NIH deserves a pro-life director – OneNewsNow

Members of Congress are petitioning Donald Trump to make a leadership change at the National Institutes of Health.

NIH is currently headed by Dr. Francis Collins, who was appointed to the post by former President Barack Obama in 2009. Now, 41 self-described "staunchly pro-life" members of Congress have signed off on a letter to President Trump calling for Collins a professed Christian to be replaced because of his stance on certain life issues.

"... [The] stances that Dr. Collins has taken in the past, regarding embryonic stem-cell research and human cloning, are not life-affirming and directly conflict with the pro-life direction of your new presidency," states the May 22 letter to the president. "It is because of this troubling paradox that we ask you to re-consider his leadership role at NIH."

OneNewsNow spoke with Dr. David Prentice, vice president and research director at the Charlotte Lozier Institute. He applauds the members of Congress who are encouraging Trump to make the change. And like the Capitol Hill lawmakers, Prentice is familiar with, and critical of, what Collins has supported: embryonic stem-cell research.

"And we've got to keep in mind that that involves the deliberate destruction of a young human being to get those embryonic stem cells," Prentice shares.

Mostly under Collins' leadership, more than a billion federal tax dollars so far have been used for the research with no documented treatments or cures for medical conditions. At the same time, Prentice points out, Collins has largely ignored adult stem-cell research, which has successfully treated over a million and a half people for various conditions.

And there's more to be concerned about, says Prentice. "Dr. Collins is in favor of human cloning," he explains. "He doesn't really believe that a human clone, even as an embryo, has any right to life. Dr. Collins has also been in favor of human/animal chimeras, [which are] sort of part-human, part-animal mixtures."

The signers of the letter to the president are also critical of Collins' support for what they describe as the "clone and kill process."

Prentice argues that a good pro-life leader at NIH could change the flow of funding and instead of wasting it on unethical research, put the money into life-affirming and life-healing research with adult stem cells, and drop funding for aborted fetal tissue research, also a failure.

In 2009, Christian ministry leader Chuck Colson (Prison Fellowship, BreakPoint) wholeheartedly endorsed Collins' appointment to direct the NIH but also took exception to the religious scientist's support for "certain kinds" of embryonic stem-cell research.

Last December, several top Republicans asked Trump to retain Collins, saying he "is the right person, at the right time" to continue to lead the NIH.

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NIH deserves a pro-life director - OneNewsNow

Pro-Life Congressmen Ask Trump to Replace Head of NIH – Church Militant

WASHINGTON (ChurchMilitant.com) - Members of the U.S. Congress are asking President Trump to remove the head of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and Obama administration holdover, Dr. Francis Collins.

Forty-one, pro-life members of Congress signed a letter to Trump, asking him to replace Collins due to the "troubling paradox" that he opposes the pro-life direction of the Trump presidency by supporting embryonic stem cell research and human cloning.

The letter further notes that Collins is "a remnant" of the Obama administration, having served as his advisor in the 2008 presidential campaign and was appointed director of the NIH by Obama in 2009.

Collins, despite claiming to be a "devout" evangelical Christian, advocated taxpayer funding of fetal stem cell research on his first day as NIH director.

He advocated for Obama's 2009 executive order, which directed taxpayer funding towards a registry of embryonic stem cells "harvested through the destruction of human embryos." The letter asserts, "It is solely through Dr. Collins' authority that such a registry exists, and under his leadership, research on these human embryos is also currently eligible to receive funding through taxpayer dollars." It further discloses, "Indeed, he continues under your Administration to approve human embryonic stem cell lines, derived through the destruction of young human embryos for federal taxpayer funding."

The letter also notes that Collins fought against efforts in 2010 to ban the use of taxpayer funding for human embryonic stem cell research.

Collins has also supported human cloning, supporting the "clone and kill" process, adding that any ethical questions are negated because the embryos used to harvest stem cells were merely clones and did not have the same dignity of human persons.

The letter finishes by telling President Trump, "We believe the American people deserve a leader at this agency who is your appointment, whose principles align with your pro-life values and your new administration's policy goals." It continues, "The protection of human life and defense of the most vulnerable of our citizens are one of this nation's most fundamental values, and Dr. Collins' controversial research position runs counter to the pro-life principals of our Founding Fathers."

The Catholic Church teaches the harvesting of stem cells is moral only if it is taken from a person after birth such as from bone marrow or from cord blood, following the birth of a child. Fetal stem cells are harvested from 45 day old children.

The use of embryonic stem cells is also built on the foundation of another immoral act, also condemned by the Catholic Church, that of in vitro fertilization (IVF), where an egg is fertilized in a laboratory.

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Pro-Life Congressmen Ask Trump to Replace Head of NIH - Church Militant

Growing an entire baby from skin cells could happen in a decade, scientists say – The San Diego Union-Tribune

Nearly 40 years after the world was jolted by the birth of the first test-tube baby, a new revolution in reproductive technology is on the horizon and it promises to be far more controversial than in vitro fertilization ever was.

Within a decade or two, researchers say, scientists will likely be able to create a baby from human skin cells that have been coaxed to grow into eggs and sperm and used to create embryos to implant in a womb.

The process, in vitro gametogenesis, or I.V.G., so far has been used only in mice. But stem cell biologists say it is only a matter of time before it could be used in human reproduction opening up mind-boggling possibilities.

With I.V.G., two men could have a baby that was biologically related to both of them, by using skin cells from one to make an egg that would be fertilized by sperm from the other. Women with fertility problems could have eggs made from their skin cells, rather than go through the lengthy and expensive process of stimulating their ovaries to retrieve their eggs.

It gives me an unsettled feeling because we dont know what this could lead to, said Paul Knoepfler, a stem cell researcher at UC Davis. You can imagine one man providing both the eggs and the sperm, almost like cloning himself. You can imagine that eggs becoming so easily available would lead to designer babies.

Some scientists even talk about what they call the Brad Pitt scenario when someone retrieves a celebritys skin cells from a hotel bed or bathtub. Or a baby might have what one law professor called multiplex parents.

There are groups out there that want to reproduce among themselves, said Sonia Suter, a George Washington University law professor who began writing about I.V.G. even before it had been achieved in mice. You could have two pairs who would each create an embryo, and then take an egg from one embryo and sperm from the other, and create a baby with four parents.

Three prominent academics in medicine and law sounded an alarm about the possible consequences in a paper published this year.

I.V.G. may raise the specter of embryo farming on a scale currently unimagined, which might exacerbate concerns about the devaluation of human life, Dr. Eli Y. Adashi, a medical science professor at Brown; I. Glenn Cohen, a Harvard Law School professor; and Dr. George Q. Daley, dean of Harvard Medical School, wrote in the journal Science Translational Medicine.

Still, how soon I.V.G. might become a reality in human reproduction is open to debate.

I wouldnt be surprised if it was five years, and I wouldnt be surprised if it was 25 years, said Jeanne Loring, a researcher at The Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla who, with the San Diego Zoo, hopes to use I.V.G. to increase the population of the nearly extinct northern white rhino.

Loring said that when she discussed I.V.G. with colleagues who initially said it would never be used with humans, their skepticism often melted away as the talk continued. But not everyone is convinced that I.V.G. will ever become a regularly used process in human reproduction even if the ethical issues are resolved.

People are a lot more complicated than mice, said Susan Solomon, chief executive of the New York Stem Cell Foundation. And weve often seen that the closer you get to something, the more obstacles you discover.

I.V.G. is not the first reproductive technology to challenge the basic paradigm of baby-making. Back when in vitro fertilization was beginning, many people were horrified by the idea of creating babies outside the human body. And yet, I.V.F. and related procedures have become so commonplace that they now account for about 70,000, or almost 2 percent, of the babies born in the United States each year. According to the latest estimate, there have been more than 6.5 million babies born worldwide through I.V.F. and related technologies.

Of course, even I.V.F. is not universally accepted. The Catholic Church remains firm in its opposition to in vitro fertilization, in part because it so often leads to the creation of extra embryos that are frozen or discarded.

I.V.G. requires layers of complicated bioengineering. Scientists must first take adult skin cells other cells would work as well or better, but skin cells are the easiest to get and reprogram them to become embryonic stem cells capable of growing into different kinds of cells.

Then, the same kind of signaling factors that occur in nature are used to guide those stem cells to become eggs or sperm. (Cells taken from women could be made to produce sperm, the researchers say, but the sperm, lacking a Y chromosome, would produce only female babies.)

Last year, researchers in Japan, led by Katsuhiko Hayashi, used I.V.G. to make viable eggs from the skin cells of adult female mice, and produced embryos that were implanted into female mice, who then gave birth to healthy babies.

The process strikes some people as inherently repugnant.

There is a yuck factor here, said Arthur Caplan, a bioethicist at New York University. It strikes many people as intuitively yucky to have three parents, or to make a baby without starting from an egg and sperm. But then again, it used to be that people thought blood transfusions were yucky, or putting pig valves in human hearts.

Whatever the social norms, there are questions about the wisdom of tinkering with basic biological processes. And there is general agreement that reproductive technology is progressing faster than consideration of the legal and ethical questions it raises.

We have come to realize that scientific developments are outpacing our ability to think them through, Adashi said. Its a challenge for which we are not fully prepared. It would be good to be having the conversation before we are actually confronting the challenges.

Some bioethicists take the position that while research on early stages of human life can deepen the understanding of our genetic code, tinkering with biological mechanisms that have evolved over thousands of years is inherently wrongheaded.

Basic research is paramount, but its not clear that we need new methods for creating viable embryos, said David Lemberg, a bioethicist at National University in California. Attempting to apply what weve learned to create a human zygote is dangerous, because we have no idea what were doing, we have no idea what the outcomes are going to be.

Lewin writes for The New York Times.

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Growing an entire baby from skin cells could happen in a decade, scientists say - The San Diego Union-Tribune

Pope Francis: Huntington Sufferers are ‘Respected’ and ‘Loved,’ Condemns Embryonic Stem Cell Research – Gospel Herald

It is well known that the Catholic Church has opposed the utilization of embryos in scientific research; Pope Francis, in a gallant, gentle, but courageous way, however, reiterated the church's stance in a Vatican meeting Thursday evening.

Surrounded by families coping in various ways with Huntington's disease, Pope Francis urged his fellows in humanity to refrain from any temptation to destroy embryos---no matter how "noble" the cause:

Some branches of research, in fact, utilize human embryos, inevitably causing their destruction. But we know that no ends, even noble in themselves, such as a predicted utility for science, for other human beings or for society, can justify the destruction of human embryos.

The hereditary illness, which involves a gradual degeneration of brain cells, eventually overtaking the mental capacities entirely. The effects are emotional, physical, and psychological. A person's cognitive abilities are eventually dissolved, and sufferers become completely dependent on their caretakers. A medical journal describes it as follows:

"Nerve cells become damaged, causing various parts of the brain to deteriorate. The disease affects movement, behavior and cognition - the affected individuals' abilities to walk, think, reason and talk are gradually eroded to such a point that they eventually become entirely reliant on other people for their care."

Tragically, there is as of now no cure for the disease; current research, however, is making an attempt for a remedy which involves the use of embryonic stem cells. Pope Francis addressed the attitude of Christ in His ministry with the sick, assuring the affected that they are "loved by God" and are not forgotten:

"In many cases the sick and their families have experienced the tragedy of shame, isolation and abandonment. Today, however, we are here because we want to say to ourselves and all the world: HIDDEN NO MORE!

Nonetheless, Francis encourages Christians not to grow weary in doing good. In seeking a means of healing which necessitates the taking of a life only adds to our "throw away culture."

What can be cured, the spiritual leaders insists, is our attitude towards those suffering from the disease:

"The strength and conviction with which we pronounce these words derive precisely from what Jesus himself taught us; Jesus met many sick people; he took on their suffering; he tore down the walls of stigma and of marginalization that prevented so many of them from feeling respected and loved.

The Pope closed with a blessing on the physically unwell, as well as their caretakers:

May the life of each of you both those who are directly affected by Huntingtons disease and those who work hard every day to support the sick in their pain and difficulty be a living witness to the hope that Christ has given us, even through suffering there passes a path of abundant good, which we can travel together.

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Pope Francis: Huntington Sufferers are 'Respected' and 'Loved,' Condemns Embryonic Stem Cell Research - Gospel Herald

Scientists Are "Tantalisingly Close" to Producing a Limitless Blood Supply From Stem Cells – ScienceAlert

Two papers published this week have revealed that scientists are "tantalisingly close" to being able to produce large quantities of blood cells from a patient's own stem cells.

This would revolutionise treatments for people who need frequent blood transfusions, as well as those with bone marrow disorders who struggle to find a match with a healthy donor.

"For many years, people have figured out parts of this recipe, but they've never quite gotten there," Mick Bhatia from McMaster University in Canada, who was not involved with either study,told Nature News.

"This is the first time researchers have checked all the boxes and made blood stem cells."

Stem cells are specially programmed cells whose job is to create all the other cells in the body.

There are two different types: embryonic, which are located in an embryo before the cells start to specialise; and adult stem cells, which are used to repair and replace old, worn-out cells.

Since 2006, whenadult mouse cells were converted back into a type of adult stem cell calledinduced pluripotent stem cells (iPS cells) for the first time, the field has been pushing towards producing new blood cells.

The goal is that a patient could have their own cells extracted, converted into iPS cells, and from those, a limitless supply of the patient's blood could be produced - no donor required.

"This step opens up an opportunity to take cells from patients with genetic blood disorders, use gene editing to correct their genetic defect and make functional blood cells," says Rio Sugimurafrom Boston Children's Hospital, one of the researchers behind the recent studies.

"This also gives us the potential to have a limitless supply of blood stem cells and blood by taking cells from universal donors. This could potentially augment the blood supply for patients who need transfusions."

In the first paper, the researchers used both iPS and embryonic stem cells and exposed them to chemical signals that direct stem cells to change into specialised cells, such as hemogenic endothelium (the precursor to blood cells).

Next, the team added transcription factors (genes that code for proteins that 'transcribe' DNA), which was able to force the cells into a blood-forming state.

The researchers discovered that five transcription factors (RUNX1, ERG, LCOR, HOXA5 and HOXA9) were required to force the cells into the correct form.

When they added these new cells to mice, they integrated and formed multiple types of blood cells, including both red blood cells and immune cells.

"We're tantalisingly close to generating bona fide human blood stem cells in a dish," says George Daleyfrom Boston Children's Hospital, head of the research lab for the new paper."This work is the culmination of over 20 years of striving."

The second paper is slightly different although equally important to the field. Instead of using iPS or embryonic cells, a team fromWeill Cornell Medicinein New York managed to use adult stem cells taken from the lung walls of mice.

The team identified four separate transcription factors (Fosb, Gfi1, Runx1, and Spi1), and were able to turn the cells into blood cells without first turning them into iPS cells.

Instead, the extracted cells had the four transcription factors added to their genomes, and kept in a petri dish designed to mimic the environment inside human blood vessels.

The cells morphed into blood cells, and began multiplying. They were also effectively added into mice, which lived with minimal issues, over 1.5 years in the lab.

The head researcher of this project, Shahin Rafii, says the difference between his and Daley's team's techniques is pretty significant.

"Because he bypassed the iPS-cell stage, Rafii compares his approach to a direct aeroplane flight, and Daley's procedure to a flight that takes a detour to the Moon before reaching its final destination," says Amy Maxmen at Nature News.

Although that analogy might make you think Rafii's method is the superior choice, right now, we still don't know which way will be more effective in humans, as the results have only been demonstrated in animal models to work effectively.

But being able to change human cells into proliferating blood cells is a fantastic achievement for both groups, and it's always exciting to see competing science in action.

The studies have both been published in Nature, and you can access Daley's here and Rafii's here.

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Scientists Are "Tantalisingly Close" to Producing a Limitless Blood Supply From Stem Cells - ScienceAlert

No research justifies the use of human embryos, Pope Francis says – Catholic News Agency

Vatican City, May 18, 2017 / 10:26 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Francis said that there is no outcome that can justify the use or destruction of embryos for scientific purposes even for the commendable cause of trying to help those suffering from incurable diseases.

Some branches of research, in fact, utilize human embryos, inevitably causing their destruction. But we know that no ends, even noble in themselves, such as a predicted utility for science, for other human beings or for society, can justify the destruction of human embryos, he said May 18.

Pope Francis spoke during a meeting at the Vatican Thursday with people affected by a rare and incurable genetic brain disorder called Huntingtons disease, along with their families and caretakers.

His comments were significant given the massive slate of members from the medical and scientific communities who treat the patients with Huntington's and perform research on how to prevent the disease or slow its progression. Present were some 1,700 people from 16 different countries. Sponsors for the event included major corporations such as Virgin Airlines.

There are several ethical problems surrounding the research on Huntingtons disease, including the use of embryonic stem cells taken from embryos made through in vitro fertilization.

The Pope noted this fact during the audience, encouraging scientists to pursue scientific advancement only through means that do not contribute to the throw-away culture which treats human beings as objects for use.

The is not the first time Francis has spoken out against embryonic stem cell research. In his 2015 environment encyclical Laudato Si, he decried a tendency within the field of science to justify transgressing all boundaries when experimentation is carried out on living human embryos.

We forget that the inalienable worth of a human being transcends his or her degree of development, he said, adding that once technology disregards ethical principles, it ends up considering any practice whatsoever as licit.

When we fail to acknowledge as part of reality the worth of a poor person, a human embryo, a person with disabilities to offer just a few examples it becomes difficult to hear the cry of nature itself; everything is connected.

Once the human being seeks absolute dominion, the foundations of our life begin to crumble, the Pope said in Laudato Si, so that instead of cooperating with God, man puts himself in Gods place and thus ends up provoking a rebellion on the part of nature.

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Major ‘Milestone’ Realized in Quest to Transform Stem Cells Into Blood Cells – Seeker

Scientists on Wednesday unveiled two methods for coaxing stem cells into blood cells, a long-sought goal that could lead to new treatments for blood disease, including leukemia.

In separate experiments reported in Nature one with mice, the other transplanting human stem cells into mouse bone marrow researchers demonstrated techniques with the potential to produce all types of blood cells.

This step opens up an opportunity to take cells from patients with genetic blood disorders, use gene editing to correct their genetic defect, and make functional blood cells, said Ryohichi Sugimura, a doctor at Boston Children's Hospital and lead author of one of the studies.

If proven safe, the proof-of-concept methods could also lead to a limitless supply of blood by using cells from universal donors, he added.

Human embryonic stem cells generic cells which, as the embryo develops, gradually differentiate were first isolated in 1998.

A decade later, scientists figured out how to generate another type of all-purpose cell from human skin, known as induced pluripotent stem cells, or iPS. These were successfully used to make neurons and heart cells.

But the goal of creating blood-forming stem cells in the lab remained out-of-reach.

RELATED: Blood From Human Babies, Teens Rejuvenates Old Mice

Sugimura and colleagues devised a three-step process to achieve that breakthrough.

They began by inducing both embryonic stems cells and iPS to morph into a form of embryonic tissue that in a natural process gives rise to blood stem cells. This had been done before.

In the second crucial step, they experimented with dozens of proteins known to control gene expression, especially during the formative process of embryo growth.

Protein cocktail They found that five of these so-called transcription factors, working together, yielded the elusive blood stem cells the starter kit for white and red blood cells, platelets, macrophages and all the other cell types of which blood is composed.

Finally, they transplanted these human blood stem cells into the bone marrow of live mice.

Within a few weeks, several kinds of human blood cells had formed, and were circulating in the rodents.

We are now able to model human blood function in so-called humanized mice, said George Daley, head of a research lab at Boston Children's Hospital and the main architect of the experiment, in a statement.

We're tantalizingly close to generating bona fide human blood cells in a dish, he added.

In the second study, a team led by Shahin Rafii at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York City used adult mouse cells as their starting material, and then guided them through several steps including exposure to some of the same gene-activating proteins to create mature blood stem cells in a petri dish.

RELATED:Vampire Bats Are Drinking Human Blood in Brazil

Taken together, the two experiments represent a milestone in stem cell development, said Carolina Guibentif and Berthold Gottgens, researchers at the Cambridge Stem Cell Institute in England who did not participate in the work.

The ability to manufacture HSCs haematopoietic, or blood, stem cells in the laboratory holds enormous promise for cell therapy, drug screening and studies of leukaemia development, they wrote in a commentary, also published by Nature.

A key concern, they noted, was the possible risk associated with using transcription factors that may themselves be linked to the early stages of leukemia.

How these cocktails of catalyzing proteins are inserted into developing tissue is of particular concern.

But new techniques of ultra-precise gene-editing, they added, could soon render such potential problems obsolete.

WATCH: How Do Blood Transfusions Work?

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Major 'Milestone' Realized in Quest to Transform Stem Cells Into Blood Cells - Seeker

Let there be tissue: More precise, controlled method of engineering tissues from stem cells – Science Daily

Science Daily

Let there be tissue: More precise, controlled method of engineering tissues from stem cells Science Daily A major promise of studying human embryonic stem cells is to understand these processes and apply the knowledge toward tissue engineering. Researchers in UC Santa Barbara's departments of Chemistry and Biochemistry, and of Molecular, Cellular and ... and more »

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Let there be tissue: More precise, controlled method of engineering tissues from stem cells - Science Daily

Approaching a decades-old goal: Making blood stem cells from patients’ own cells – Science Daily

Daily Mail

Approaching a decades-old goal: Making blood stem cells from patients' own cells Science Daily Since human embryonic stem (ES) cells were isolated in 1998, scientists have been trying, with little success, to use them to make blood-forming stem cells. In 2007, three groups (including the Daley lab) generated the first induced pluripotent stem ... Is this the end of blood donation?Scientists close to unlimited supply from stem cellsTelegraph.co.uk Scientists close to creating blood cells patient's skinDaily Mail Stem cell breakthroughs bring unlimited supply of lab-made blood closerNew Atlas Los Angeles Times -Inquirer.net -The Australian all 21 news articles »

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Approaching a decades-old goal: Making blood stem cells from patients' own cells - Science Daily

Stem cells: Stem cell-based therapies threatened by the … – Nature – Nature.com

Nature.com

Stem cells: Stem cell-based therapies threatened by the ... - Nature Nature.com Human embryonic stem (ES) cells can self-renew indefinitely and give rise to virtually all cell types in the body. This makes them a valuable source of cells for ... and more »

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Stem cells: Stem cell-based therapies threatened by the ... - Nature - Nature.com