Explore current medical research based on herbs, organic gardening and the restoration of our natural environment. Meeting 2nd Tuesday of month 6:30 p.m., at the Provident Bank meeting room on the front or Florida side of the building, 1690 East Florida Avenue, Hemet California 92544, at the corner of Florida Avenue and Girard Street, The topic discussion is followed by questions, an open gardening discussion and refreshments. Anyone interested in health, gardening and environmental issues is invited to attend. Optionally bring garden produce or fruit for exchange. For further information see: gardenhealth.tripod.com or call: 951-925-8110.
Tuesday, September 13, 2005, 6:30 p.m., talk 7:45 p.m., 1690 East Florida Avenue, Hemet
Topic: "Stem Cells, their collection, activation and the future of medicine; or a threat to religious values" in addition to our regular gardening discussion and exchange of ideas, plants and produce.
Topic: "Inducing your immune system to prevent Alzheimer’s with turmeric and omega-3, and naturally relaxing your heart with nitric oxide."
Stem
Cells Heal a Broken Heart By KristenPhilipkoski
02:00 AM Mar. 07, 2003 PT
Sixteen-year-old Dimitri Bonnville had already been accidentally shot in the heart with a nail gun while doing home repair, undergone open-heart surgery and suffered a massive heart attack, when doctors told his parents he needed a heart transplant.
The doctors did offer an alternative: Bonnville could become the first human to receive experimental stem-cell therapy to revive his damaged heart tissue. They went ahead with the procedure, the results of which could turn the stem-cell debate on its head.
Doctors at William Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak, Michigan, used a procedure that, if successful, could eliminate some of the controversy surrounding the medical use of embryonic stem cells, as well as the practice of therapeutic cloning.
"We're very excited because we think that there's already been substantial recovery of cardiac function," said William O'Neill, Beaumont's chief of cardiology, regarding Bonnville's progress.
The teenager's therapy began Feb. 17 with a four-day regimen of a drug that stimulated the production of stem cells in his blood. On Feb. 21, doctors harvested Bonnville's stem cells. Using a heart catheter, they transplanted the stem cells into the artery that supplies blood to the front of the heart.
He was discharged about a week later and is now recuperating at home. His doctors say they have never seen a recovery like his.
"We did cardiac MRI studies and we found that basically the entire front wall of his heart was dead (before the procedure)," O'Neill said. "Many other patients we have observed like this have never seen any improvement."
The stem cells -- master cells that can grow into almost any type of tissue in the body -- used to treat Bonnville were taken from his own blood, which eliminated the possibility of rejection by his immune system.
Many scientists believe that embryonic stem cells -- usually taken from 4-day-old embryos that are often obtained from leftover stores at in-vitro fertilization clinics -- are the most powerful and flexible of all the cells.
On Aug. 9, 2001, President Bush declared that scientists who receive federal research funds could work only with the 60 or so embryonic stem-cell lines that had been created before that day. In reality, however, the number of usable lines turned out to be fewer than 10.
However, the Beaumont procedure doesn't require embryonic stem cells at all, because the necessary cells were taken from Bonnville's own blood. The experimental therapy also eliminates the need for another intensely debated technique: therapeutic cloning.
The assumption that therapeutic cloning is key to the success of embryonic stem-cell therapies (none of which has yet been shown to work) has permeated both the stem-cell and cloning debates.
By creating a cloned embryo of a patient and extracting stem cells from it, scientists believe they might get around the body's tendency to reject new cells as an immune response.
Since Bonnville's own cells were used in the procedure, rejection isn't a concern, O'Neill said.
"They're his own cells, highly concentrated, and we put them into the damaged area," he said. "We wouldn't anticipate anything different than we would normally."
Other studies have suggested that simply injecting stem cells into a damaged area might be enough to instigate tissue repair. But most of the work has been done with younger stem cells taken from embryos or aborted fetuses.
This appears to be the first piece of evidence that stem cells taken from someone as old as 16 have differentiated so effectively. Still, O'Neill says he's not sure the results could be duplicated in older people.
"We know that based on age, older people have less recovery of heart function," he said. "It's very possible this is age-dependent."
Other researchers said the results look promising, but that it will take time to determine whether the treatment is a success.
"I think it's extremely hopeful," said Dr. Neil Theise, a stem-cell researcher at Beth Israel Medical Center in New York.
Dr. Sam Dudley, a cardiologist at Emory University in Atlanta who is also involved in stem-cell research, said that even if Bonnville continues to improve, it may be hard to know whether it was thanks to the therapy, and, if so, how it worked.
"I think this is a wonderful thing that they did," Dudley said. "We have to (proceed) judiciously because we need to know a little bit more what we're doing."
The fact that Dimitri Bonnville didn't have any appealing alternatives to the stem-cell therapy made the decision to go with an experimental treatment easy, his father said.
"We felt that he just had really limited options," Craig Bonnville said. "We heard the doctors talk about it, and they offered a chance as long as it was approved through their hospital to have it done. And we felt that was a very low-risk, high-reward scenario for Dimitri, especially being 16 years old."
Beaumont doctors said they hope soon to begin clinical trials of their stem-cell technique.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Johns Hopkins Medicine
November 9, 2004
Results from an animal study conducted at Johns Hopkins show that stem cell therapy can be used effectively to treat heart attacks, or myocardial infarcts, in pigs. Stem cells were taken from another pig's bone marrow, when injected into the animal's damaged heart, were able to restore the heart's function to its original condition.
If further animal studies and human clinical trials prove equally successful, the Johns Hopkins researchers believe this could be a new, widely applicable treatment to repair and reverse the damage done to heart muscle that has been infarcted, or destroyed, after losing its blood supply. Nearly 8 million Americans alive today have suffered at least one heart attack and so are at greater risk for chronic heart failure or another, potentially fatal, heart attack.
"Current treatments for cardiovascular disease prevent heart attack from occurring and/or alleviate its after-effects, but they do not repair the damaged muscle that results, leaving sizably dead portions of heart tissue that lead to dangerous scars in the heart," said cardiologist Joshua Hare, M.D., professor of medicine at The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and its Heart Institute, and lead author of the study to be presented at the American Heart Association's Scientific Sessions 2004 on Nov. 9.
"Damage done by a heart attack to heart muscle is really the cause of all the serious complications of the disease: Disturbances of heart rhythm can lead to sudden cardiac death and decreased muscle pumping function can lead to congestive heart failure," said study co-author and interventional cardiologist Alan Heldman, M.D., assistant professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins, who performed the injection procedures. "Our aim is to find a way to repair the damage done to the heart muscle and prevent these complications."
In a controlled study of 14 pigs (whose circulatory systems are similar to humans), seven received therapy and another seven did not. The researchers found that injections of bone marrow, or "adult," stem cells directly into heart muscle, recently damaged by a heart attack, produced a nearly full recovery after a relatively short period of time, two months.
Recovery was measured for the seven treated animals as full restoration of heart muscle contraction to levels existing prior to infarction. Indeed, dead scar tissue nearly disappeared after therapy, which produced mostly healthy, normal-looking heart tissue and left only a small trace of the heart attack, the researchers said.
In contrast, for the seven animals in the control group that did not receive therapy but were injected, instead, with placebo, no recovery was observed and the animals' condition worsened, leading to the development of congestive heart failure within two months after heart attack.
In order to thoroughly cover the area of damaged heart muscle -- approximately the size of a one-dollar coin -- researchers gave every treated animal between 12 and 15 microscopic injections of adult stem cells, each injection containing nearly 200 million cells.
The cells were injected directly into the heart muscle using a specialized catheter inserted through a tiny puncture in an artery, a procedure similar to other cardiac catheterization techniques. Use of this catheterization technique was shown to be safe and effective. Its use increases the options for delivering stem cell therapy in the future; most existing studies use intravenous injections.
It remains unclear how or why the adult stem cells developed into new and healthy heart tissue, or exactly how long their healing effects last.
Adult stem cells were used because they are readily available from the bone marrow, where they are plentiful. A special kind of bone marrow stem cell, called a mesenchymal stem cell, was separated from other kinds and used in this study. While their precise biological action is not known, mesenchymal bone marrow stem cells are known to give rise to a variety of cell types, including bone, cartilage, fat, and other kinds of connective tissue cells such as those in tendons, as well as muscle, such as the heart. A stem cell is a special type of cell in the body from which all others grow and derive into the major specialized cell types of the body.
Using mesenchymal stem cells also avoided potential problems with immunosuppression, in which each animal's immune system might have attacked stem cells from sources other than itself. Because they remain in an early stage of development, mesenchymal stem cells do not trigger an immune response, unlike what would happen if more developed stem cells were used.
"While the bone marrow adult stem cells do not have the same potential to develop into different organ tissues as do embryonic stem cells, the use of adult stem cells in this study shows their tremendous potential in developing effective therapies for heart disease, and avoids the controversy surrounding destruction of embryos to obtain the embryonic variety," added Hare.
"Among its many benefits are that adult stem cells are readily available, meaning they can be extracted from the patient, no donor is required, and the cells can be simply reproduced if more are needed. In our animal experiment, the treatment regimen was relatively simple, requiring only injection to the damaged tissue. The therapy was extremely effective, allowing for almost complete recovery, with no serious complications, such as immunosuppression, which is a problem in organ transplantation. Now, we need to see how it works in people."
According to the latest statistics from the American Heart Association, in 2001, there were an estimated 565,000 new cases of heart attack in the United States, plus an additional 300,000 cases of recurrent heart attack. Almost 185,000 of all heart attacks were fatal. The AHA also estimated that 7,800,000 Americans had suffered at least one heart attack. People who have had a heart attack have a sudden death rate that is four to six times greater than in the general population. About two-thirds of heart attack patients do not make a complete recovery; however, 88 percent of those under age 65 are able to return to work.
This two-year study was funded by the Johns Hopkins Institute for Cell Engineering, the National Institutes of Health, and The Donald W. Reynolds Cardiovascular Clinical Research Center, and the National Institutes of Health. Further assistance came from Osiris Therapeutics, which developed a process for preparing mesenchymal stem cells and provided both funding and the lines of adult stem cells used for each animal involved in the study. Injection catheters were provided by Biocardia Inc.
Dear expectant stem cell recipient, you have our deepest sympathy. However the person who wanted to be your prospective stem cell donor has been denied the right to donate any stem cells for your recovery, as it has been determined by the law of our creator that those cells possess a living soul which may not be commingled with your eternal soul; so I hope you will understand that you may not receive their cellular donation; because that would certainly only desecrate their own dignity and threaten our fundamental religious beliefs in a single and all powerful god; so those stem cells do unreservedly belong to our god and shall be disposed of as medical waste and incinerated intact without any intervention, in full accordance with the will of our god; and as a result your life shall pass quietly, as this too is the will of our god almighty. We do not portend to play god here on this earth, nor to profane the dignity of man through abominations including the tolerance of any non-traditional medical intervention in your behalf. May our god almighty care for your soul in the hereafter. Your loyal and faithful minister in god forever.
Naturally an alternative for fundamentalist Christians would be to exclude themselves from modern medicine altogether; and certainly individually and permanently commit to personally rejecting any advances for themselves involving any type of therapeutic cellular therapies; any form of advanced fertility assistance; along with eliminating the inclusion of science in the education of their own children. These are rights that any individual or family can easily insist on. Ignorance may well be upheld as an American birth right, so that we could be completely impoverished and biologically decimated by our lack of understanding; while we import all our electronics, cars and clothing, and send our citizens to India for medical care; if they could afford the transportation costs in a technologically backward, petroleum dependent world. These are not dismal predictions for some distant future, but precisely what is now occurring.
The preliminary question is, what kind of a minister or political leader would condemn millions of people to an early death, simply because some medical research had proposed utilizing knowledge gained from the use of fertilized ovum, that is not even necessarily harmed or damaged in any way; that was in fact, in any case being thrown into a trash can; the disposal of which, incidentally has not been raised as morally objectionable by these same religious leaders; while working to understand how to activate our own adult stem cells is somehow supposed to be a huge concern. Adult stem cells are in all our our own bones, fat and skin cells and that is somehow supposed to be a religious problem? Incidentally each woman disposes of 100's of millions of egg cells that have embryonic potentials, all of which are usually depleted by her early 40's, so why aren't these cells considered sacred? They each have the same life bearing capacity; and most of the trillions of sperm cells that a male can generate, each have the same capacity to initiate reprogramming the egg. However if anyone is sexually active, promiscuous, drunk or even a rapist then a hysterical religious minority believes, on the basis of a private hunch, that a sacred act may have occurred, although there's no evidence of a sacred transformation, when these two cells collide. We might note that spontaneous abortions of fertilized eggs occur millions of times per hour, without anyone ever pressing criminal charges; and without anyone ever being harmed over countless human generations; and that too is god's will or nature's way. Objecting to any such cellular medical research appears to be not a religious issue at all, but overwhelming a question of the deteriorated ethics and the degenerate moral values of the opponents; the so called religious and political authorities, who care little or nothing of humanity only their own unquestionable authority to control or punish others; to promote needless wars based on perpetuating violence and abuse or corporate profits; and by perpetuating such ignorance and suffering throughout humanity. One thing I discovered as a young person, is that when you listen to a sermon, and notice that the use of the word god more closely matches the term death in its context, and not life; then that will help define the type of message that's being delivered or perhaps the type of cult that's being engaged in. (1)
In actual fact medical science has never had any particular incentive or interest in utilizing stem cells, whether adult or embryonic, from another human being; obviously because there would be severe immunological rejection issues, just as there is with organ transplantation, which requires the use of very problematic immunosuppressive drugs that can severely shorten the life of the patient should rejection takes place or any minor infection occur; as well as add tremendous costs that few could even afford anyway. The point of taking disposed of embryos before they get into the incinerator is only to help understand how to regress our own adult stem cells to an earlier stage where they will be able to replicate the regenerative qualities of embryonic stem cells in some way; so that our own adult stem cells can begin to effectively repair our own damaged or failing organs; hopefully at a comparatively low cost that anyone could afford and without the risks of any form of surgery.
All of this is however very difficult medical research to accomplish; that is nevertheless offering notable evidence for realistic hope. What scientist are looking for is knowledge of how earlier stage stem cells are able to initiate the construction and repair of our organs, so that adults can heal their injuries in a way that is similar to young people; because adult cells have been almost fully shut-down usually by the time we are 20 years old, and remain shut-down until death, except for a few stem cells in our skin, liver and bone marrow; which allows for a limited amount of rebuilding to cope with minor injuries and prevent our bleeding to death. The evidence now exists that methods may be understood and ultimately brought into clinical practice that could help us rebuild our own hearts, with our own adult stem cells, and hopefully this knowledge could be transferred to rebuild our ageing mussels, kidneys, bones and our slowly deteriorating brains. Naturally the enemies of understanding and life have always condemned any new life saving efforts, and have always gathered a following of ignorant, depressed and angry people around their morbid beliefs; and later when these same opponents become ill they will typically be among the first to take advantage of any new medical technology or stem cell technique that could extend their mean spirited lives. It should be obvious that their personal god is or belief may be based on ignorance, oppression and vengeance; and it should also be obvious that most Christians do not believe that such authoritarians represent Christ’s message, and are themselves trying to live lives based of hope, understanding and helpfulness for the health of their children and their community. Obviously a knowledgeable, hopeful and life supportive Christian should choose the church or minister that supports their sincere living spirit; if such a church exists anywhere; or simply live independently with deeper ethical and spiritual values; and contribute some personal resources to help life saving medical research; so that a few dedicated scientists can continue making extraordinary discoveries and keep food on their table.
1) Repressive Puritanical Christian
beliefs have explicitly driven fears of pregnancy and the extreme use of birth
control, resulting in a genocidal collapse of the American population, with
births declining from 96% to less than 9% in California within 40 years, and
with over 75% of the population now being originated by an intentional invasion
of extraordinarily desperate and aggressive illegal aliens, who had overpopulated
and devastated their own countries (by doubling their population every 22 years);
and then fabricating claims that the entire continent is their ancestral racial
heritage and consequently available for their exclusive conquest and occupation.
Any category of ignorance or deceit can have irreversibly lethal consequences,
while at the same time be extremely profitable to corporate interests and media
management, and be fully supported by religion and government force.
Judaism
• No central authority
• Traditionally no moral status of embryo before 40 days of development
• No fundamental conflict with embryo or adult human stem cell research
or therapies
Hinduism
• No central authority
• Indian government allows hESC research but not the creation of embryos
for research
• No fundamental conflict with embryo or adult human stem cell research
or therapies
Islam
• No central authority
• Muslim legal commentators generally accept the morality of abortion
through the 40th day
• No fundamental conflict with embryo or adult human stem cell research
or therapies
Buddhism
• No central authority
• Ahimsa: principle of non-harming. Debate on whether prohibits infliction
of harm on sentient beings or all living things.
• No conflict with embryo or adult human stem cell research or therapies
Taoism
• No central authority
• No conflict with embryo or adult human stem cell research or therapies
Christianity
• Papal authority (canon law v. theology)
• St. Augustine: Ensoulment & Sentience after 40 days
• Thomas Aquinas: Differentiates primary matter (potentiality) from substantial
form (actualizing principle).
• Post- Reformation/Decentralized Authority
• No conflict or alternatively extreme conflict with embryo or adult human
stem cell research or therapies, based on sect.
|
“Abortion is sinful, if it conceals sin” |
“No abortion is allowed at all.” Immediate hominization (1) |
“Abortion, if early, is not homicide.” Implies delayed hominization |
“Abortion requires penance ‘just incase’ it is homicide.” |
|
| Early Period (1-600 AD) | Continuous Development | Didrache (100 AD) |
St. Jerome (347-419) St. Augustine (354-430) Cyril of Alexandria (d444) |
|
| Middle Period (600-1500) | Continuous Development | Peter Lombard (1095-1160) Bonaventure (1221-1274) St. Thomas Aquinas (1227-1274) Council of Vienne (1312) |
Gratian Innocent III (1198-1216) Gregory IX (ca1240) |
|
| Pre-Modern (1500-1750) | Continuous Development | Sixtus V (1588) | Council of Trent (1566) Holy Office (1679) Holy Office (1713) |
Gregory XIV (1591) |
| Modern | Continuous Development | St. Alphonsus Ligouri Jean Gury (1864) Pius IX (1869) Code of Canon Law (1917) Pius XI (1930) Pius XII (1951) Vatican II (1965) Paul VI (1968) Declaration of Procured Abortion (1974) |
St. Thomas Theses (1914) H. de Dorlodot (1949) H.M. Haring Joseph Donceel (1970) Therapeutic: John of Naples (1315) St. Antonius (1581) Martin Azpilcueta (1640) Tomas Sanchez (1550-1610) |
Jane Hurst, The History
of Abortion in the Catholic Church, 1990./ ref: StevePeckman
1) hom·i·ni·za·tion, n. The evolutionary process leading to the development of human characteristics that distinguish hominids from other primates.
Of the thousands of varieties of fruits and vegetables created or genetically engineered by growers and researchers over many thousands of years; and with extraordinarily few exceptions we are daily, exclusively depending on and eating cloned plants and genetically engineered dairy and meat, even buying genetically engineered fibers and pharmaceuticals. The results have been extraordinarily successful; we now have food to stay alive every day, and the quality far better than prehistoric grains, vegetables or fruits, which were typically small and usually inedible.
Do we condemn the farmers and researchers that gave us these beneficial plants, and refuse to consume their genetic miracles, or attack them for playing god before sentencing them to prison or death for their hard work? During the past century medical scientists have also been making extraordinary efforts to find cures for lethal and disabling diseases; and now that stem cells are beginning to show exceptional potential, these same scientists are in fact being accused of engaging in criminal behavior, by religious hate groups, with a blatantly anti-life message, irrational arguments and extraordinary little understanding; who want a nearly illiterate Christian ayatollah to control the future of medicine.(2) Meanwhile a growing list of diseases and uncontrollable viral infections is taking 10’s of millions of lives each year; but everyone is supposed to adhere to the unfounded beliefs of the most ignorant and authoritarian, and stop anything new or life supportive. At the same time the world’s population has grown over a thousand fold, largely as a result of agricultural progress; which has allowed for dense cities that spread for hundreds of miles; which allow diseases to flourish and spread far more rapidly; than the more ecologically balanced world of our ancestors.
Heightened food production has driven global overpopulation, which has promoted warfare, genocidal assaults and wrecked many countries, as well as driven massive illegal migration patterns, expanded violence and environmental destruction. The mass media rarely mentions such interactions, so that the intended victims don’t try to stop such disasters from occurring; because wars and catastrophes mean huge corporate profits. So whenever someone tries to reduce suffering or ignorance, they have been labeled as the enemy, whether Christ, Socrates, Galileo or some contemporary scientist trying to save lives.
Our mass media undoubtedly created a population driven by consumption and hostile to anything other than the consumer goals designated by multi-national corporations. So we have a history of causing trouble and being invaded; while wanting to continue being deceived by our media, even if it results in creating more desperation and violent individuals who are simply receive advanced training in our prisons; since our society insists not on crime elimination but on vengeance. This vengeance has now been extended to attacking scientists who are doing life saving work that benefits humanity. The result of George Bush’s decrees opposing stem cell research has stopped the most effective medical research in the US. Now South Korea, which is about the size of Indiana, has eclipsed the US in advanced stem cell research; with Singapore, China and India rapidly moving forward; as a result of few if any prohibitions against research that could benefit humanity.
But this is not America’s only achievement in self-destruction. The US has eliminated 80% of its union jobs and exported 75% of its industrial capacity; at the same time escalated the consumption of oil with 3 ton personal trucks instead of cars; along with the marketing of huge 3,000 square foot and larger houses, that are now considered a minimum requirement; and more seriously by allowing soon over 100,000,000 illegal aliens to take over the US, who’s population is doubling every 22 years, all in order to perpetuate this extraordinarily wasteful and self-destructive way of life. America’s consumer driven population is being completely replaced by a much more aggressive, desperate and violent population, who flood in at the rate of over 4,000,000 per year. Meanwhile America’s religious leaders are concerned with when a soul enters an egg; naturally concluding that it enters with the sperm, not noticing that life had always been present long before the gametes were joined; typically as a result of one or two people drinking alcohol. Ordinary people inflict vastly more risks to life than medical science could ever imagine causing. If preachers want to regulate and destroy life saving medical research, then their parishioners should start going to them for their regular medical visits and surgeries.
During the past 40 years the greatest threat to the survival of this nation has been coming from a massive influx of illegals who deeply believe that they own the country outright, and are willing to conquer it through an extraordinarily high birth rate, that is blatantly supported by a multitude of US government breeding programs that support the desperate and aggressive; while rapidly depleting and replacing the US population through the intensive marketing of birth control, along with random ritual murders, used as initiation rights for gangs. Our relatively meager life sciences budget has to be disposed of in order to pay the nearly $1 trillion per year needed to support the most massive invasion and genocide in world history.
2) Instead of being life supportive, political leaders are promoting an irrational debate about when the soul enters the ovum. Obviously life did not begin the moment sperm entered the egg, it was clearly there before those two gametes made contact. The entire concept of a soul entering an egg when sperm enters the egg is unknown to anyone, certainly never been observed and somewhat insulting in character to say that only the male carries life or a soul. If a soul is transferred into a fertilized egg through the sperm then how could all the many millions of gametes that are naturally disposed of by males and females be anything less than murder? Also disregarded in this attack on medical science is the fact that researchers have no interest in damaging embryos or mass producing them; these are false accusations in the first place. The objective is to enhance the regenerative capabilities of adult stem cells. Naturally if an adult human being has a soul, then how could the state justify the execution of any adult without the state being guilty of murder, and without the mandatory punishment of the people of the state? Of course that is what happens; citizens are in fact punished through burdens or incarceration, even when they have done no harm. The US Supreme Court nominee John Roberts said that it's completely constitutional and appropriate for the government to execute an innocent person, without having to consider any new evidence that could prove their innocence, because it would create unwanted delays, (response made during the US Senate hearings of September 14, 2005). So obviously government and religious leaders don't care in the slightest about anyone's soul, nor justice or god for that matter; it's just their fear tactic to confuse, deceive and control the people; otherwise they would have eliminated all such unjust, vengeful and hypocritical laws. The term 'soul' has been used just as a label, without any understanding being provided of any vested interests of government or religion to manipulate for other motives; and since other animals, trees and mountains aren't allowed such an elevated status or label, then they can be destroyed for commerce and profit without allowing much consideration; all based on the pronouncements of a few authoritarians, who use ignorance and deception to justify and perpetuate their destructive behavior. They steal and manipulate the words of their messiah to confuse their followers and manipulate political power; and what's very strange, nobody notices? Why would anyone listen to such bullies, except out of fear, or perhaps because they recognize the same deceit and malicious behavior in themselves. In any case it's certainly not in anyone's best interest to be ignorant, subservient or abusive.
Photos of young gang members, now spread throughout the US. 1) Rehearsing a murder with a 45 automatic, 2) East LA with an automatic rifle, 3) Gang tattoos, 4) Throwing bottles at a school bus carrying rivals.
They use unique tattoos, have their own symbols and graffiti, and their own language both written and through hand signals. Each mara has its own internal rules which are very elaborate. Even in view of these unique, and at times bizarre or grotesque characteristics, probably the most defining characteristic of the maras, is the use of violence. Indeed, their unique vocabularies emphasize precisely the criminal activities and violence. From initiation, to ascension into leadership positions, to discipline, everything is based on violence. To enter the MS-13, to be baptized into the mara, requires thirteen seconds of being beaten by four members of the mara, without putting up any resistance and only being allowed to cover the face and genitals. Later, as part of the ascension process, they have to kill a person for no other cause than to show they can, and this is called “Sangre Afuera, Sangre Adentro” (blood outside, and blood inside). For women, if strong, they undergo the same initiation rite. If not, they have to have sex with all the male members of the mara. The maras are continually fighting not only against the authorities, but also against each other for turf and markets, especially for drugs.
The PNC in El Salvador lists the various causes of homicides which include the following: rivalries among gangs, to extract revenge, dispute over territories, for opposition to payment of rent, for denying them a favor, or if anyone gets into a conflict with them for any reason. As part of their aggressiveness, at least MS-13 commit murders including mutilations and decapitations. According to Dom Romulo Emiliani, Auxiliary Bishop of San Pedro Sula, between eight and twelve percent of the maras are psychopaths, “…murderers, addicted to blood.”
Destruction and urban warfare is the future that has been decreed for this country as a result of indifference, ignorance and a tolerance of violence. We will have to become far more aware, better educated and personally creative to help a better world emerge; all of which can be vastly more rewarding than any mass marketed belief systems used to create a subservient humanity.
Groups of every political orientation are often so poorly informed by short messages and sound bites in the news that everyone receives an extraordinarily incomplete view of any situation and in the confusion no understanding is ever likely and inevitably contradictions will be adhered to as truth; and since all the details are missing, propaganda is all that gets repeated in efforts to convince others of their own fragmentary truths, of course others with different but equally fragmentary truths will naturally be presenting the opposition; which ultimately doesn't result in a full understanding; two contradictory lies rarely result in truth; so the various groups proceed to overpower all others into accepting their own rules, ultimately through the force of law. The result is not greater understanding and cooperation, but greater opposition and conflict. When with closer inspection of an issue there may in fact be no conflict whatsoever between the desires and the hopes of everyone, nor the actual facts for that matter. The only question is will it take centuries to observe the obvious and the fundamental lack of conflict that exists; and then perhaps only after millions of lives have been lost, or everyone has been overwhelmed by anger and suffering that we consider the obvious facts?
Conflicts and catastrophes rarely occur by surprise; typically some virulent and aggressive factions have intentionally engineered some problem through a deception that ultimately impacts millions of lives; perhaps only because a slower process of understanding has never been encouraged or tolerated. As a result numerous categories of disasters are endlessly perpetuated, created or earned; and so in a way problems are often deserved; whether they are economic hardships, industrial decline, ecological destruction, agricultural shortages, energy or oil related dilemmas, or perhaps the results of overpopulation pressures, or a peculiar opposition to lifesaving medical technique. In each case an understanding of the subject has first been carefully avoided for a very long time, perhaps to perpetuate or initiate a conflict, and to promote an authoritarian answer that invariably creates additional conflicts.
What seems to be overlooked in all the endless problems and deceptions that we endure are the contradictions, perhaps because they may help to reveal a lack of actual understanding; which may require a tremendous amount of personal effort to assemble a fairly complete set of facts. Which is why we rely on television news, perhaps magazines, newspapers, books, lectures and friends to help us get the information we need. However if that information is highly abbreviated as on television, or politically slanted as in many newspapers, or intentionally deceptive, then misunderstanding and conflict is created. However it's always easier to present a quick and entertaining deception than grapple with a far more complete grasp of a complicated subject that conveys a detailed understanding. Besides clarifying the obvious might just offend someone who has been taught for decades to believe some particular misconception. Revealing anyone's contradictory beliefs may not be a welcome experience; however the alternative can be catastrophic for themselves, their family and perhaps their community. Naturally we are currently encountering a variety of such dilemmas that need to be considered if we are going to survive at all.
The pro-life movement certainly has validity by being in favor of life; however also being a political cause a number of contradictions have been incorporated among its beliefs that literally threaten family survival as profoundly as their pro-choice opponents. When IVF (in-vitro fertilization) emerged around 1980, providing couples experiencing infertility with a way of having a child, extraordinary opposition came from the religious communities. IVF came very close to being banned in the US and perhaps worldwide. "What rights do doctor's have to play god?" and similar arguments were voiced in the media. However after most congregations had or knew about Christian couples that had the child they always wanted through IVF, it obviously became a little irrational to attack these families in their own congregations. Isn't it interesting that pro-life groups of the 1980's couldn't see that IVF was a technique that supported the life of children and families, and so they blatantly attacked this life saving medical technique. Some so-called "pro-life" organizations are still angry about any medical techniques such as IVF that support life. There's nothing honest, ethical or moral about taking any such position, yet many authoritarians will claim that their contradictory beliefs are the only truth possible, perhaps to retain submissive followers.
Over two decades passed and a new life saving approach for medicine emerges; and just a quickly it's condemned as baby killing. The same vengeful people apparently found another beneficial technique that they could create lies about and attack. The fact is that disposing of an embryo through a spontaneous abortion or because it was leftover from IVF has never presented much concern. A healthy embryo that fails to implant properly and dies apparently has never been called or considered a murder nor mentioned as an ethical problem either. However when an embryo that would have naturally been destroyed because it can not implant properly is saved, and not destroyed, and is used to help save another person's life that could be dieing of a life threatening disease, that's now a huge problem for a few people and described as a massive threat to religious values.
When disposing of ovum or embryos by natural means is considered a non-issue, but saving those same microscopic tissues is labeled as baby killing we are entering the area of diminished sanity. Accusing life saving medicine that is attempting to sustain the life of these microscopic tissues, that would otherwise strictly be disposed of in an incinerator as waste, and then accusing such life saving work as destroying life, is beyond bizarre and contradictory; and then when these same accusers demand that such tissues and embryos be incinerated in the name of their religious principles; one could only wonder what form of death cult is promoting such venomous speech. Well apparently it's coming from, not all, but many so-called Christian organizations, as well as pronouncements from the Whitehouse in order to secure this voting block. The result is that the most significant medical discovery of the past century has been substantially stopped in the US. Which is certainly nothing less than exceptionally malicious behavior that will cost many lives and perhaps only deserved by those who promoted such deceptions. Naturally the rest of the world doesn't follow such bizarre anti-life principles as America's pro-life advocates.
Somehow a Christian couple that goes to an IVF clinic to obtain help in having a child because they are having fertility problems, and successfully has a child is somehow supposed to be presenting a real threat to authoritarian religious values; perhaps because an excess embryo might remain in storage for many years unused; and horror of horrors, instead of being disposed of, which apparently has caused little concern, it might possibly be used to save someone's life; and that's where the crisis begins. Actually scientists are not interested in using anyone's embryos as a life saving medical technique; that part was a made-up accusation. Certain churches have accused medicine of considering this; perhaps to create fear in their congregation, and use their congregation in a fight based on the creation of a hoax for their congregation to battle, perhaps to keep their congregation from loosing interest in their religion. Government leaders have started wars for much the same reason, and always see their national support climb. People eventually change their attitudes when they see how much harm they have caused for themselves by following such malicious beliefs, while their leaders look for something new to attack. In the 1960's computers were being presented as a threat that would destroy civilization.
Groups that made a claim to be pro-life have taken numerous anti-life positions; in addition to opposing IVF in the late 1970's and 1980's; their opposition of early childbirth and abortion had advanced sterilization to the number one form of birth control for over 3 decades, costing 10's of millions of lives in the US. Efforts to protect marriage by penalizing divorce through civil litigation has only proven to many young people that marriage is legally and financially extremely dangerous to consider for any responsible person; or alternatively if married it compels people to endure decades of suffering and abuse; and a litany of religious prohibitions has only encouraged generations of young people to rebel against such oppressive regulations, and to engage in anything dangerous that they have been warned against. The result of a rigid religious and pro-life community has been a rapidly declining population that cannot sustain itself even into the near future, with a loss of well over 150,000,000 American lives. Consequently, the government in response to corporate interests created a program of population replacement through an open borders policy. The policy has created what is undoubtedly the largest genocide in history, fully concealed and perpetuated by a corporate media.
In this environment those who want to be life supportive are intentionally be made to feel threatened whether through litigation, presidential pronouncements against some new research, the threat of criminalizing science and prosperous moral accusations, or economic marginalization; while the malicious, inept and unproductive accusers play the role of judge and jury. Once again the dark side of christianity exposes itself. Of course the religious accusers want the benefit of any life saving technique for themselves and their own survival when it eventually emerges. So these are all typical strategies of abusers, who invariably blame their victims for their own malicious behavior, leaving everyone else either confused or defending themselves against obvious lies and malicious accusations; however many victims end-up joining their abuser because the abusers are seen as strong or to be personally feared. It's no wonder that governments, gangs and religions have long ago adopted such strategies to maintain and control their membership. However the alternatives of study, understanding and consideration for life make everything else futile a futile endeavor. (9/15/05)
by CraigCFreudenrich, Ph.D.
Photo
courtesy Advanced Cell Technology, Inc.
Noah was the first endangered animal to be cloned.
On January 8, 2001, scientists
at Advanced Cell Technology, Inc., announced the birth of the first clone of
an endangered animal, a baby bull gaur (a large wild ox from India and southeast
Asia) named Noah. Although Noah died of an infection unrelated to the procedure,
the experiment demonstrated that it is possible to save endangered species through
cloning.
Cloning is the process of making a genetically identical organism through nonsexual means. It has been used for many years to produce plants (even growing a plant from a cutting is a type of cloning). Animal cloning has been the subject of scientific experiments for years, but garnered little attention until the birth of the first cloned mammal in 1997, a sheep named Dolly. Since Dolly, several scientists have cloned other animals, including cows and mice. The recent success in cloning animals has sparked fierce debates among scientists, politicians and the general public about the use and morality of cloning plants, animals and possibly humans.
In this article, we will examine how cloning works and look at possible uses of this technology.
Producing Clones: Plant Life
Nature has been cloning organisms for billions of years. For example, when a
strawberry plant sends out a runner (a form of modified stem), a new plant grows
where the runner takes root. That new plant is a clone. Similar cloning occurs
in grass, potatoes and onions.
Reproduction
Sexual reproduction involves the merging of two sets of DNA (one from the father's
sperm and one from the mother's egg) to produce a new offspring that is genetically
different from either parent. Asexual reproduction (without sex) produces offspring
that are genetically identical to the single parent organism.
People have been cloning plants in one way or another for thousands of years. For example, when you take a leaf cutting from a plant and grow it into a new plant (vegetative propagation), you are cloning the original plant because the new plant has the same genetic makeup as the donor plant. Vegetative propagation works because the end of the cutting forms a mass of non-specialized cells called a callus. With luck, the callus will grow, divide and form various specialized cells (roots, stems), eventually forming a new plant.
More recently, scientists have been able to clone plants by taking pieces of specialized roots, breaking them up into root cells and growing the root cells in a nutrient-rich culture. In culture, the specialized cells become unspecialized (dedifferentiated) into calluses. The calluses can then be stimulated with the appropriate plant hormones to grow into new plants that are identical to the original plant from which the root pieces were taken.
Diagram
of plant cloning through tissue culture propagation
This procedure, called tissue culture propagation, has been widely used by horticulturists to grow prized orchids and other rare flowers.
Producing Clones: Animal
Kingdom
Plants are not the only organisms that can be cloned naturally. The unfertilized
eggs of some animals (small invertebrates, worms, some species of fish, lizards
and frogs) can develop into full-grown adults under certain environmental conditions
-- usually a chemical stimulus of some kind. This process is called parthenogenesis,
and the offspring are clones of the females that laid the eggs.
Another example of natural cloning is identical twins. Although they are genetically different from their parents, identical twins are naturally occurring clones of each other.
Scientists have experimented with animal cloning, but have never been able to stimulate a specialized (differentiated) cell to produce a new organism directly. Instead, they rely on transplanting the genetic information from a specialized cell into an unfertilized egg cell whose genetic information has been destroyed or physically removed.
In the 1970s, a scientist named John Gurdon successfully cloned tadpoles. He transplanted the nucleus from a specialized cell of one frog (B) into an unfertilized egg of another frog (A) in which the nucleus had been destroyed by ultraviolet light. The egg with the transplanted nucleus developed into a tadpole that was genetically identical to frog B.
Gurdon's experiment to clone a frog
While Gurdon's tadpoles did not survive to grow into adult frogs, his experiment showed that the process of specialization in animal cells was reversible, and his technique of nuclear transfer paved the way for later cloning successes.
Dolly
In 1997, cloning was revolutionized when Ian Wilmut and his colleagues at the
Roslin Institute in Edinburgh, Scotland, successfully cloned a sheep named Dolly.
Dolly was the first cloned mammal.
Photo courtesy Roslin Institute, Dolly
Wilmut and his colleagues transplanted a nucleus from a mammary gland cell of a Finn Dorsett sheep into the enucleated egg of a Scottish blackface ewe. The nucleus-egg combination was stimulated with electricity to fuse the two and to stimulate cell division. The new cell divided and was placed in the uterus of a blackface ewe to develop. Dolly was born months later.
Diagram of the nuclear transfer procedure that produced
the first cloned mammals
Dolly was shown to be genetically identical to the Finn Dorsett mammary cells and not to the blackface ewe, which clearly demonstrated that she was a successful clone (it took 276 attempts before the experiment was successful). Dolly has since grown and reproduced several offspring of her own through normal sexual means. Therefore, Dolly is a viable, healthy clone.
Since Dolly, several university laboratories and companies have used various modifications of the nuclear transfer technique to produce cloned mammals, including cows, pigs, monkeys, mice and Noah.
Why Clone?
The main reason to clone plants or animals is to mass produce organisms with
desired qualities, such as a prize-winning orchid or a genetically engineered
animal -- for instance, sheep have been engineered to produce human insulin.
If you had to rely on sexual reproduction (breeding) alone to mass produce these
animals, then you would run the risk of breeding out the desired traits because
sexual reproduction reshuffles the genetic deck of cards.
Other reasons for cloning might include replacing lost or deceased family pets and repopulating endangered or even extinct species. Whatever the reasons, the new cloning technologies have sparked many ethical debates among scientists, politicians and the general public. Several governments have considered or enacted legislation to slow down, limit or ban cloning experiments outright. It is clear that cloning will be a part of our lives in the future, but the course of this technology has yet to be determined.
Hemet Organic Gardening and Healthy Living Club © 2005, Last updated: Saturday, September 17, 2005 2:06 AM