Dear Hobby Lobby Haters: Birth Control is not Medicine
There is one argument against the Hobby Lobby decision that is driving me crazy maybe because it is going unchallenged on Facebook pages and comboxes all over.It goes like this: if Hobby Lobby can deny health insurance coverage for birth control, then what will stop a company owned by other religious nut jobs from denying blood transfusions, chemotherapy, or inhalers for asthma?This one seems to make sense and I am sure many people do not see where it falls short. I am not expert on Constitutional Law or on health insurance in general but this seems pretty obvious to me.Blood transfusions, chemotherapy, and inhalers are me...
Source: Mary Meets Dolly - July 15, 2014 Category: Geneticists and Genetics Commentators Tags: Reproductive Technologies Source Type: blogs
My Rules for Discourse on the Internet
I could be having a great day and a nasty exchange on the Internet will always bring me down. Whether I am involved or not, uncivil discourse sucks the joy out of the Internet for me. I suspect it does for most people who are not secret psychopaths. I am especially discouraged when I see Christians ripping each other apart for the whole world to see.In a recent exchange on Twitter, someone called a woman a "dumb nasty-deragatory-term-begining-with-a-c" for raising flags about some reproductive technologies. Other women, myself included, came to her defense calling the comment what it was: a blatant example of mis...
Source: Mary Meets Dolly - July 8, 2014 Category: Geneticists and Genetics Commentators Source Type: blogs
In-Vitro Fallout: Donor IVF Teen Says I Wish I Had Never Been Born
This story is so heartbreaking and so indicative of the complicated ethical web the fertility industry has spun. Gracie Crane is a UK teenage girl full of angst, but not the kind that troubles most teenagers. She was adopted as a "leftover" IVF embryo. Gracie keenly feels the loss of her genetic roots, but the law in the UK prevents her from ever knowing who her biological parents are. The pain is so acute, some days she says she wishes she were never born.Continue reading at LifeNews>> (Source: Mary Meets Dolly)
Source: Mary Meets Dolly - June 27, 2014 Category: Geneticists and Genetics Commentators Tags: IVF Source Type: blogs
Yours Truly "Award-Winning Columnist"
In the blogosphere, there are times I think when it is acceptable to toot your own horn. This maybe one of those times, so I am going to toot away.At the Catholic Media Conference in Charlotte this past week, the National Catholic Register submitted my commentaries to the Catholic Press Awards. They won first place in the Best Regular Column Culture, the Arts and Leisure" category. The judges said my commentary was "Informed, interesting approach to this very complicated topic. Written in a way that most readers can digest and learn from." That is exactly my mission. I am not the M.D. Ph.D. Church schol...
Source: Mary Meets Dolly - June 24, 2014 Category: Geneticists and Genetics Commentators Source Type: blogs
New Nike World Cup Ad Glimpse of What Enhancements Will Do to Sport
The World Cup is back. I was lucky enough to be standing near a TV (at a soccer center no less) when the U.S. scored its first goal against Ghana. I will never forget the first time I ever watched men's soccer live. It was a college game and I sat in awe of how exciting such a low scoring game could be. I wondered where soccer had been all my life.Nike has a clever ad for the World Cup. The best football players in the world are replaced by "clones" that never make mistakes. Once one guy is cloned, they all get cloned because, go figure, the natural athlete can no longer compete. Then the fans disappear because a...
Source: Mary Meets Dolly - June 18, 2014 Category: Geneticists and Genetics Commentators Tags: Transhumanism Source Type: blogs
UK Embryo Authority: Wrong to Test Three-Parent Technique in Animals But OK in Humans
In today's modern society everything seems turned around. Black is white. White is black. You would think nothing would surprise me anymore, but it does, especially in the realm of reproductive medicine.The United Kingdom's authority on reproductive medicine, the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA), has called the creation of embryos with three genetic parents "not unsafe" in the attempt to move the procedure to the clinic. I have written extensively about the technique and its safety issues before.The HFEA recommends more testing be done, but they don't recommend that testing be done in primates....
Source: Mary Meets Dolly - June 10, 2014 Category: Geneticists and Genetics Commentators Tags: Genetic Engineering Source Type: blogs
Can Cerebral Palsy be Prevented With Cord Blood Stem Cells?
In my life I have been blessed to know many people who have cerebral palsy. When I was a child, Michael, a friend of my parents, would come to visit. My brother and I looked forward to his time with us because of his infectious sense of humor.Later, when I married my husband, I got to meet his cousin Jay. Jay is confined to a wheel chair but that did not stop him from making me laugh so hard I almost peed my pants. And just around the corner from my house lives Sarah. She cannot speak, but her mother and sister, who was hands down my kids' favorite babysitter, look at her with such love and admiration that I know she commu...
Source: Mary Meets Dolly - June 6, 2014 Category: Geneticists and Genetics Commentators Tags: Stem cells, Adult Source Type: blogs
Entering the Bionic Age: Why Be You, When You Can Be New?
A whimsical animated childrens movie that came out in 2005 may be one of the most prophetic films of our time.Robots, featuring the voice talents of Robin Williams and Ewan McGregor, is the story of Rodney Copperbottom, a young robot adept at building and fixing things. He goes to the big city to meet his idol, the head of Bigweld Industries, Mr. Bigweld.What Rodney finds at Bigweld Industries is a change of management and a change of direction. The company will no longer be making replacement parts for robots. Instead, they will only be making new shiny upgrades for those robots that can afford them. The new motto f...
Source: Mary Meets Dolly - May 29, 2014 Category: Geneticists and Genetics Commentators Tags: Transhumanism Source Type: blogs
Musings of a Former Zygote
I am a former zygote. If you are not familiar with biology terminology, a zygote is the first cell that results when gametes (sperm and egg) fuse in sexual reproduction. I teach biology to homeschool students and we discover that many organisms begin as zygotes. Any organism that reproduces sexually starts as a zygote. Humans are just one of many.And while we are quite willing to acknowledge that a canine zygote is a brand new dog, or a bovine zygote is a brand new cow, or an equine zygote is a brand new horse, all genetically distinct from any that came before, somehow we humans are different. Many of us are perfectly hap...
Source: Mary Meets Dolly - May 16, 2014 Category: Geneticists and Genetics Commentators Tags: Human embryo Source Type: blogs
BioTalk, Episode 9: Transhumanism in Popular Culture
To grease the wheels of the transhumanist technological utopia it will take getting a generation on board with radically changing the nature of humanity. That is where popular culture comes in. In Episode 9 of BioTalk, Chelsea and I discuss the transhumanist images, both good and bad, in the media today. (Source: Mary Meets Dolly)
Source: Mary Meets Dolly - May 8, 2014 Category: Geneticists and Genetics Commentators Tags: BioTalk Source Type: blogs
More Human Embryos Cloned and Destroyed
On the heels of the announcement that researchers were able to clone two adult men and destroy those cloned embryos for stem cells, another group funded by the New York Stem Cell Foundation has published research where they cloned a woman with type 1 diabetes. NBCNews reports:Scientists have used cloning technology to make stem cells from a woman with Type 1 diabetes that are genetically matched to her and to her disease.They hope to someday use such cells as tailor-made transplants to treat or potentially even cure the disease, which affects millions and which now has few treatment options other than careful diet and regu...
Source: Mary Meets Dolly - April 30, 2014 Category: Geneticists and Genetics Commentators Tags: Environment Source Type: blogs
Down Syndrome Discovery Has Implications for Human Genetic Engineering
The 21st human chromosome is the smallest of all our chromosomes. It contains only a few hundred genes and is only 1% of our total DNA. As most people know, an extra chromosome 21 causes Down Syndrome. What most people did not know until research published this week, is that tiny chromosome has an effect across the whole human genome.Instead of simply being an extra copy of each of the genes on chromosome 21, trisomy 21 has an effect on the expression of genes on other chromosomes. The Scientist has the story of the fascinating research that lead to this discovery:The deleterious effects of trisomy 21the extra chromosome...
Source: Mary Meets Dolly - April 23, 2014 Category: Geneticists and Genetics Commentators Tags: Genetic Engineering Source Type: blogs
Two Men Cloned for Stem Cells
For years Massachusetts company Advanced Cell Technology ACT) has been trying to clone human embryos. They have been working with somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT), the same technique that cloned Dolly the sheep, in vain attempts to get cloned human embryo to grow long enough to produce embryonic stem cells. ACT has even tried using cow, rabbit and mouse eggs instead of human eggs to produce cloned human embryos.Well, ACT has finally done it. Working with the research of Oregon scientists who last year announced that they had successfully cloned embryos using cells from infants and fetuses, ACT reports that they were su...
Source: Mary Meets Dolly - April 18, 2014 Category: Geneticists and Genetics Commentators Tags: Cloning Source Type: blogs
Happy is the Word on World Down Syndrome Day!
"Happy" is the word of the day because today is World Down Syndrome Day. Jérôme Lejeune, a French geneticist, was the man who discovered the cause of Down Syndrome. Before his discovery, Down Syndrome brought shame, as Mark Bradford at the Jérôme Lejeune Foundation explains:Thank you, Professor Lejeune, for what you did for my father and my mother. Because of you, I am proud of myself. This brief and unplanned eulogy was given at Jérôme Lejeunes funeral in 1994 by his patient, Bruno, whose karyotype was one of the first to reveal, in 1958, that an extra copy of the 21st chromosome caused Down sy...
Source: Mary Meets Dolly - March 21, 2014 Category: Geneticists and Genetics Commentators Tags: Genetics Source Type: blogs
BioTalk, Episode 8: Genetic Modification -- Bad for Cows and Corn, but Okay for Humans
In light of my recent piece in the National Catholic Register "Genetically Modified Food: Bad; Genetically Modified Humans: Good", Chelsea asks, "Why are we going to great lengths to raise awareness about and regulate the use of GMO in our food supply, while largely ignoring the direct genetic modification of human beings??" A great question we discuss in the latest episode of BioTalk.
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Source: Mary Meets Dolly - March 20, 2014 Category: Geneticists and Genetics Commentators Tags: Genetic Engineering Source Type: blogs
