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HEART TRANSPLANTS: IS BRAIN DEATH REAL DEATH?

OTTAWA, Mar 3 (LSN) As the Canadian Parliament seeks to find ways to increase organ donation in Canada, a parliamentary committee has heard that heart transplant "donors" must be alive when organs are retrieved. Ruth Oliver, a Vancouver psychiatrist who was declared clinically dead in 1977 at the Kingston General Hospital after suffering internal bleeding of the brain, told the committee she is "living testimony that people survive."

Dr. John Yun, a Richmond, B.C. oncologist, testified to the committee that organ harvesting was the impetus behind the brain death theory that has been accepted by the medical profession since 1968. Ten years ago Yun worked in an ICU unit keeping brain dead patients on life support for organ transplants. Yun now believes this activity was wrong. "We must not jump to the conclusion that a dubious definition of death -- the medical hypothesis of brain death -- is in fact death," he said.

Dr. Michael Brear, a Vancouver general practitioner, who has for 30 years been raising questions about the ethics of brain death, told the committee that "The so-called 'beating-heart cadavers' who are used as donors are in fact living patients. They are sick, they are dying. They are living and not dead."

Dr. Brear notes that the first successful heart transplant harvesting took place in South Africa. He suggested that racism was behind the decision to approve the procedure since the operation took place under the old apartheid system and the donor was a black woman.

Dr Oliver noted, "unconscious or dying people are not people of lesser value. More and more ethicists, philosophers, and churches are rejecting brain death specifically for that reason."

See the story in the National Post at:
http://www.nationalpost.com/home.asp?f=990303/2333116

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CANADA ADMITS DISCRIMINATION AGAINST STAY-AT-HOME PARENTS

CALGARY, Mar 3 (LSN) The Canadian government has issued a 33 page report officially denying discrimination against stay-at-home parents. The report was produced to disprove allegations brought before the United Nations by a Canadian woman, Beverley Smith, seeking equity in the way the Canadian tax system treats stay-at-home parents.

Despite the federal government's denial, material in the report suggests a discriminatory attitude towards single-income families. The report, obtained by the Canadian Press admits "single-earner families pay higher taxes than dual-earner ones." Then, in an attempt to defend the favoured status of dual-income families in the tax code, the report states that "when costs such as day care are considered, two-income families have less after-tax disposable income."

The report also made clear that it is government policy to push women out of their homes and into the work force. "New policies helping stay-at-home parents would reduce the incentive for paid work," says the report. Equitable treatment of women regardless of the vocational choices they make is apparently not a Liberal principle today.

The Canadian Press report is located at:
http://www.canoe.ca/TopStories/parents_mar2.html

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CARTOON PAMPHLET SEEN AS A THREAT BY ABORTIONISTS

TORONTO, Mar 3 (LSN) Canadian media uncritically picked up on a hysterical report by the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario that claimed that a cartoon pamphlet sent out by a U.S. pro-life group to doctors and medical students in North America is "a threat." The Texas pro-life group Life Dynamics purchased a list of doctors and medical students and sent out a cartoon pamphlet discouraging them from being enticed by head-hunters in the abortion industry.

Jim Maclean, director of public affairs with the College, said that the wording on the cover of the pamphlet --"If you're a doctor, resident or med student, someone's out to get you" was "basically a threat." Presumably Maclean means to suggest that pro-lifers are threatening to harm abortionists. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth.

Dzintra Tuttle, a spokesman for Life Dynamics, told LifeSite that the cover wording refers to page 16 of the pamphlet where it states that "today abortion advocates are engaged in an aggressive campaign to lure physicians into the abortion industry." The extreme reaction on the part of the College is evidence of the "paranoia of the abortion industry," said Tuttle.

Recently abortionist Garson Romalis proved both the assertion of Life Dynamics that an abortionist recruitment campaign is underway, and that abortion is a "bottom feeder aspect" of the medical profession. Romalis, a hero of the pro-abortion movement since being shot in the leg in 1994, spoke to University of British Columbia medical students in an attempt to recruit more abortionists last January.

Romalis told his listeners that, "Abortion has always been viewed as a kind of a subterranean thing. [Children] don't walk around saying, 'My father is an abortionist.'" In addition, he said, "it's boring, it's repetitious, it's not particularly technically or intellectually demanding and it's not very well paid."

For the Canadian Press article see:
http://www.canoe.ca/TopStories/abortion_mar2.html

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MEXICO TO REMOVE PENALTY FOR ABORTION?

MEXICO CITY, Mar 3 (LSN) A bill has been presented in the Mexican legislature to remove the criminal penalties for abortion. Catholic World News reported that the head of the nation's pro- life committee warned the leaders that "a government which seeks to legalize this practice is a genocidal government."

See the Catholic World News report:
http://www.cwnews.com/news/getstorystart.cfm?recnum=9744

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