LifeSite Daily News for Tuesday November 20, 2007

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Message for November 20, 2007

Dear Readers,

The United Nations has thankfully been forced to admit that its AIDS statistics have been greatly exaggerated. More important is that the UN must now be encouraged, in the light of the revelations of this debacle, and it can at the very least be called that, to admit its condom strategy has also been very wrong – and deadly.

As the whistleblowing international AIDS scientists have emphasized, behaviour change, not condom programs, has been the greatest factor associated with dramatic declines in the AIDS rates of certain African nations. But, there is no money to be made, personal empires to build or sexual revolutions to cause with abstinence. As well, abstinence programs have a tendency to strengthen marriage and family life, the bane of de-populationists. These are all keys to understanding the problem.

Looney England is at it again, this time with its Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill. It is painful to watch and report, day after day, this once great nation going down – willingly and deliberately (with of course some brave souls still fighting for life and family).

We have been privileged to be of considerable help to pro-life, pro-family forces in Latin America as a result of our news reports on events there.

LifeSiteNews journalist Matthew Hoffman had an extensive opinion piece based on his research for one of our reports published in the Managua, Nicaragua newspaper LaPrensa. We are told by local contacts that the article had a real impact in the case of Marta Maria Blandón, who smuggled young Rosita and her stepfather out of Costa Rica in 2003. The article was published at a very important time during the debate over this issue. See https://www.laprensa.com.ni/archivo/2007/septiembre/26/notici…

Our writers, based in the United States, England, Canada and Mexico make a serious effort to produce well researched, factual articles that can then often have such an impact. The Nicaraguan situation is only one of many others that LifeSiteNews and you, our readers, have been able to influence in a big way.

Steve Jalsevac
LifeSiteNews.com

UN Finally Admits Worldwide AIDS Epidemic Greatly Overestimated

UNAIDS estimates now much lower but AIDS scientist says new figures still too high

By Thaddeus M. Baklinski

NEW YORK, November 20, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) – As reported by LifeSiteNews at the beginning of November, the number of AIDS cases worldwide has been grossly exaggerated by the UN Joint Program on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS). This exaggeration was seen to benefit the massive AIDS industry’s constant demands for large funds. See LifeSiteNews.com stories here: Scientists Acknowledge AIDS Crisis is Distorted and Overblown – Part I (https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2007/nov/07110101.html) and Part II (https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2007/nov/071102.html). Now the UN has been forced to admit there has been a major problem with its numbers.

On Tuesday, a UNAIDS annual report admitted that the world body has sharply reduced its estimates of the global HIV/AIDS pandemic because of strong evidence from AIDS scientists that the agency’s methods for measuring and predicting the course of the epidemic were flawed.

Dr. James Chin, former head of a World Health Organization Global Programme on AIDS unit from 1987-1992 and Drs. Edward Green and Daniel Halperin, formerly with AIDS units of USAID, accumulated and publicised much of the evidence that eventually forced the UN to publicly admit the serious flaws with its AIDS numbers.

The Washinton Post reports that Dr. Chin has responded that the UN’s revisions are still too high. Chin estimates the current number of AIDS cases worldwide to be 25 million whereas the new UN figures are 8 millon above that. Chin told the Post “If they’re coming out with 33 million, they’re getting closer. It’s a little high, but it’s not outrageous anymore”.

Much of the reduction, says UNAIDS, is due to revised information from India, where the numbers have been cut in half from six million cases to about three million, and from new data from several countries in sub-Saharan Africa.

The agency’s former estimates were based on studies of HIV infection rates of women receiving prenatal care rather than populations as a whole. New studies relying on random, census-style sampling techniques observed consistently lower infection rates.

The AIDS experts critical of the UN emphasised that dramatically lower rates of infection in African countries such as Kenya and Uganda can be attributed to sexual behavior differences “which are the biggest factors determining the severity of the AIDS epidemic in different countries and even within countries.” Significantly, these African countries have strong support for abstinence education, whereas countries in the “hot spot” of African AIDS concentration, such as Swaziland and Botswana, consistently promote condom use.

The UN AIDS agency and other members of the AIDS industry have often ridiculed and aggressively targeted those who emphasised abstinence programs over failed and very costly condom distribution campaigns.

AIDS researchers have stated that AIDS has become a “Billion Dollar Industry” that stands to profit from misinformation. Inflated AIDS numbers were used to distort information in order to gain political and financial support for AIDS progammes.

Helen Epstein, author of a recent book on the AIDS fight, told the Washington Post that within the UN, “There was a tendency toward alarmism, and that fit perhaps a certain fundraising agenda”.

The now far more realistic findings may cause spending for AIDS research and treatment to be reduced and at the same time possibly lead the UN to accept the overwhelming evidence that abstinence programs will save far more lives than massive condom distribution and harmful sex-ed programs.

Related LifeSiteNews.com coverage:

Kenya First Lady: Condom “is causing the spread of AIDS in this country.”
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2006/may/06052307.html

Ugandan AIDS Activist’s Facts Trounce UN Official Claim that Catholic Church to Blame for AIDS Crisis
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2007/oct/07102507.html

“Last Stand” for the Family on Homosexual Agenda within British Fertility Bill

MP says, “Labour ministers are sending out the utterly wrong signal that fathers don’t matter”

By Hilary White

LONDON, November 20, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Recent moves by British parliamentarians to alter or defeat the government’s proposed embryology bill is being called a “last stand” to defend the rights of the child to true family life. Former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith and a group of MP’s, family rights groups and religious leaders have denounced the government’s proposed Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill.

The bill proposes to erase the legal requirement of IVF clinics to take into account a child’s need for a father when considering applications by single or lesbian women for artificial procreation treatments. The bill would allow two women to be named as the parents of a child conceived with donated sperm or ova.

In an article in the Daily Mail’s Sunday edition, Iain Duncan Smith called the bill the “last nail in the coffin” of the traditional family, “and another blow will have been struck against fatherhood”.

Smith wrote, “This move could not have come at a worse time. Just as we are beginning to appreciate the vital role fathers play in the successful upbringing of children, Labour ministers are sending out the utterly wrong signal that fathers don’t matter.”

45 MP’s, including a number of Labour Members, have signed a Commons motion saying the proposals are “profoundly misinformed and clearly undermine the best interests of the child”. In an announcement yesterday, Prime Minister Gordon Brown said that there would be no free vote for Labour MP’s, a move that has angered some of his party, insisting the bill be railroaded through Parliament.

In a letter to the Times, Cormac Cardinal Murphy O’Connor, Primate of the English Catholic bishops and Archbishop of Westminster, wrote that the bill’s proposal “subordinates the rights of the child to the desire of the women”. “This radically undermines the place of the father in a child’s life, and makes the natural rights of the child subordinate to the desires of the couple. It is profoundly wrong,” the Cardinal wrote.

Cardinal Murphy O’Connor was joined by Dr. John Sentamu, the Anglican Archbishop of York, who said the proposals in the Human Tissue and Embryology Bill were “divorced from morality”. He told the House of Lords the bill’s proposal to remove the need for a father, contradicted the government’s emphasis on the need for father figures to encourage “social cohesion”. The move, he said, derives from a “consumerist mentality” in which “the science that allows something to happen is transformed into the right to have it”.

The Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC) commented on yesterday’s debates saying that the “principle of welfare of the child is disregarded” in the bill.

The “legal fictions” surrounding the questions of parenthood, a SPUC memorandum says, “should be rejected as contrary to honesty, justice and the best interests of the child.” SPUC is urging Peers to reject the bill as a whole when it is debated again this Wednesday.

“The welfare of the child should be a guiding principle in the delivery of reproductive technology. The need for a father, a basic principle that is clearly in the best interest of the child, is rejected to satisfy ill-founded demands for the right to parenthood.”

Daily Mail columnist Melanie Philips applauded the move as a “last stand” to defend the family after decades of attacks by “an alliance of feminists, gay rights activists, divorce lawyers and ‘cultural Marxists’”.

In the decades since the “catastrophe” of the sexual revolution of the 1960’s, Philips says, “stitch by stitch, the fabric of family life was unpicked…Lone parenthood and illegitimacy were de-stigmatised, cohabitation became routine and marriage was penalised through the tax and benefits system.”

“The outcome has been an epidemic of fatherlessness and a rising tide of juvenile misery and social breakdown.” She wrote that more recently, “anyone who objected” to the imposition of the homosexual agenda on British political life “was crucified as ‘homophobic’, creating a climate of rampant intimidation and cultural bullying which has successfully stifled debate and dragooned politicians into line.”

Read related LifeSiteNews.com coverage:

Two Lesbians to be named as “Mothers” on Birth Certificates under UK Human Tissue and Embryo Bill
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2007/nov/07110601.html

Brazilian Government’s National Health Conference Rejects Abortion

Vote seen as devastating blow against Lula regime’s desire to legalize practice

By Matthew Cullinan Hoffman

BRASILIA, November 20, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) -The Brazilian National Health Conference, an arm of the pro-abortion Ministry of Health of the socialist Lula regime, has made headlines across the nation by roundly rejecting the legalization of abortion.

“The Ministry of Health was defeated”, summed up the Globe, a nationally recognized newspaper, which attributed the event to the superior organization of Catholic delegates to the conference.

According to Francisco Batista Junior, president of the National Health Council, at least 70% of the participants voted against the proposal, even after it had been watered down with vague language. The word “abortion” had been removed from the original text, and replaced with the term “reproductive rights”, a phrase often used by the abortion lobby to refer to the availability of abortion.

The text of the resolution read: “Ensure sexual and reproductive rights, respect the autonomy of women regarding their bodies, recognizing it as a public health issue and debate its decriminalization by means of legislation.”

The rejection of the pro-abortion amendment is seen as a particularly significant setback for pro-abortion forces because the National Health Conference had recommended the decriminalization of abortion eight years ago in December of 2000. The decision may reflect the recent surge in awareness about the possibility of legalizing abortion, which has spurred a growing national pro-life movement that has the support of 60% of the Brazilian population.

Adson Franca of the National Alliance for the Reduction of Maternal and Neonatal Mortality, a subsidiary of the Ministry of Health, expressed his disappointment. “The rejection was very surprising because the proposal passed in more than eight plenary sessions, with more than 300 delegates in each one,” he said.

Franca later made it clear that the Ministry of Health would continue to promote the legalization of abortion despite the vote. “The force of religious thinking is very great and, paradoxically, does not perceive that penalizing doesn’t help society,” he said. “We believe that the central question is to decide if a woman should be a prisoner or not.”

Clovis Boufleur, from the Pastoral Institute for Children, had a different perspective on the vote. He called it a “victory for society”.

Dolly Creator’s Announcement of No More Human Cloning Raises Some Concerns

New method of acquiring stem cells might still result in cloning of embryos

By Hilary White

TORONTO, November 20, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) – While the news is full of glowing reports that Britain’s Dr. Ian Wilmut, the world’s leading cloning and stem cell researcher, has given up the project of cloning human embryos, some are dubious that his new methods are not just cloning by another name.

The Telegraph reported that Dr. Wilmut, famed for having created “Dolly” the cloned sheep in 1997, was giving up attempts to create human cloned embryos by the somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) method.

“I decided a few weeks ago not to pursue nuclear transfer,” Prof. Wilmut told the Daily Telegraph November 16.

In SCNT, the method used to create Dolly and a number of other cloned mammals, the nucleus of an ovum is removed and replaced with the nucleus of a “somatic” or body cell such a skin cell. The transferred somatic cell nucleus contains the full complement of genes for the animal and the cell thus created can be induced to begin cell division as an embryo.

Wilmut told the Telegraph that he has decided not to pursue the licence to clone human embryos, which he was granted two years ago by the UK’s Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA). He said he would instead pursue a method pioneered by a team of Japanese scientists that they claimed was able to create embryonic stem cells without cloning embryos themselves.

The Telegraph reported that most of Wilmut’s motivation “is practical” but that he said the Japanese approach is also “easier to accept socially.”

The Japanese team, led by Dr. Shinya Yamanaka of Kyoto University, announced in July this year that they had developed a technique of creating “pluripotent” stem cells, those cells that can create many of the body’s tissues, from just a skin cell.

Yamanaka’s experiments used mouse skin cells, into which was introduced four proteins which “reprogram” the cell’s nuclear DNA making it pluripotent – having the same qualities as a stem cell taken from a very early-stage embryo. Yamanaka told the London Times in an interview, “Neither eggs nor embryos are necessary. I’ve never worked with either.”

Some fear, however, that the possibility exists that the Japanese research did or could result in the creation of embryos.

Dr. John Shea, medical consultant for Canada’s Campaign Life Coalition told LifeSiteNews.com that he had “some concerns” about the ethics of Yamanaka’s work and that further study of his progress was needed.

“Yamanaka’s work,” Dr. Shea said, “essentially somatic cell genetic engineering, is a very complex subject.”

The issue, said Shea, is whether the pluripotent stem cells created by the technique will always remain merely stem cells and cannot become embryos.

Shea said it is at least theoretically possible that the proteins being introduced to the cell to “reprogram” its genes, “may produce totipotent ‘stem cells’ that could, at least in theory, become human embryos” by a chemical process called “regulation”.

“Yamanaka’s methods might produce not just stem cells, but embryos that would be killed, as they are in IVF [in vitro fertilisation], to derive ‘stem cells.’”

The ethical onus remains he said, with the researchers proposing to do the work to ensure that what is being created is not and cannot become an embryo. “Unless he can prove that they cannot become embryos I think that the same rule applies as does in the case of cells separated from an embryo that may themselves become embryos. So yes…..if it can be cloning, morally it is the same thing as cloning.”

All cloning of embryos is cloning, Shea said, “but, of course, not all cloning is due to nuclear transfer.”

LifeSiteNews is further investigating the Wilmut development although open to the possibility that Wilmut’s announcement is indeed good news for the protection of human life.

Read related LifeSiteNews.com coverage:

Dolly the Sheep Cloner Now Wants to Clone Humans
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2004/sep/04092803.html

From Unthinkable to Morally Imperative: Dolly Cloner Flip Flops on Human Cloning
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2006/jun/06060505.html

UK Cloning Doctor Wants to Create Human/Rabbit Hybrid Clones
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2006/jan/06011306.html

Pro-Lifer Claims Boycott Success Over Abortion Supporting Poinsettia Business

Says boycott must continue while flowers still being sold under original name.

By Meg Jalsevac

November 20, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Two years ago, San Diego based pro-life activist James Hartline used his on-line report to organize and promote a national boycott of Paul Ecke Ranch Christmas poinsettias due to the Ecke family’s extensive history of financial support for abortion-giant Planned Parenthood (PP). Hartline is now claiming a major boycott victory. Recent local reports indicate that, since the 1920’s, this will be the first year the principal poinsettia producer in the nation, Ecke Ranch, will not produce and sell their typically large crop of the festive Christmas plant.

The Ecke family’s financial and ideological support of PP is well-documented and extends back through the years. Multiple members of the Ecke family are listed on the Planned Parenthood of San Diego’s 2006 annual report within the ‘Margaret Sanger Donor Circle’.

Mrs. Elisabeth Ecke, referred to as “a longtime champion of Planned Parenthood and the reproductive services it provides”, is listed as also having bequeathed funds to PP upon her death. In 2005, several members of the Ecke family contributed $250,000 to fund the renovation of the local PP clinic which was in turn named in honor of the family matriarch, Elisabeth Ecke.

According to an article in the San Diego Tribune Review, the Ecke Ranch has decided to license Armstrong Garden Centers to both grow and sell poinsettias under the Paul Ecke Ranch name. According to ranch officials, the change is not expected to cause any great diminution to the ranch’s overall income since they assert that selling the full-grown plants does not constitute the bulk of their business. However, according to the Tribune Review, the ranch typically grows and sells anywhere between 300,000 to 400,000 full-grown poinsettias each Christmas season. This year, they will produce only 6,000 to be used for promotional purposes.

While the Tribune Review article makes no mention of the pro-life boycott, Hartline is convinced that it has affected the Ecke business. “It is clear that our boycott will continue to hurt the Ecke name and their poinsettia sales. I fully believe that the Eckes know that their name is bad news among pro-lifers. I believe their decision to license out their name is, in part, due to our ongoing boycott.”

Hartline encouraged pro-lifers to continue the boycott of the Ecke poinsettias saying, “We must understand that the Eckes will continue to profit off of the poinsettias being produced by Armstrong Gardens, because the Ecke name will still be used.”

“I am convinced that our boycott has created major problems for Ecke Ranch. Without churchgoers purchasing their poinsettias, the Eckes will have a real hard time getting that extra cash they need to fund Planned Parenthood. Babies are more important than giving the Eckes blood money for their poinsettias!”

To contact Armstrong Garden Centers who will be selling Ecke poinsettias this Christmas:

Corporate Office
2200 E. Route 66, Suite 200
Glendora, CA 91740-4673
TEL: (626) 914-1091

Gary Jones, Marketing VP
Armstrong Garden Centers
[email protected]

Operation Rescue Files to Intervene in Kansas Grand Jury Abortionist Case

To prompt Kansas judiciary to stop making exceptions to law for abortionist Tiller

By John Connolly

WICHITA, Kansas, November 20, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Operation Rescue filed a motion of intervention with the Kansas Supreme Court on Friday, attempting to push forward legal proceedings against infamous abortionist George Tiller that were indefinitely stalled by an illegal measure by Chief Justice Kay McFarland.

The Writ of Mandamus, filed by Tiller, asks the Kansas Supreme Court to ignore state law and not impanel the grand jury called for by the statutory citizen petition process of Kansas. State law requires a grand jury to be convened within sixty days of the appropriate petition, but Chief Justice Kay McFarland has indefinitely stayed the grand jury against this law, citing undefined special circumstances to the case.

The sixty-day deadline passed on November 6. A group of Kansas Legislators have released a statement indicating that the Court had overstepped its bounds in its disregard for the state law.

Justice Michael Corrigan, chief judge in Kansas’ 18th Court District, called Tiller’s petitions “absurd” in his own motion filed on Friday. “Just as a demand that there be no district attorney or no attorney general is absurd, it is absurd for any citizen to demand that no grand jury be summoned,” he said in a legal brief. “One cannot challenge an indictment which has not yet, and may never be, issued by a grand jury.”

The intervention of Operation Rescue is designed to prompt the Kansas judicial branch to stop making exceptions to the law for Tiller, who is known to have performed numerous late-term abortions on the grounds of medical treatment of supposed “maternal depression.” Operation Rescue filed for intervention in response to numerous references to Operation Rescue in Tiller’s Writ of Mandamus.

“Nothing less than the rule of law is at stake here,” said Operation Rescue President Troy Newman. “Tiller is demanding that he be treated differently than any other subject of a grand jury investigation in Kansas history. He wants the law set aside just for him. This turns the ‘Equal Justice’ doctrine on its head.”

Speaking to LifeSiteNews today, Newman called attention to pro-abortion hypocrisy concerning the law. “In 1991, when Operation Rescue was working hard to shut down abortion clinics, the mantra from the left was ‘work within the law,” he said. “We have done all that, the work of modifying the law, the work of getting legislators who agree with our ideology into office. Now we’re asking the judges to enforce it, and they aren’t. They are becoming the activists, imposing their opinions outside of the law.”

See previous LifeSiteNews.com coverage:

New Kansas Attorney General Immediately Fires Prosecutor of Abortionist Tiller
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2007/jan/07011107.html

Kansas Abortionist Killed Late-Term Babies for “Maternal Depression”: Fox News
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2006/nov/06110606.html

Abortion Clinic Caught Shredding Documents as Kansas Court Considers Mandating Records Release
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2005/sep/05090601.html

British Government to Lower Northern Ireland Age of Sexual Consent

By Steve Jalsevac

BELFAST, Northern Ireland, November 20, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com)– The Associated Press reports today that the age of sexual consent in Northern Ireland will be lowered to 16 from the current 17 by the British government. The stated intent is to bring the Irish age in line with that in the rest of the United Kingdom. The new age will also now match Ireland’s current legal marriage age of 16.

Britain’s criminal justice minister in Northern Ireland, Paul Goggins, has stated there will be a two month consultation in Northern Ireland after which a bill modernizing sexual offenses laws would be passed in 2008.

Gregory Carlin of the Irish Anti-Trafficking Coalition has expressed serious concern about the age change in light of recent trends in the UK. He notes that the bill which proposes to make the age change may also be used to legalize brothel-keeping which in turn could place vulnerable youth in greater danger of being pushed into prostitution.

Carlin also criticizes the fact that the legislation is being imposed on Ireland by the British government. He stated to LifeSiteNews, “This is direct rule legislation which has by-passed the Northern Ireland Assembly, it is undemocratic.”

The age of consent for male-female sex varies from 14 to 18 in most nations of the world with a small number permitting it at age 13 and a tiny number allowing it as low as age 12.

Swedish Parliament Votes to Allow Abortion Tourism

Church leaders have vowed to work for government defeat over issue

By Thaddeus M. Baklinski

STOCKHOLM, November 20, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Foreign women will be allowed to have abortions in Sweden up to 18 weeks gestation starting in January 2008 under changes to legislation passed by the Swedish parliament last Thursday according to a report in AFP (Agence France-Press).

The changes to the existing abortion law were passed by a very small majority: 134 in favour, 124 against, 91 abstentions.

Until now abortion in Sweden has been reserved for Swedish citizens and residents, but since most EU countries already allow foreign women access to abortion, the Swedish government has decided to follow suit. Non-resident women now have the same access to abortion as they have to other health services in the country. The only condition is that they pay for the procedure themselves.

Christian Democrat leader and Social Affairs Minister Göran Hägglund, who introduced the bill, brushed off criticism from his own party, which traditionally favours a restrictive approach to abortion. Several Christian Democrat members of parliament have warned that the new law could lead to ‘abortion tourism’.

Catholic Bishop Anders Arborelius, and evangelical leader Sten-Gunnar Hedin with the Philadephia Church in Stockholm strongly opposed the law change. In a joint statement issued earlier this year they stated, “We are sad that this proposal is backed by a Christian Democrat social affairs minister, Göran Hägglund. It is incomprehensible that he is supporting this proposal while claiming that it was required by the EU, something that this country’s leading EU law expert, Professor Ulf Bernitz, insists is not the case.”

Bishop Arborelius and Mr. Hedin stated that if forced they would work together with a majority of Christian leaders in Sweden, “to work actively to reduce the chances of the Alliance being re-elected,” at the next general election in 2010.

While traditionally supported by Christian voters, the Christian Democrat party has lost popularity in recent opinion polls and is barely hanging on to the four percent essential for a position in the Riksdag.

See previous LifeSiteNews.com coverage:

Sweden: Church Leaders Warn Government Over “Abortion Tourism” Plan
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2007/feb/07022607.html

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