Just got back home after speaking at the All for Life formation event.

Kudos to BJ, Dave and the rest of the team for organizing such a great pro-life formation event – it really was an awesome day that was well attended.

Matt and Madeline were in top form!

Andy Moore also organized an important and well attened protest march on Friday to oppose the plans of the FPA to start administering the dangerous RU 486 abortion drug from their clinics around NZ.

One of our biggest worries in the field of genome medicine is the use of prenatal genetics tests to justify the abortion of human embryos. Current technologies allow enhanced detection of genetic abnormalities that a few years ago would have been unthinkable.

Array-CGH (Comparative Genomic Hybridisation) is becoming a common method for analysing patients’ genomes. Array-CGH works by taking a reference genome covering the whole human genome sequence, cutting it into thousands of pieces and attaching them to a chip. These pieces are called probes or oligos and are usually on the range of dozens to thousands DNA bases long respectively. A saliva or blood sample is then taken from the patient and his/her DNA chopped into millions of pieces, carried by a suspension with a solvent. The array is then washed with the suspension containing the patient DNA pieces.

DNA is a double chain of nucleotide bases where one chain complements the other. Knowing one chain of the DNA, it is possible to know the other chain. In its natural state, a single DNA chain tends to bind to its complementary chain. Thus, by washing the patient’s suspension with array probes attached to a chip, the patient’s DNA ends up binding to their complementary DNA probe in the array.

Array-CGH can be used to detect whether a a region of the genome is missing or has been duplicated. Probes attached to the chip emit a different color depending on their state of binding. Once the array is washed, most probe spots appear yellow, meaning that most of the reference genome’s probes are bound to the patient’s DNA. If a patient is missing a DNA region big enough to span a probe, the complementary spot in the array appears in red. If several red spots appear in sequential order, these can be mapped to the patient’s genome as missing regions or deletions. The symptoms of the genetic disease depend on the genes that overlap the deletion.

The same happens if the array shows a series of green spots, indicating that a duplicated region of the genome has been found in the DNA of the patient. Because the gene content is also duplicated, this may cause disease as a consequence of the over-expression of genes included in such regions.

Thus we are now able to find deletions or duplications in the genome of a patient beyond the microscopic level. We are all familiar with the features of a patient with Down’s Syndrome. This syndrome is caused because there is an extra copy of chromosome 21 in the affected patient, due to a duplication of one of the two usual copies (trisomy 21). This was discovered in 1959 by the French geneticist Jerome Lejeune.

But it is only recently that we have discovered the importance of structural changes such as deletions and duplications in the evolution of a genome. Before these technologies became widely accessible to hospital practice, many patients with genomic diseases, ie diseases caused by pathogenic deletions or duplications, went undiagnosed because only big chromosomal changes (like trisomy 21) could be detected.

Techniques such as array-CGH now allow the detection of chromosomal changes a thousand times smaller in length. For a price of about US$170 per array a genome can be screened for chromosomal changes. In fact, it seems that most of the genetic changes observed between any two people (in terms of number of DNA bases) are micro-deletions and duplications (called copy number variations).

Next-generation sequencing technologies are fast arriving that will allow base-by-base complete sequencing of the DNA at a price of US$1,000 in 24 hours.

So far there is no remedy for DNA anomalies when they are detected other than the treatment of symptoms. Many prenatal tests are now by default array-CGH tests instead of the traditional microscope chromosomal observation (called a karyotype). We are now able to detect genetic abnormalities before children are born. Thus these marvellous array-CGH techniques may lead to the diagnosis of more and more subtle syndromes and changes that may lead to not-so-severe abnormalities.

Continue reading this article…

A top Roman Catholic cardinal told CNSNews.com that there is “no way” Catholic members of Congress can support the Senate health care reform bill as long as it includes a provision that allows tax dollars to go to insurance plans that cover abortion.

At the National Press Club on Nov. 20, CNSNews.com asked Cardinal Justin Rigali, the archbishop of Philadelphia: “The Senate health care bill that Majority Leader Reid released this week permits tax dollars to go to insurance plans which cover abortion

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The Republic of Korea has signaled its willingness to work to reverse a heavily pro-abortion culture through various measures, including beginning to enforce an abortion ban that has technically existed in the country for decades, in order to address the severe demographic implosion that threatens the country’s economic stability, Korean sources report.

The pro-birth effort was announced on Wednesday by the Presidential Council for Future and Vision, and includes proposals to expand benefits for single mothers and provide greater benefits to families with more than two children.

“We have been a society that promoted abortion,” Kwak Seung-jun, leader of the Presidential Council, told reporters. “There are few people who realize abortion is illegal. We must work to create a mood where abortion is discouraged.”

According to the Korean journal JoongAng Ilbo, the abortion ban – rarely enforced for decades, and even flagrantly violated in the 1960s and 1970s as part of official policy to combat what the government had deemed a “population explosion” – will now be more strictly enforced as part of an overall plan to increase the birth rate and incentivize more women to carry their pregnancies to term.

The Korean Herald reports that proposals outlined in the “Increase Koreans” project outline aggressive steps to give increased support for families with at least three children.

The Presidential Council proposed that the third-born child of a family be given an advantage in university entrance examinations, employment, and financial support for high school and university tuition. Families with three or more children will be given special interest rates on their mortgages.

As a sign of further desperation, the Council recommended that the government finance artificial insemination procedures up to three times to the tune of 1.5 million won ($1300 US).

Kwak announced that the panel was proposing aggressive measures that had to be taken immediately, and could not wait even ten years from now.

Official data from the Ministry of Health indicates that doctors perform 350,000 abortions per year, while they deliver on average just 450,000 babies, meaning 43.7 percent of pregnancies end in abortion.

Continue reading this story…

“It’s light years beyond ultrasound and will make you practically fall off your chair when you see it.” So says Father Frank Pavone about the breakthrough video Priests for Life is now distributing and promoting, called The Biology of Prenatal Development.

By using embryoscopy, a rare technique involving a tiny camera the size of a pen tip, scientists were able to get breathtaking, real footage of the unborn, which shows how preborn babies have a heartbeat at three weeks, make spontaneous movements at six weeks, and have 90% of the anatomical structures found in adults at eight weeks.

Check out the video here…

Life Matters is a weekly opinion column which appears
EXCLUSIVELY on Semper Vita every Friday morning

By Brendan Malone

It is not often that two important, but completely unrelated stories, about the same issue break in the same week, but that’s exactly what happened over the past week when two very different, but very important stories relating to the issue of euthanasia broke.

The first was the tragic story about a seventeen year old NZ man who has been charged with assisted suicide for helping a seventeen year old friend to kill himself in a Christchurch park in September.

What this tragic event exposes is the grand flaw which lies at the heart of the pro-euthanasia ideology – the idea that suicide is a good thing, and that assisting someone to take their own life is an act of mercy.

Any rational person who saw this story would have been immediately sickened, saddened or horrified by what they read.

I seriously doubt that anyone would have been thinking to themselves that the 16 year old victim had made a courageous and empowered decision which reflected his personal autonomy and the right to decide his own fate in the face of a quality of life that was no longer appealing to him.

And I seriously doubt that anyone would have thought that the 17 year old who assisted in this suicide was doing something caring and merciful, and that the law should be more compassionate and allow his friend a public facility with trained medical staff to help him carry out his wish for the right to die.

Now here comes the complete and utter mental disconnect that goes on within our culture…

Let’s imagine for a minute that instead of two teenagers, this incident had involved two 60 year olds, and that the 60 year old who had died in this suicide pact had a disease or a disability.

Under such a scenario, there is absolutely no doubting that fact that not only would a majority of people in this country have considered this act of assisted suicide acceptable, they would be chastising the police for charging the man who assisted his friend to die, and Michael Laws would be using this incident as a vehicle to promote his pro-euthanasia ideologies on his talkback show.

Yet because it involves young people, with no known illnesses, people are saddened and horrified.

Why?

Well, because our culture has fallen into a philosophical trap which completely confuses and rejects the great, and inalienable dignity and worth of the human person, and instead embraces the idea that your life only has worth if it meets a certain set of criteria – all of which are totally arbitrary.

So, according to this pernicious little ideology, if you’re seventeen and you’re relatively disease and disability free, then your life has great worth and it is too valuable for suicide.

But if you’re elderly, or disabled or sick, then your life all of a sudden has very little worth and suicide is the best thing you could do with your relatively valueless existence.

Sure, a sixty five year old person, or a person with a terminal illness is probably not going to live as long as a sixteen year old, and a disabled or elderly person can’t surf the break at Raglan, climb Mount Cook or compete in Dancing with the Stars, but so what?

Their life is no less valuable or less worthy of life than yours or mine, yet sadly, this is exactly the evil and false distinction that all pro-euthanasia ideologies proclaim.

Not only that, but at the heart of the pro-euthanasia ideology is a confused view of personal autonomy which believes that every human being should have the right to exercise total freedom and choice about how and when their life will come to an end.

So why is it that so many Kiwis, who are pro-euthanasia, should have been horrified when, earlier this week, they heard about a seventeen year old male who exercised the freedom to choose how and when his life would come to an end – after all, this is the very heart of their pro-euthanasia beliefs, and it is something that many of them call a “right”.

The other story broke just two days ago, and it is about a Belgian man who was wrongly diagnosed as being in a Persistent Vegetative State (PVS) after a car accident, and then left totally conscious, and unable to communicate or interact with anyone for 23 years.

His erroneous diagnosis was discovered by a doctor using state of the art equipment.

It’s quite amazing that this man wasn’t killed by euthanasia, because he was labelled as a “vegetable” for 23 years, and during that time he was totally unable to communicate the fact that he truly was a living, breathing disabled person, who simply wasn’t able to interact with anyone.

What this case highlights, once again, is the very dubious nature of the PVS diagnosis – which, despite all the pro-euthanasia hype and media confusion, is nor a universally accepted, or defined condition.

Many of you will remember the case of Terri Schiavo, sister of Semper Vita contributor Bobby Schindler – she was killed in 2005 by the state of Florida because it was claimed that she was in a PVS.

Her family fought courageously to save Terri’s life, but sadly her ex-husband won the court battles and was able to proceed with the brutal state mandated starvation and dehydration of Terri.

This was all despite the fact that, unlike this Belgian man, Terri was actually interacting with the people she came in contact with.

As if that wasn’t sick enough, not long after Terri’s death pro-euthanasia supporters, who had endorsed her brutal killing, then had the gall to suggest that her case highlighted why legalized euthanasia involving more humane and painless methods of killing, like lethal injections, was urgently required.

The simple truth is that our level of knowledge about the human brain is barely at a kindergarten level, there is a vast amount of information that we just don’t know – which is what makes the PVS diagnosis all the more dubious, especially when it is used with such binding authority and finality, as it was to end the life of Terri Schiavo.

Doctor Steven Laureys, the man who discovered that that this Belgian man was actually conscious, has since tested other patients with the same techniques and he has discovered that there are other people who have some degree of awareness of the outside world – although he won’t say how many at this stage.

This case highlights the totally anti-human and dispassionate ideologies that have crept into our cultural consciousness of late, the end result of which is that real human beings are either treated as little more than vegetables, or are killed, simply because we now choose to qualify their personhood, rights and worth based solely on subjective, speculative and arbitrary criteria that lack philosophical soundness and reason.

All for Life is a special one day pro-life training event happening in Wellington THIS Saturday (28th November). This event is FREE, and lunch is provided, and it includes presentations from Bob McCroskrie of Family First, Brendan Malone of Family Life International, Dr. Matt and Madeline Flannagan and Andy Moore of Pro-Life NZ.

All for Life will provide formation in practical pro-life apologetics, so that participants will be formed in the knowledge they need to intelligently defend the pro-life position on the issue of abortion.

9am to 5:30pm
THIS Saturday 28th November
Saint Patrick’s School Hall
8 Tongariro Street, Paraparaumu

Check out www.allforlife.org.nz for all details

Prolife NZ has organised a special PEACEFUL protest event to voice opposition to the Family Planning Association’s plans to open up 30 new abortion clinics, killing babies up to 9wks throughout NZ. The peaceful protest starts at Parliament Grounds and will march to the Margaret Sparrow Family Planning Clinic.

4:30pm
TOMORROW Friday 27th November
Parliament Grounds, Molesworth Street, Wellington

Full details here

The Family Planning Association (FPA) announced in March 2009 its plans to provide ‘abortion by pill’ from its 30 branches in New Zealand. The first application – for the Hamilton clinic – will be heard this month and is likely to receive approval from the Abortion Supervisory Committee allowing abortions up to 9 weeks of gestation using Mifegyne RU-486.

RU-486 is a controversial, dangerous and lethal drug which is 98 per cent effective in killing unborn children up to 7 weeks gestation. It is also dangerous for women’s health, with over 12 reported deaths and 1200 complications (some life-threatening) in the USA alone. The long term effects on women’s health are unknown as trials have not been conducted.

Family Life International, with the support of Bishop Barry Jones of Christchurch, are going to be holding a special Mass and prayer vigil THIS FRIDAY evening to pray that the FPA’s application for a licence to destroy unborn children in their clinics will be rejected and that God’s precious unborn children and their mothers will receive true compassion, protection and care in their time of need.

Mass will be followed by an all night prayer vigil with Eucharistic Adoration, so please feel free to come and join us throughout the night.

7pm Mass, followed by all night Adoration and prayer
TOMORROW Friday 27th November
Christ the King Parish
90 Greers Road, Burnside, Christchurch