Stem Cells, Cloning and “Emergency Contraception”

To understand stem cell cloning and birth control pills, we must first review how a normal pregnancy happens.

After sperm are deposited inside a woman, they rapidly swim through the uterus, through the tubes, and out to the ovary. This passage can take as little as thirty minutes. If she has ovulated and an egg awaits, fertilization occurs immediately. One sperm enters the ovum and proceeds to unite its 23 chromosomes with the 23 female chromosomes in the nucleus of the ovum. From sperm entrance until the first cell division takes place is about one day. From then on, rapid cell division occurs.

For the first week of life, this new human embryo floats freely down his or her mother’s fallopian tube, journeying to the womb. When one week old, he or she plants in the nutrient lining of the womb.

Within a few days this new passenger sends roots into the wall, taps into the mother’s blood stream and sends a chemical, hormonal message into it that goes to the base of her brain. This notifies her of his/her presence and stops her menstrual period. 18 to 20 days after fertilization the fetal heart begins to beat.
This single-cell fertilized egg is in fact an entire human body. It is alive, not dead, and proceeds in an ongoing, self-controlled process of growth and development. He or she is sexed as determined by XY male and XX female chromosomes. His/her intact body is complete, for nothing will be added from the first cell until the person dies, nothing but nutrition and oxygen.

The above are irrefutable biologic facts and must be taken into account when discussing the following.

STEM CELLS
These are very primitive cells, as yet undifferentiated, from which all of the organs of the body develop. Two types are being investigated.

• Adult stem cells taken from the donor, cultured and returned to the donor.
• Embryonic stem cells taken from another human (an embryo), cultured and used to treat the already born human.
  Adult stem cells are plentiful in bone marrow, cord blood and many other organs. In recent years there have been dozens of research reports of successful use of these in treatment of a variety of pathological conditions, e.g., diabetes. Such use is ethical and promises to be a great boon to mankind.
  Embryonic stem cells are obtained from four-day-old living human embryos. This tiny human is cut open and embryonic stem cells are extracted from him or her. The process directly kills a four-day-old human. Because of this direct killing, the method of “harvesting” these cells has been roundly condemned by traditional ethicists.

Advantages of Embryonic Stem Cells:

• Some researchers claim that these cells are more primitive and therefore will more easily be grown into various organs.
• They are available from surplus frozen IVF embryos.
• They are so primitive that the host recipient will probably not reject them.Disadvantages:
• They are more “plastic” and easily (and as yet uncontrollably) grow wild into multi-organ tissues e.g. skin, bone, etc., in tumors.
• They can carry virus infection from the donor humans, through their original sperm or ovum.
• They are another human’s tissue and can be rejected like other transplanted organs.
• So far, unlike adult stem cells, there are almost no reports of their use for successful treatments.

Conclusion
The use of adult stem cells is ethical and beneficial. Obtaining and using embryonic stem cells is unethical, as it requires the direct killing of an innocent human in theso-far not realized hope of benefiting another.

CLONING
So you want to clone your son and give him an identical twin brother? Here’’s how to do it in theory. You take an unfertilized ripe ovum from a woman, and remove and discard its nucleus. Take a skin cell from your son and remove its nucleus. Now, insert this nucleus into the empty shell of the ovum. Give it a few tiny jolts of electricity and with luck, he will grow and develop just like a naturally fertilized egg. If he is planted in a womb and all goes well, in nine months she will deliver your son’s identical twin.

A number of large animals have been cloned, starting with Dolly the sheep. Typically, in each case there have been hundreds of failures before each success. These have included miscarriages, multiple deformities, sudden deaths, gigantism and more. Because of these problems, it is so far almost universally agreed that a cloned human should not be brought to term and delivered.

Human Cloning
Because of the above, two terms have been given to human cloning even though there is really only one type.

• The term “reproductive” cloning has been used to describe when a human clone is implanted and delivered as a full term pregnancy. As noted, there is almost complete condemnation of this.
• Research, experimental or “therapeutic” cloning have been the terms used for the other “type”. In this, the procedure is identical to the above except that this new cloned human is experimented upon in his or her first few weeks of life and then killed.This is accurately termed research or experimental cloning. However, many scientists, eager to perform destructive research experiments, have coined the name “therapeutic” cloning for this. This is a classic example of semantic gymnastics using a false name to fool the public. There is nothing therapeutic about such lethal research. Accordingly, the very descriptive term “clone and kill” is commonly used.

CONTRACEPTIVE PILLS
The first combination (estrogen and progestin) birth control pill was Enovid 10 in 1960. To reduce fatal blood clots and improve efficacy, the estrogen dose has been reduced from 10.0 to 0.35 and the progestin likewise altered and reduced. Today’’s typical pills have three major functions.

• They thicken the mucous plug at the mouth of the womb, the cervix. This acts as a bit of a barrier to sperm entrance. Another minor effect is to alter tubal mobility.
• About 80% of the time these pills block ovulation. In the remaining 20% there can be break-through ovulation with the possibility of fertilization.
• They thin and “harden” the endometrial lining of the womb so that, even if fertilization occurs, the one-week-old embryo cannot plant in the womb and dies. This is a very early abortion.

“Emergency Contraception” Pills
We are constantly told that if a woman has sex on Saturday night and takes these pills on Sunday morning, she will then “prevent pregnancy.” In fact, there are three possibilities.

• She was not fertile that night, did not conceive and didn’’t need the pills.
• She had sex Saturday night, an egg awaited, sperm deposited in her body quickly swam out to the end of her tube and she was fertilized. As is commonly stated, “she was pregnant before she got out of bed.” She took the pills Sunday morning, much too late to prevent fertilization. One week later, when the new human embryo tried to implant, he/she could not and died. Since there was no implantation, the mother’’s body was not affected by this and proceeded to menstruate on schedule. Clearly this was an early abortion.
• Perhaps in a small percent of cases these pills actually can “prevent” pregnancy. Here’’s how. She has sex Saturday night and takes the pills Sunday morning, but her body was programmed to ovulate on Tuesday. Since the pills were taken long enough before this, they possibly could suppress Tuesday’’s ovulation. Then, even though she still had viable sperm in her body, she would not conceive.

More Semantic Gymnastics
In the early 1960s it was determined that this newly available birth control pill would block ovulation and was a “contraceptive.”

It was correctly judged that the public would accept this. But there was this anti-implantation effect also, which clearly was an abortion. They worried that if the general public found this out, the pill would be rejected. What to do?

There was a meeting of officials of the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology, the US Food and Drug Administration, some drug companies and a prominent doctor, Alan Guttmacher. They solved this “dilemma” by officially, but very quietly, ruling that henceforth the word “conception” would no longer mean union of sperm and egg. Its new meaning was to be implantation one week later.

The word “pregnancy” was also a problem so they changed its definition from beginning at fertilization to beginning at implantation. Their stated reason was that her body was not pregnant until implantation.

Almost nobody was told about this then, nor do even most doctors know about it now, but this enabled the drug companies to call the “pill” and the IUD contraceptives. Today, using their new definitions, they say that the “emergency contraceptive” pill prevents conception and prevents pregnancy.

The obvious problem is that “the elite” say these things with a straight face, using their own definitions, while 99% of everyone else, including most clergy and doctors, believe “conception” and “pregnancy” still carry their traditional meanings of union of sperm and egg.
Pretty clever? You bet!

To counter these misleading terms, pro-lifers should use “fertilization” not “conception” and always speak of “human life” not “pregnancy.”

Note: RU 486 does not work until two weeks after implantation and kills a developing baby whose heart has already begun to beat. It is an abortifacient, not a contraceptive.