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- Calgary Herald Letters On Doctors And Conscience February 27, 2009
- Canadian School Curriculum Promoting "Celebration" Of Homosexuality March 6, 2009
- Celebrate LGBT Issues March 3, 2009
- Courageous Nurse Needed February 19, 2009
- 'Ethical' Stem Cell Creation Hope March 4, 2009
- Killing Without Consequences March 4, 2009
- Lifeissues.Net Newsletter #412 March 1, 2009
- Right To Die Bill Introduced Into Canadian Parliament February 19, 2009
- Summary Of Oregon's Death With Dignity Act March 3, 2009
1. Calgary Herald Letters On Doctors And Conscience – February 27, 2009
Bad medicine – Calgary Herald – February 27, 2009
From the dawn of modern medicine, doctors avoided having anything to do with any procedure they were not fully convinced was beneficial to their patient.
In these times, it is even more important that they do not perform, refer for, or inform about any aspect of medical care that clearly would do their patient more harm than good. The main reason is if they did, they could be dragged into a claim for damages brought by a patient.
This is most relevant to abortion because there is no good evidence abortion is necessary, beneficial and without serious harmful consequences in 98 per cent of their pregnant patients.
Most doctors will not give great weight to moral, ethical or religious considerations. They know providing abortions is almost always bad medicine even if it is legal. They will resist practicing bad medicine even under threat. Good physicians always have.
Philip Ney, MD,
Victoria, B. C.
© Copyright (c) The Calgary Herald
2. Canadian School Curriculum Promoting "Celebration" Of Homosexuality – March 6, 2009Parent, would it alarm you if the following information was true?
Well, it is true and it is alarming. The B.C. school curriculum from K to 12 has been revised to present a favourable portrayal of homosexuality and the homosexual lifestyle.
First they wanted “tolerance”, then they wanted “acceptance”, now they want to teach “celebration” of that lifestyle.
This was the result of the B.C. government giving two homosexual activists a legal, binding agreement to oversee and critique the revision of the school curriculum. Can you imagine only two persons receiving such an agreement? And it was all done in secret. No parents group or other organization was allowed to participate. Efforts to include parents in the revision have been refused by the Liberal B.C. government.
Is this the “new democratic way” of governing?
Our organization is formed to oppose and resist this revision of the school curriculum.
Please look us up on www.parents4democracyineducation.org.
There is additional information on www.takebackourschools.org.
Questions and requests for information are welcomed.
Contact: lenremple@shaw.ca.
From: Parents for democracy in education society
Len Remple, President
Marc Gravelle, Vice-President
See also: http://canadianalliance.org.
Note... How long before this is happening in every province?
Forwarded by: www.takebackcanada.com
3. Celebrate LGBT Issues – March 3, 2009
LifeSiteNews.com – March 3, 2009
Commentary by Ron Gray
BC Teachers' Conference Urges Teachers to Change Students' Attitude to "Celebrate" LGBTQ Issues
Feb. 20 and 21, I attended the first "Social Justice conference" staged by the BC Teachers' Federation at University of the Fraser Valley in Abbotsford.
It was an eye-opener!
Although the stated purpose of the conference was to show teachers how to approach the Social Justice 12 curriculum adopted under BC's Corren Settlement Agreement, an underlying purpose was clearly revealed by a graphic of a staircase, distributed by the BCTF in its information packages: the goal is to move students' attitude towards LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered and questioning) people beyond "tolerance" to "acceptance" – and then further along to "support," "admiration," "appreciation" and finally "celebration" of deviant sexuality.
Most Canadians have never seen what constitutes "celebration" of homosexuality, but our big cities' annual "Gay Pride" parades clearly show the reality: public nudity (partial and/or total), simulated fornication, lasciviousness – and open mockery of traditional morality.
This exposure of the BCTF's real goal – to manipulate the attitudes of students until the "Prescribed Learning Outcome" of celebration is attained – reveals that the teachers' union is actually in violation of its own code of ethics, which forbids using the classroom for indoctrination.
What has given the BCTF this extraordinary power to manipulate the attitudes of BC's children? The cowardice of a pusillanimous government, and especially of two cabinet ministers – Education Minister Shirley Bond and Attorney-General Wally Oppal – who reached a secret agreement with two homosexual activists without ever allowing debate in the Legislature.
Those same ministers have consistently resisted efforts by parents' groups to have a countervailing voice in the education of their children on sensitive topics.
This BCTF conference similarly lacked any opportunity for input from parents who want to resist manipulation of their children's curriculum to make acceptance of homosexuality a goal.
The February conference was the first of four planned to train BC teachers how to implement the Correns' 'Social Justice 12' curriculum. It did not deal with the companion – and more radical – teacher's guide "Making Space, Giving Voice," which the Correns were able to force on a supine Ministry of Education. "Making Space, Giving Voice" instructs teachers how to make every subject, at every level from Kindergarten to Grade 12, 'gay'-friendly.
In one workshop, a teacher suggested that if a student says his or her parents disapprove of homosexual behaviour, he (the teacher) deflects the comment by saying, "Well, different people have different ideas about sex."
"That won't accomplish the kind of change we need," said Dr. Martha Dow, a professor in the Department of Social, Cultural and Media Studies at UFV. "Students feel silenced by that kind of comment.’What does everybody think?' is a bigoted comment. We need to decide who we want silenced."
So such students are to be told that their parents' ideas are wrong. Perhaps not all parents: Prof. Dow repeatedly identified "Evangelicals and Fundamentalists" as the perceived problem.
That theme recurred in several sessions. The result of the BCTF's unilateral advocacy that "gay is good" can only be to drive a wedge between children and their parents. And the long-term social result of that alienation would be worse than the problems they are trying to correct.
However, the BCTF apparently operates on the assumption that they are in possession of an absolute truth – even though peer-reviewed science has discredited every claim of discovery of a "gay gene"; and even though medical studies indicate that homosexual behaviour shortens life expectancy dramatically. To "true believers" in the BCTF dogma, such facts are apparently irrelevant.
Their position is essentially religious – a fact that was vividly highlighted by a teacher who said in a Friday workshop, "I don't think I can teach this without being converted."
The conference was lamentably short on factual information-but presenters were quite willing to reiterate falsehoods, like the "10 percent myth," based on the discredited 1948 and 1953 Reports of self-styled "sexologist" Alfred Kinsey. (Kinsey alleged that 10 percent of the population is homosexual; however the 2003 Canadian Community Health Survey showed that only one percent of the population identify themselves as homosexual.)
Dr. Judith Reisman, in her book Kinsey: Crimes and Consequences, revealed that Kinsey's "research" included criminal sexual abuse of infants, and that a substantial part of his survey population was drawn from prison inmates and 'gay' bars-but they were represented by Kinsey as typical of the whole population. Kinsey himself was a homosexual who died from orchitis, an inflammation of the testes often caused by excessive sexual self-abuse.
Keynote speaker, Alex Sanchez, brought in from Florida to deliver a message called "Faith and Spirituality", claims to be a 'gay' Christian. He said in one of his workshops: "Jesus didn't say anything about homosexuality." Of course, that's utterly untrue: Jesus affirmed every jot and tittle of the Mosaic Law, which includes explicit prohibitions against sodomy.
Referring to the Mosaic Law in Leviticus 18:22, one participant asked me, "So, does that give you the right to stone me?"
"No," I answered. "For two reasons: one is that the same Torah says there must be at least two eyewitnesses – 'You shall not put a man to death on the testimony of one witness' – and because you say you're trusting Jesus for your salvation… and He died to pay the penalty for your sins and mine. But just as with the adulterous woman, He says, 'I don't condemn you; go and sin no more.'"
The conference was not without merit: participating teachers were given some useful tips on correcting students who use slurs or bully other students.
But the underlying theme – BCTF's absolute certainty that only their pro-'gay' dogma is correct, and they have the right to impose it on BC's children because "we're professional educators" – was terrifying: such use of government power to compel conformity is the very essence of fascism.
(Ron Gray is a former journalist and was a member of the founding administration of Fraser Valley College, the forerunner of University of the Fraser Valley. He is currently Vice-President of Parents for Democracy in Education.)
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4. Courageous Nurse Needed – February 19, 2009
Priests for Life Canada; www.PriestsForLifeCanada.com; mikevw@priestgsforlifecanada.com Courageous Nurse Needed |
Courageous Nurse Needed |
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5. 'Ethical' Stem Cell Creation Hope – March 4, 2009
BBC NEWS – 'Ethical' stem cell creation hope
The ability to create stem cell treatments without using embryos is a step closer, say researchers.
A UK and Canadian team have manipulated human skin cells to act like embryonic stem cells without using viruses – making them safer for use in humans.
The cells are reprogrammed by the insertion of four genes which are then removed once the process is complete, they report in Nature.
While a significant step it is early days, the Edinburgh-based experts say.
Much of the work on stem cells has focused on those taken from embryos as they have an unlimited capacity to become any of the 220 types of cell in the human body – a so-called pluripotent state.
But campaigners have objected to their use on the grounds that it is unethical to destroy embryos in the name of science.
“It is a step towards the practical use of reprogrammed cells in medicine, perhaps even eliminating the need for human embryos as a source of stem cells.” – Dr Keisuke Kaji, study leader.
In 2007, teams in Japan and the US managed to genetically modify skin cells to be pluripotent, opening the way for a new source of stem cells for use in research.
However, the technique used viruses to genetically modify the cells, which means there was a risk they could become cancerous and so would not be safe for medical use.
The latest study reports a way of delivering foreign genes to reprogramme the cells without using viruses in mouse and human cells.
Furthermore, the team was able to remove the genes afterwards.
Efficiency
Study leader Dr Keisuke Kaji, from the Medical Research Council Centre for Regenerative Medicine at the University of Edinburgh, said nobody, including himself, had thought it was really possible.
"It is a step towards the practical use of reprogrammed cells in medicine, perhaps even eliminating the need for human embryos as a source of stem cells," he said.
But he added they needed to improve the efficiency of the process.
Co-author Professor Andras Nagy, from the University of Toronto, added: "We hope that these stem cells will form the basis for treatment for many diseases and conditions that are currently considered incurable."
Professor Sir Ian Wilmut, director of Edinburgh centre where the research was done and the creator of Dolly the sheep, said it would still take time before these cells could be given to patients.
"Crucially, we need to have a method to generate the desired cell types from these stem cells.
"But I believe the team has made great progress and combining this work with that of other scientists working on stem cell differentiation, there is hope that the promise of regenerative medicine could soon be met."
Professor Robin Lovell-Badge, head of the MRC National Institute for Medical Research, said the research was an exciting step in the right direction but there was still a long road ahead.
"For the time being I think it rather premature to suggest that their work will completely remove the need to derive human stem cells from embryos."
He added there was still a lot to learn from human embryonic stem cells in order to know whether stem cells reprogrammed from adult cells are truly useful or not.
Josephine Quintavalle, of Comment on Reproductive Ethics, said: "This is ethical stem cell research at its best, with embryonic-type stem cells derived successfully from adult tissue without involving human embryos."
Story from BBC NEWS: http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/health/7914976.stm
Published: 2009/03/01 18:06:56 GMT
© BBC MMIX
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6. Killing Without Consequences – March 4, 2009
By Chuck Colson – 3/4/2009
'The Last Goodnights'
In his new book, The Last Goodnights: Assisting My Parents with Their Suicides, lawyer and author John West publicly tells a story that most people would have kept silent. He does it so that one day others may be able to kill openly and without fear. That’s not how West puts it, of course, but I’m afraid that’s what it boils down to.
West’s parents were prestigious psychiatrists. As West wrote, “Neither was at all religious, but both had deep insight into the human condition... And they knew what they wanted.”
What they wanted was to die “on [their] own terms.” When West’s father was diagnosed with cancer, he asked his son for help in taking his own life. In West’s mother’s case, “advancing cognitive decline” led her to fear that she would “turn into a bowl of Jell-O in her head.” A couple of weeks after West assisted his father’s suicide, his mother made the same request.
It’s hard to listen to West talk about his parents’ deaths, as he recently did on NPR’s Diane Rehm Show. As he describes it, when talking about their impending deaths, his parents kept resorting to euphemisms like “do the trick” and “achieve the goal.”
No euphemism, however, can do away with the stark reality of death and what West had to do to kill them. For instance, he had to wake his father, who was groggy from pain pills given to him by a hospice worker, in order to take the extra pills that would kill him. West admitted that his father might not have finished taking the pills had he, the son, not fed them to him.
In California, these acts were against the law, but as West proclaimed on Rehm’s show, “Everyone in the medical world knows that it happens all the time.” (As it happens, both a doctor and a hospice worker contacted Rehm to disagree.) At any rate, West considered this a case where “it was more important to do the right thing than to follow the letter of the law.”
So, according to West, murder of an innocent is the right thing?
West is publicizing how he helped kill his parents to promote assisted suicide, which he wants to see legalized.
But as West’s story itself shows, our culture and our legal system have already begun to acquiesce to murder, to the point where more and more of these assisted suicide cases are allowed to slip by. Diane Rehm asked West whether he might face any legal repercussions for his actions. His response was that he had heard nothing from the authorities so far.
No good can come of allowing people to kill others – even if they claim they were acting out of the most purely humanitarian motives. The authorities need to uphold the law.
Make no mistake: Legalizing assisted suicide is a big step on a dangerous and slippery slope, especially in a world where human life is growing cheaper by the minute. We’ve already seen that legalizing assisted suicide has led to non-voluntary euthanasia in the Netherlands. And we’ve talked recently on BreakPoint about how increasing health-care costs have spurred Britain to deny certain citizens life-prolonging treatment.
I will say it over and over, until I am blue in the face: Every human life, from conception through natural death, is sacred. And to take that life unjustly is simply murder – the kind of thing the state has a sworn duty to stop.
http://www.breakpoint.org/listingarticle.asp?ID=11352
In The Faith DVD Curriculum, Chuck Colson and Gabe Lyons discuss the foundational tenets of Christianity in six sessions.
For Further Reading and Information:
Listen to John West on the Diane Rehm Show.
“Man Reveals He Assisted Parents' Suicides 10 Years Ago,” ABC News, 4 January 2009.
John West, “Book World Live: A Personal Story of Assisted Suicide,” Washington Post, 9 February 2009.
“The March of Death: A Culture Commits Suicide,” BreakPoint Commentary, 13 January 2009.
“What Price Life: Health-Care Rationing in Britain,” BreakPoint Commentary, 6 January 2009.
“Human Dignity: What Matters Most, Part 1,” BreakPoint Commentary, 26 December 2008.
7. Lifeissues.Net Newsletter #412 – March 1, 2009
Greetings from LifeIssues.net (www.LifeIssues.net)
Dear Friends for Life,
Embryonic Stem Cell pioneer has changed his course. James Thomson of the University of Wisconsin considered the "Father of Embryonic Stem Cell Research" is famous for isolating the first embryonic stem cells in 1998. Now, we hear that he is planning to focus his entire energy on stem cells that don't involve killing five-day-old human embryos. He is in the forefront of research on the new pluripotent stem cells.
Adult Stem Cells heal knee ligaments. Scientists at Bristol University (UK) have used adult stem cells to repair knee ligament injuries in soccer players. This shows very interesting promise as it is better to heal a tear than to remove the damaged ligament as is the current practice.
Serbia – Abortionist Converts: The former "Champion of Abortion," Stojan Adasevic, has become pro-life. During his sordid career, he had performed 48,000 abortions over a 26 year period. He stopped doing abortions after a series of nightmares and dreams in which he conversed with a man dressed in a black and white habit who identified himself as St. Thomas Aquinas. He has told his story in magazines and newspapers throughout Eastern Europe and has returned to the Orthodox faith of his childhood.
God Bless; Jerry Novotny, OMI
Encouraging Words: "Every baby born is God's way of saying the world should go on." – Thornton Wilder
Lifeissues.net Newsletter #412 – March 1, 2009
8. ‘Right To Die’ Bill Introduced Into Canadian Parliament – February 19, 2009
CANADA | POLITICS
Photo via hometowncanada.com
"Right to die" bill introduced into Canadian Parliament
Last Thursday's parliamentary "Notice Paper" shows that Bloc Quebecois MP Francine Lalonde has again introduced a private members bill, "An Act to amend the Criminal Code (right to die with dignity)." The text of the bill is not yet available, reports LifeSiteNews.com http://%20www.lifesitenews.com.
This is the third time that Lalonde has introduced such a bill into Canadian Parliament. In 2005 she introduced a private members bill (C-407) to legalize assisted suicide in Canada. Had C-407 passed, the law in Canada would have allowed any individual to "assist" someone to commit suicide with or without a doctor present.
C-407 died on the table when an election was called in December 2005. Then in June 2008 Lalonde introduced Bill C-562, a slightly revised version of C-407. That bill also died when an election was called.
Alex Schadenberg, Executive Director of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition, commented to LifeSiteNews.com about Lalonde's most recent attempt, saying, "We are very concerned about the bill.
"Our primary concern," he said, "is that euthanasia and assisted suicide directly threatens the lives of the most vulnerable in society. We should not be focused on how to take the lives of the vulnerable but rather how we should be caring for them.
"To legalize euthanasia and assisted suicide represents the right of one person to take the life of another person. Our society should not be going there."
TAGS: Canada’s “Right To Die” bill; Canadian Parliament; Abortion; Election.
9. Summary Of Oregon's Death With Dignity Act – March 3, 2009
The 2008 Summary of Oregon's Death with Dignity Act was released on March 3, 2009.
The report stated that:
During 2008, 88 prescriptions for lethal medications were written under the provisions of the DWDA compared to 85 during 2007 (and 65 during 2006). Of these, 54 patients took the (lethal) medications, 22 died of their underlying disease, and 12 were alive at the end of 2008. In addition, 6 people with earlier prescriptions died from taking the (lethal) medications, resulting in a total of 60 DWDA deaths during 2008, which was up from 49 DWDA deaths during 2007 and 46 DWDA deaths during 2006. This corresponds to an estimated 19.4 DWDA deaths per 10,000 total deaths, up from an estimated 14.7 DWDA deaths per 10,000 total deaths in 2006.
There has therefore been an increase by 30% in the total estimated DWDA deaths in two years between 2006 and 2008.
The report stated that:
The annual report continues to lack the essential information for determining the social context of these decisions and the reporting system continues to lack any safeguards for the people who die by assisted suicide based on the fact that reporting is completed by the physician who prescribes the lethal drugs while the physician was only present at the time of ingesting the lethal drugs 11 times or (18.3%). Further, there are no third party reports or investigations to ensure that the cases fulfilled the requirements of the law and/or that the reports are accurately reported and there are no investigations to confirm that reports were submitted for all assisted suicide deaths.
In other words, we do not know whether other assisted suicide deaths occurred and we do not know if any of the people who died by assisted suicide were socially pressured or died outside of the guidelines of the law because the Oregon Death with Dignity Act relies on physicians to submit reports based on their own actions. It is unlikely that any physician will ever submit a report that admits to decisions or actions that are outside of the legal parameters.
Even though concerns about inadequate pain control are the reason that most people support legalizing assisted suicide, only 3 of the 60 people who died by assisted suicide in Oregon listed concerns about inadequate pain control as a reason for them to request assisted suicide.
The 2008 report, like the previous reports lacks the necessary information to assure the public that all is well in Oregon. As the Oregonian Editorial Board stated on September 2008 in their article: Washington state's assisted suicide measure: Don't go there: Oregon's physician-assisted suicide program has not been sufficiently transparent. Essentially, a coterie of insiders run the program, with a handful of doctors and others deciding what the public may know. We're aware of no substantiated abuses, but we'd feel more confident with more sunlight on the program.
http://www.oregonlive.com/opinion/index.ssf/2008/09/washington_states_assistedsuic.html/
Euthanasia Prevention Coalition, Phone toll free: 1-877-439-3348, Email: info@epcc.ca, Website: http://www.epcc.ca
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