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Much-hyped Moderna mRNA-1273 Covid-19 Vaccine Uses Aborted Fetal Cells – Sanofi Pasteur’s Version Does Not (Clearwater, FL) In light of the Covid-19 pandemic, pharmaceutical companies are racing to provide a vaccine to prevent further spread of the disease. Unfortunately, Moderna, the company that has been recently touted in news headlines for its developing mRNA-1273 vaccine to fight the virus, uses aborted fetal cell cells. Debi Vinnedge, Executive Director of Children of God for Life, a prolife organization whose mission is to end the use of aborted fetal material in vaccines and medicines, said her suspicions were raised after checking Moderna’s...

Lawmakers call for pro-life protections amid coronavirus research | EWTN News Nightly, You Tube video

I certainly don’t recommend the cartoon “Family Guy,” but in a 2012 episode the main character, Peter Griffin, has a stroke that paralyzes half his body. He stumbles into a stem cell research lab and is cured in five minutes. “Why aren’t we funding this?” he asks. Well, the show not only got it exactly wrong, it cheated. Let me explain. The cartoon never delineates whether the research center uses adult stem cells or embryonic stem cells. That difference is everything. Embryonic stem cells are only acquired by destroying human embryos. Acquiring adult stem cells does not require the death...

In 2004, Vice-Presidential candidate John Edwards promised that if John Kerry won, people would rise out of their wheelchairs and walk. In the 2006 election, actor Michael J. Fox, who suffers from Parkinson’s, made a commercial for Democratic Senate candidates in which he urged voters to support those candidates who opposed restrictions on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research and stood in the way of imminent miracles. Private funding, it should be noted, was never restricted. The only thing that stood in the way of miracle cures from embryonic stem cell research miracle cures, we were told, was the...

Michael J. Fox is a tragic shell of his former self and so crippled by Parkinson’s disease that he needs help getting into a car. On Feb. 15, the reclusive 54-year-old actor tried to enjoy a rare night out with his actress wife Tracy Pollan at the Hollywood restaurant Craig's. As Pollan followed, the stricken Back to the Future star, whose speech is slurred and who walks with a limp while dragging his left foot, was put into the vehicle by several helpers. "It was heartbreaking," an insider told RadarOnline.com. "Michael's bravery knows no bounds. But as the disease takes...

It’s time for scientists and bioethicists to establish a Embryonic Stem Cell Truth and Reconciliation Commission.It all seems so long ago now. But from 2002 to 2008 they barnstormed, fibbed, exaggerated, hyped, and caricatured to get government funding so that they could play God with human embryos. It was a brutal battle in which truth came second. "People need a fairy tale," said Ronald D.G. McKay, a leading stem cell scientist, in 2004.The claims made for the near-miraculous potential of human embryonic stem cells were extraordinary. Celebrities and scientists spoke with the breathless enthusiasm normally associated with crystal medicine or ayurvedic...

A BRITISH pensioner has become the first person to undergo revolutionary eye surgery aimed at curing blindness in millions of people. The 60-year-old woman, who had severely impaired sight and was in danger of going blind, is said to have had no complications so far following the three-hour operation last month. The surgical team hopes to determine how successful the treatment was by early December. The woman has asked to remain anonymous. The scientists behind the pioneering procedure hope it will dramatically transform lives, allowing the blind to recognise faces of loved ones again and regain the ability to carry...

The Obama Administration has chosen to back Ebola vaccines made using cell lines cultivated from aborted babies, despite the fact that the government itself acknowledged that moral alternatives could also be used, according to a pro-life organization that specializes in advocating for morally produced vaccines.  Children of God for Life says it has discovered that several Ebola vaccines in development for use worldwide are being made using the aborted fetal cell lines.The proof of the use of the controversial cell lines in the manufacture of the vaccines is found in the patents. According to the patents, Glaxo SmithKline (GSK) and NIAID...

Excitement over a newly-released paper on stem cells making insulin is a tribute to the Harvard stem cell Press Office.The actual report is quite a bit less earth-shaking than you might be led to believe by the Harvard press office. The science itself, in a paper from the lab of Dr. Doug Melton published in the journal Cell, provides an incremental improvement in the derivation of functional (insulin-secreting) beta cells. MeltonÂ’s lab developed an improved method to generate millions of insulin-secreting cells from human embryonic stem cells (hESC, which require the destruction of a young human being) and from human...

Scientists are reporting a significant milestone for cancer research after charting 21 major mutations behind the vast majority of tumours. The disruptive changes to the genetic code, reported in Nature, accounted for 97% of the 30 most common cancers. Finding out what causes the mutations could lead to new treatments. Some causes, such as smoking are known, but more than half are still a mystery. Cancer Research UK said it was a fascinating and important study. A tumour starts when one of the building blocks of bodies, a cell, goes wrong. Over the course of a lifetime cells pick up...

The California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, the state’s controversial, $3 billion stem-cell research agency, has yet to follow recommendations from a December report by the Institute of Medicine, a division of the National Academy of Sciences. The report, which urged the agency to overhaul its board of directors, did not fully convey the magnitude of CIRM’s failure—but it did confirm that CIRM might be better described as Conflict of Interest Research Money. Almost all members of the CIRM board, investigators noted, “are interested parties with a personal or financial stake in the allocation of CIRM fundings.” In fact, CIRM directed...

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Two scientists who have fought a 3-year, losing court battle to block federal funding for human embryonic stem cell (hESC) research have now taken their case to the U.S. Supreme Court. Yesterday, attorneys for the plaintiffs in Sherley v. Sebelius filed what's known as a writ of certiorari with the land's highest court. In their 36-page petition(PDF), they ask the court to consider two questions that were raised when a federal appeals court ruled against them in August. One is whether the appeals court should have relied on its own earlier, split decision finding that federally funded hESC research doesn't...

Bioethics: British and Japanese researchers have been awarded this year's Nobel Prize for showing how to create embryonic stem cells without using human embryos in a genuinely promising line of research. For decades now, embryonic stem cell research (ESCR) has been trumpeted as the most promising avenue of research, and those who had moral qualms about using human embryos were dismissed as Bible-thumping troglodytes who stood in the way of making the lame walk. ESCR supporters said their way led to finding "imminent" miracle cures to tragic and sometimes deadly conditions and diseases. They dismissed suggestions of a more promising...

A federal appeals court has determined a federal judge was right to throw out a lawsuit challenging President Barack Obama’s decision to force taxpayers to fund embryonic stem cell research. The U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia upheld a decision throwing out a lawsuit challenging the funding, which President George W. Bush stopped and Obama allowed just months after entering office. The bringers of the lawsuit argued Obama’s executive order forcing taxpayer funding violated the 1996 Dickey-Wicker law that prohibits taxpayer of any scientific research that results in the destruction of human embryos, unborn children at...

Cardiomyocytes, the workhorse cells that make up the beating heart, can now be made cheaply and abundantly in the laboratory. Writing this week (May 28, 2012) in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a team of Wisconsin scientists describes a way to transform human stem cells -- both embryonic and induced pluripotent stem cells -- into the critical heart muscle cells by simple manipulation of one key developmental pathway. The technique promises a uniform, inexpensive and far more efficient alternative to the complex bath of serum or growth factors now used to nudge blank slate stem cells to...

Michael J. Fox, whose turn from Parkinson’s disease patient to scientific crusader made him one of the country’s most visible advocates for stem cell research, now believes the controversial therapy may not ultimately yield a cure for his disease, he told ABC’s Diane Sawyer in an exclusive interview. There have been “problems along the way,” Fox said of stem cell studies, for which he has long advocated. Instead, he said, new drug therapies are showing real promise and are “closer today” to providing a cure for Parkinson’s disease, a degenerative illness that over time causes the body to become rigid...

LOS ANGELES -- The creation of California's stem cell agency in 2004 was greeted by scientists and patients as a turning point in a field mired in debates about the destruction of embryos and hampered by federal research restrictions. The taxpayer-funded institute wielded the extraordinary power to dole out $3 billion in bond proceeds to fund embryonic stem cell work with an eye toward treatments for a host of crippling diseases. Midway through its mission, with several high-tech labs constructed, but little to show on the medicine front beyond basic research, the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine faces an uncertain...

Subsidies: A firm that received tax dollars to pursue embryonic stem cell research abandons what was touted as the most promising avenue of research for medical miracles. Then there's that "conscience thing." When Geron Corp. announced in January 2010 that the first clinical trial using its embryonic stem cells to treat an actual human patient was under way, its stock shot up 6.4%. Geron got the first Food and Drug Administration license to use embryonic stem cells to treat people in a clinical trial, in this case patients with a spinal cord injury. Last week Geron announced that it was...

Geron, the company that helped pioneer human embryonic stem (hES) cell research, said yesterday that it is stopping its first-in-the-world clinical trial and pulling out of further stem cell work. The company, based in Menlo Park, California, will instead concentrate on its anticancer therapies, CEO John Scarlett said in a statement. "Deciding to move out of the stem cell business was a very difficult decision to make," he told investors and journalists this morning. Geron helped to fund the work of James Thomson at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, who in 1998 was the first to isolate hES cells. That...