Catholic Church Favours Birthing Hybrid Humanoids

I don’t know how I missed this when it was announced, but the Catholic Church in England and Wales has said women should be allowed to give birth to human-animal hybrids created in the laboratory. The bishops said this in a submission related to the Draft Tissue and Embryos Bill, which overhauls the law regulating fertility treatment and embryo research.

The bishops have said there should be no ban on implanting hybrid embryos in the womb of the woman who supplied the egg. According to their statement: “Such a woman is the genetic mother, or partial mother, of the embryo; should she have a change of heart and wish to carry her child to term, she should not be prevented from doing so.”

This is not to say that the bishops are in favour of hybrids. They oppose creating them, but say if hybrids (or chimera, as they are called) are allowed to be created then they have to be allowed to live. The Church had to make this distinction because one aspect of the legislation that is not up for change is the requirement that any embryos that undergo experimentation must be destroyed within 14 days of fertilisation.

Chimera are not true hybrids of the sperm of one species with the egg of another. This would still not be allowed under the draft legislation. The proposal allows for the introduction of non-human DNA, but the embryo would still be 99.9% human. Perhaps when they are allowed to be 1% non-human and then 5% non-human and then whatever percent can be technologically managed, the Church will have to modify its position. Or not. The current position of the bishops is based upon the view that “At very least, embryos with a preponderance of human genes should be assumed to be embryonic human beings, and should be treated accordingly.” So a 50.01% human should still be carried to term.

The full response to the draft bill can be downloaded from here.

St Mewan

Today is the commemoration of St Mewan. Never heard of him? Not surprising. I hadn’t either until I checked the Menologion.

He appears to have been born in South Wales, worked in the vineyards of the Lord in Cornwall, and moved on to Brittany. This is not an uncommon route of ministry, as all three regions shared a nearly common language.

I feel a bit of a link with St Mewan because he was ordained by St Samson of Dol, who was elevated to the episcopate by one of my own patrons, St Dyfrig. Mewan and his godson Austol (namesake of the town of St Austell in Cornwall) both followed Samson to his monastery in Brittany. Thus when I think of my visit to the cathedral in Dol during half-term break, I also made a pilgrimage to the memory of Mewan.

Holy Mewan, pray to God for us who also try to shine the light of the Gospel in a heathen Britain.

Teens, Sex, and Consequences

I’m sure it is coincidental that these stories appeared on consecutive days. Yesterday, we learned that teenagers have pushed the abortion rate to a record high in this country and are having a record number of abortions. Today, Department of Health said it had agreed “in principle” that Gardasil should be given to all girls in the first year of secondary school. Most readers will be aware that this is the vaccine against human papilloma virus.

According the Daily Telegraph:

Despite huge Government spending on contraception education, 19-year-olds are now the most likely of any age group to have an abortion, with 35 in every 1,000 having the procedure, according to Department of Health figures.

A total of 40,244 abortions were carried out on girls aged between 15 and 19 years, and 18,691 on girls aged under 18, including 1,042 on under 15-year-olds, 907 on 14-year-olds and 135 on girls under 14.

In total, 3,990 abortions were carried out on girls aged under 16 – the age of consent – last year.

 There were there were 193,737 abortions in England and Wales last year. This is an increase of nearly 4% over 2005.  And over 21% of these were carried out on babies with mothers 19 and under. (I have to disagree with the language used by the Telegraph – its not the mothers who are aborted.) Teens have now ousted the 20- to 24-year-olds as the biggest age group of aborters.

The Government spent £40 million in tax money on contraception education to bring down the abortion rate. Sadly, the one thing they don’t emphasise is that the only way to avoid pregnancy is to avoid sex. But how can they do that when political representatives are fornicators, teachers are fornicators, parents are fornicators, and the Government pays for entertainment programming on television and radio which openly and aggressively promotes fornication? How is any teenager going to keep their legs closed if everyone they know, see, and respect has theirs splayed open?

Now I am all for preventing cancer. Gardasil works best if it is introduced before girls are sexually active and especially before they are exposed to HPV. It is part of the sad commentary on teen sex that they have to get them at 11 in order to make sure they gotten most of them protected.

And I have to say I’ve no doubt it will serve as another green light to the safeness of sex as a game and a toy. That pubescent boys in an amoral society see it like this is no surprise, but that is exactly how it is viewed by many girls by the time they are even in Year 8 (7th grade).  By Year 10 (when the topics I teach include cohabitation, contraception, and abortion) many of them are aggressive about their sexuality and against any suggestion that there is any reason, moral or otherwise, to curb their appetites. It is truly frightening.

No Change in Cardiff After All

Sadly, reports of the demise of the Labour Party in Wales were premature. The rainbow coalition of Plaid Cymru, the Tories, and the Lib-Dems was within a whisker of reality. The national executive committee of the Welsh Lib-Dems deadlocked over the deal, so they vetoed it by not approving it.

So Rhodri Morgan was once again nominated unopposed as First Minister of Wales. Ruling with a minority, he has promised to lead a new “listening” style of government, but since when has Labour ever listened?

It’s just back to politics as usual in Cardiff.

Surprise! Welsh Party Running Wales

Labour are the largest single party in the Welsh Assembly – that odd creature that has less power than the Scottish Parliament and more power than a local council. They do not have a majority, with only 26 of the 60 seats.

They had been expecting to hold onto the reins of power, which they had held since the Assembly was first elected in 1999. However, last night Plaid Cymru agreed in principle to a coalition with the Tories and Lib-Dems with a total of 33 members. Plaid leader Ieuan Wyn Jones will most likely become the new First Minister of Wales.

Before the era of David Cameron, it wouldn’t have been thinkable that the Tories could have joined with a hard left party like Plaid.  With Cameron re-invented the Conservatives to the left of Labour, I suppose this isn’t too surprising.

The Price of an NICE English Postcode

The postcode lottery strikes again.

One of the advatages of devolution for Scots is that they may no longer be tied to England for the worst cancer survival rates in Western Europe. The approval of drugs available on the NHS is down to the Scottish Medicines Consortium. England and Wales is governed by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE).

The Scots have approved the use of cetuximab and docetaxel for head and neck cancer. Drug trials have shown that cetuximab (also know by the brand name Erbitux) plus radiotherapy survive for an average of just over 4 years, compared with less than two and a half years for those treated with radiation alone. Nice says it costs too much for what you get. Tough luck.

As I mentioned back in January, Erbitux has already been rejected by NICE for use in bowel cancer. It seems that Nice and the NHS have found a good way to keep the socialised medicine fiscally viable. All you have to do is let all the cancer patients die off and there are fewer people putting a drain on resources.

When I hear about how much more compassionate enlightened British socialism is when compared with the big bad USA, I just think of all the people here who die due to rationed health care. And if you are in the US, remember that this is what Hillary wants for you, too.

Singing, Sermons, and Saints

We had liturgy this morning. It was the bi-monthly visit from the priest (and a number of parishioners) from the Greek church in the adjoining shire.

Our family was a bit late, because Aidan had a mid-morning swimming lesson that had already be paid for before we remember that it was the appointed day for the service. I missed the chance to read the Epistle. We got there about just before the Great Entrance.

We had quite a crowd by our standards. Twenty-five that can definitely remember, fit into a very tiny space. We were packed in like sardines in the little oratory chapel kindly loaned to us by the local Catholic abbey.

Unprompted Abigail sang “Christ is Risen from the Dead” all the way from the house to the abbey. Non-stop. Over and over. Christ is risen from the dead / trampling down death by death / and upon those in the tombs bestowing life. We sing it three times before our meals and in place of “Oh Heavenly King” at bedtime prayers from Easter to Pentecost, so she hears it a lot. She sings it around the house all the time. When we sang it at the end of the Liturgy, she was disappointed that we only did it once. She tried to start singing it again until she noticed that no one else had joined in.

I just wish she had been a little more settled during the sermon as Fr Stephen spoke about “trampling down death by death” so I could have paid attention to the whole thing. He made an excellent observation about Christ as the new Adam, explaining that when Mary Magdalene saw Him immediately after the Resurrection she correctly identified Him as the gardener.

After the service I was also commissioned to assist in coming up with the name of our new community that is emerging. I have made a good case for the most important saint in the history of the Shire, St Dyfrig. As one of the founders of Christianity in the area and as a teacher and father to 2,000 missionaries sent to evangelise that part of this island that would eventually be called Wales, I am confident in his desire to intercede on our behalf. We’ll see how it all works out.

As this group will be affiliated with the Archdiocese of Thyateira, it is apparently customary to also attach a Greek patron. I’m not familiar with a lot of Greek saints, but I’m happy enough if one wants to tag along. We can use all the help we can get.

Anti-climax

I just find it hard to get exicted about the election results across the country. Here in the Shire, there were some welcomed wins and losses, but our joy is based on local issues and not on party affiliation.

The Tories gained control with 32 out of 58 seats, but it’s never been a fight with Labour here. We are one of the battlegrounds between the Tories and the Lib-Dems. Lib-Dem losses meant the Tories no longer have to coalition with Independents. We are represented by the only two Labour councillors in the county. Before last night there were four.

Everyone was a expecting a Labour meltdown across the country. Though I wasn’t particularly excited at the prospect of a Tory landslide, I did want to see Labour lose. In most places, the Labour losses were not terribly significant. In the Welsh Assembly, they lost four seats, with leftwing Plaid Cymru gaining three of those and the Tories one.

In Scotand, the SNP, which was just a fringe party not too many years ago, gained the largest number of seats in the Scottish Parliament. But don’t expect Scotland to declare independence just yet. The Nationalists have one more seat than Labour, but no majority. Labour have run Scotland in coalition with the Lib-Dems. The SNP have no natural coalition partners. They may very well find themselves a plurality party in Opposition. We won’t know for a few days.

We will never know what the Scottish electorate wanted. 100,000 votes were lost due to either invalid ballots because people didn’t understand how many boxes they could tick in a complicated multi-tiered system or because the electronic voting machines experienced major failures in their first outing.

In other parts of the country the electorate simply didn’t want anything. In our ward, less than 20% over the registered voters cast a ballot. People just couldn’t be bothered.

They probably realise that for the most part, even with a few more Conservative councils, it will be political business as usual.

Cold and Wet

Today is one of those days we don’t get as often in Britain anymore. It’s cold and rainy, grey and dreary.

This is the kind of weather I first experienced when I visited the UK in 1980. This is what I came to expect British weather to be. I still remember staying in a Bed and Breakfast above the Barry train station with the cold wind whipping up off the Bristol Channel, freezing under the blankets. Actually we froze twice in Barry that trip, in two different B&Bs.

When I lived here in 1992, it was still like this to a great extent. But thanks to Global Warming™ we have to endure endless days of comfortable short-sleeve temperatures, even in winter.

There used to be a time when a jumper was necessary for most of the year. I’ve worn one twice so far. In fact, I have worn one so infrequently tat I didn’t even know my favourite had a hole in it until I got home from work.

I suppose I’ve have to get used to living in a sub-tropical climate again.

Tony and the Welsh

Tony Blair is worried about the Welsh.

He’s always had a problem with the Welsh. When watching disappointing results for Labour from the 1999 Welsh assembly elections coming in, he repeatedly said “F*&^%ing Welsh”. He didn’t actually say this to any Welsh people, but North Wales Police even used this as an excuse to investigate him for racial hatred. (Apparently the money they spent investigating Anne Robinson for “anti-Welsh remarks” on BBC Two’s Room 101 wasn’t enough. A superintendent, a detective chief inspector and two detective inspectors spent 96 working hours after 12 complaints that Anne had said the Welsh were “irritating and annoying”.) In both cases, the Crown Prosecution Service declined to proceed so no charged were made.

Now Tony is looking at Welsh Assembly elections that portend true humiliation. Labour has been dominant in Wales for a long, long time. Even so, they are one vote short of a majority in the Welsh Assembly.