New Newsweek

[axolotl]

Yesterday, this week’s issue of Newsweek arrived in my mailbox. I think I am irritated enough to cancel my subscription, maybe get a good Catholic magazine instead.

1. This made the cut for reader’s submissions for Great Americans:

…Sanger worked in the ghettos of New York City to teach immigrant women about their own health and pushed the medical community to support contraception education.

1. Jonathan Alter’s lastest op-ed:

…conned Bush into seeing the issue as morally complex, but the rest of the world understands that it’s simple enough–reproductive cloning, no; embryonic-stem-cell research (to cure diseases), yes. (The phrase “therapeutic cloning” should be retired)…Only Bush bitter-enders and the pope ate in the perverse postion of valuing the life of an ailing human being less than that of a tiny clump of cells no bigger than the period at the end of this sentence…the “pro-life” position should argue for therapeutic research…400,000 surplus blastocysts at fertility clinics are eventually thrown in the trash instead of a few thousand being used to enhance life. To be intellectually coherent, Bush would have to shut down all in vitro clinics, depriving millions of infertile couples of the chance for a child.

Well, the Catholic Church sure was prescient in its opposition to in vitro.

 

[Rosalinda]

It is a circular argument. First they create the problem and then they offer a solution. If anything the problems of in vitro fertilization only point to the wisdom and foresight of the Catholic Church.

A side issue which is rarely spoken of is the danger posed to women who have had their ovaries hyperstimulated to produce so many eggs. These conditions set them up as candidates for ovarian cancer but it is dubious doctors are informing their patients of that risk. The research points to an increase risk of cancer for women who either failed to conceive or have a baby while on these powerful hormonal drugs. Bottom line is the women are being exploited and experimented on without informed consent. Fewer women would be willing to try in vitro if they realized they would be putting their own health at risk.