Catholic Fire

Over the past 30 years, in vitro fertilization has been reassuringly safe. Millions of healthy children have been born and developed normally. And the first IVF baby, Louise Brown, born in England on July 25, 1978, now has her own child, 2-year-old Cameron, conceived without the technique. But researchers have always wondered whether there might be subtle changes in an embryo that is grown for several days in a petri dish, as IVF embryos are — and, if so, whether would there be any consequences. Now, with new epidemiological studies and new techniques that allow scientists to probe the genes of embryo cells, some tentative answers are starting to emerge. The issues have nothing to do with the chances that a woman will have twins, triplets or even, as just happened in California, octuplets. Instead, they involve questions of whether there are changes in gene expression or in developmental patterns, which may or may not be obvious at birth. For example, some studies indicate that there m...

This week's Carnival is being hosted by Steven at Book Reviews and More. Steven has done a superb job with images (such as the one at the left) and the theme to create a beautiful Carnival post. Here are just a few of the great posts you'll find there: Denise Hunnell presents The Most Confusing Sacrament--This Was A Surprise! posted at Catholic Matriarch in my Domestic Church aka Catholic Mom . Aggie Catholics (aka Mary's Aggies) writes about In-Vitro Fertilization and Catholics she ponders about the morality of in-vitro fertilization and Catholic teaching. Sarah in a post As We Enter Your First Spring from just another day of Catholic pondering shares a letter to her 6-month-old daughter to try and capture the wonder of seeing the new world through her daughter's eyes. Be sure to go to Steven's blog and check out all the posts -- you'll be glad you did!

It’s on the lips and in the thoughts of most Kansans these days. Our parish adult education guest speaker Catholic Dave Gittrich , the President of Kansans for Life, gave us a basic introduction on stem cell research this past week, which I will briefly summarize in simple terms here, with the help of my notes from that talk, along with some of American Life League’s definitions, and excerpts from A Pastoral Letter from the Bishops of Kansas . The Basics What is a stem cell? Stem cells are unspecialized cells. One of the fundamental properties of a stem cell is that it does not have any tissue-specific structures that allow it to perform specialized functions. For example, a stem cell cannot work with its neighbors to pump blood through the body like a heart cell. Stem cells are very simple, primitive human cells. However, when stem cells divide, they can form a variety of more specialized cells. When unspecialized stem cells give rise to specialized cells, the process is called diff...