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aka Mexico City Policy Malthus eugenics new phyllum |
P | opulation |
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#16 Human genome project opens door to ethnically specific bioweapons Top 25 censored media stories of 2001 Project Censored
3.27.01 UN Office of Internal Oversight Services rpt E/AC.51/2001/2 | |||
NatSec Study memo 200
4.24.74 Henry Kissinger
¹ ª
²
Implications of world wide population growth for U.S. security & overseas interests
Dr. Henry Kissinger proposed in his memorandum to the NSC that "depopulation should be the
highest priority of US foreign policy towards the 3rd world." He quoted
reasons of national security, and because `The US economy will require large and increasing amounts of minerals from abroad, especially from less-developed countries...Wherever a lessening of population can
increase the prospects for such stability, population policy becomes relevant to resources,
supplies and to the economic interests of U.S." …
World depopulation is top NSC Agenda
Club of Rome & Haig-Kissinger depopulation policy
3.10.81 Lonnie Wolfe EIR
"The professionals," said Ferguson, "aren't interested in lowering population for humanitarian
reasons. That sounds nice. We look at resources and environmental constraints. We look at our
strategic needs, and we say that this country must lower its population-or else we will have trouble."
"So steps are taken. El Salvador is an example where our failure to lower population by simple
means has created the basis for a national security crisis. The El Salvador govt failed to use our
programs to lower their population. Now they get a civil war because of it. … There will be
dislocation and food shortages. They still have too many people there."
Civil wars are somewhat drawn-out ways to reduce population, the OPA official added.
"The quickest way to reduce population is through famine, like in Africa or through disease like the Black Death," …
Ferguson's OPA monitors populations in the Third World and maps strategies to reduce them. Its
budget for FY 1980 was $190 million; for FY 198l, it will be $220 million.
The Global 2000 report calls for doubling that figure.
The sphere of Kissinger In 1975, OPA was brought under a reorganized State Dept Bureau of Oceans, International Environmental, and Scientific Affairs, a body created by Henry Kissinger. The agency was assigned to carry out the directives of the NSC Ad Hoc Group.
According to an NSC spokesman, Kissinger initiated both groups after discussion with leaders of the Club of Rome during the 1974 population conferences in Bucharest and Rome. …
"For a long time," Ferguson stated, "people here were timid" They listened to arguments from Third World leaders that said that the best contraceptive was economic reform and development.
So we pushed development programs, and we helped create a population time bomb."
"We are letting people breed like flies without allowing for natural causes to keep population down. We
raised the birth survival rates, extended life-spans by lowering death rates, and did nothing about
lowering birth rates. …
Accordingly, the Bureau of Oceans, International Environmental, and Scientific Affairs has consistently blocked industrialization policies in the Third World … According to an NSC spokesman, the U.S. now shares the view of former World Bank President Robert McNamara that the "population crisis" is a greater threat to U.S. national security interests than "nuclear annihilation."
"Every hot spot in the world corresponds to a population crisis point," said Ferguson who would rename Brzezinski's arc of crisis doctrine the "arc of population crisis."
This is corroborated by statements in the NSC Ad Hoc Group's April 1980 report. There is "an
increased potential for social unrest, economic and political instability, mass migration and
possible international conflicts over control of land and resources," says the NSC report.
It then cites "demographic pressures" as key to understanding "examples of recent warfare in India,
Pakistan, Bangladesh, El Salvador. Honduras, and Ethiopia, and the growing potential forinstability
in such places as Turkey, the Philippines, Central America, Iran, and Pakistan."
Through extraordinary efforts, the Ad Hoc Group and OPA estimate that they may be able to keep a billion people from being born through contraceptive programs. …
At current rates, India will overtake China as the country with the biggest population some time in the next few
decades. But catching up in other areas may take longer. On average, Chinese are better educated than Indians,
live longer and are less likely to endure dire poverty. Indians acknowledge this, but are quick to point out that
human-development statistics aside, they have reason for pride.
"India is a democratic, open society, and we have maintained our diversity," says B.G. Verghese at the Centre for Policy Research, a New Delhi-based think-tank. "We are ahead of China in areas such as federalism, stockmarkets, banking, a legal system and the use of English."
As India's 600 million voters head to the polls in general elections next month, they may find solace in the fact that while two of the world's countries are now home to more than a billion people, only one elects its leaders.
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UN adopted the Convention on the Prevention & Punishment of the Crime of
Genocide, more commonly known as the 1948 Genocide Convention or "The Genocide Treaty."
… Ironically, the first proceeding brought expressly under the banner of genocide is the
Arusha trial, the case arising from the mass slaughter in Rwanda that began in 1994. But the
Rwanda situation, as utterly catastrophic is it has been, was nonetheless a civil war. And it is not
one that differs, except possibly in scale, from a number of other post-colonial conflicts in the
southern hemisphere. As Barry Crawford has noted (Submission to the UN Tribunal on Rwanda,
London, 1995), "Genocide means more than mass murder. [It] is distinguished from all other forms
of killing by the motivation behind it." The critical point is made that western intervention, both
military & economic, set the stage for what may be the most memorable mass orgy of human
violence in recent times. Rwanda, already impoverished by a World Bank-imposed structural
adjustment scheme, had become completely polarized.
The invocation of the genocide treaty against Rwanda's old-guard military does nothing to prevent similar situations
from occurring elsewhere on the continent. It merely criminalizes the unfortunate participants in a vicious upheaval,
the battle-lines for which were drawn early by foreign institutions. Even more to the point, the genocide charge
conveniently exonerates the west for its provocative activities in the region. In fact, it could be argued that no one
could have foreseen the scale & intensity of the fighting or the enormous loss of life it caused with the
possible exception of U.S. & British intelligence. And it is obvious that western nations, acting as bilateral
donors of aid & arms or through the UN, played a critical role in the events that led up to the war. World Bank
policy is controlled by the U.S. through a special oversight unit at the Department of the Treasury. The western
nations that aided & abetted the RPF did so in a spirit of mutual collaboration. Everything from the collapse of
Rwanda's economy to the Arusha conference demands that the Rwandan govt accommodate the unpopular Tutsi
opposition forces was orchestrated by westerners. Thus, one can conclude that if anyone exercised a "monopoly
on the means of force" in Rwanda, it was the U.S. & its allies. And they,
more than anyone, could be called perpetrators of genocide.
… Hermann Rauschning, who defected from the Nazi party in the 1930s, warned of the plans
of German leaders in a 1940 book called The Voice of Destruction. In that text, he recalled a 1934
conversation in which Hitler said about the peoples of eastern Europe: "We are obliged to
depopulate … We shall have to develop a technique of depopulation … I don't
necessarily mean destroy; I shall simply take systematic measures to dam their great natural
fertility … There are many ways, systematical & comparatively painless, or any rate
bloodless, of causing undesirable races to die out … By doing this gradually & without
bloodshed, we demonstrate our humanity." (Rauschning, 1940, at pages 34-38). … Population Control in
the Early Years
Among other things, the royal panel noted the extraordinarily high rate of population growth experienced by the
European nations in the previous two centuries, and said: "The increase in population provided both a motive for,
and a means to, the development of the modern techniques of production, trade & communications on which
present day European standards of living are based, for it provided both an expanding market & an expanding
labour supply." Furthermore, it advised that "the growth of European population, and the expansion of the
economic system of which it was partly the cause & partly the essential condition, were largely responsible for
the extension of European control over inhabited tropical & semi-tropical countries & their development
as suppliers of food & raw material" (Royal Commission on Population, His Majesty's Stationery Office, 1949,
at page 7). Noting that population growth continued to take place beyond the borders of the industrial world, the
commissioners concluded: "The establishment or continuance among western peoples of sizes of family below
replacement level would accentuate a change in relative numbers which threatens in a few generations to be as
radical as that between France & Germany in the 19th century, and might be as decisive in its effects on the
prestige & influence of the west. The question it should be observed is not merely one of military strength
& security; that question becomes merged in more fundamental issues of the maintenance & extension of
western values, ideas & culture" (Royal Commission on Population, 1949, at pages 135-136).
In the U.S., too, similar worries were being expressed. Frank Notestein, head of an elite demographic research
center at Princeton University, warned in 1944 that the development of industry in nations with high fertility rates
would only guarantee that western peoples would "become progressively smaller minorities & possess a
progressively smaller proportion of the world's wealth & power." Notestein, who soon afterward was chosen
the first head of the UN Population Division, admonished: "The determination of national policy toward the
underdeveloped regions must be made in light of that fact" (Notestein, in Demographic Studies of Selected Areas
of Rapid Growth, Proceedings, 22nd Annual Conference, Milbank Memorial Fund, New York, 1944). Western
promotion of population control in developing regions began officially with the founding of the UN. Assistance was
funneled to "private" family planning groups through large American foundations & non-govermental
organizations and even such "secret" bureaus of govt as the Central Intelligence Agency (see, i.e., Gerard Colby
with Charlotte Dennett, Thy Will Be Done, The Conquest of the Amazon: Nelson Rockefeller & Evangelism in
the Age of Oil, Harper Collins, 1995).
After at least two military panels in the U.S. formally & publicly recommended that population control be made
part of U.S. aid to developing nations, Congress in 1965 voted to include family planning in the overseas
development budget. The amount of money set aside for this purpose, openly described by American legislators as
"the population budget", has consistently increased from year to year. By the late 1970s, hundreds of millions of
dollars in Congressionally-earmarked population funds were going every year to a variety of projects to train so-
called "third world" medical personnel to operate family planning clinics, to establish & equip birth control
centers, and to advocate host country policies favorable to population control activities. By the mid 1980s,
money allocated for other programs (including Economic Support Funds, the Commodity Import Program, the
Sahel Development Fund and African Development Fund) was being diverted to family planning campaigns in
Africa, Asia, Latin America & the Middle East. And between 1980 & 1995, the World Bank increased
population sector spending from about $100 million a year to over $2.5 billion (a 25-fold increase). All of this
suggests that western leaders, particularly those in the U.S., considered birth curbs in developing countries to be a
matter of extremely high priority. And there is much on the record to support that assumption.
In 1988, the Department of Defense commissioned a series of studies on demographic trends & their impact
on U.S. national security. A summary of the reports, written by an instructor at the National Defense University in
Washington and published by the Center for Strategic & International Studies in its Washington Quarterly
(Spring 1989) concluded: "As difficult & uncertain as the task may be, policymakers & strategic planners
in this country have little choice in the coming decades but to pay serious attention to population trends, their
causes, and their effects. Already the U.S. has embarked on an era of constrained resources. It thus
becomes more important than ever to do those things that will provide more bang for every buck spent on national
security. To claim that decreased defense spending must lead to strategic debilitation is fatuous. Rather,
policymakers must anticipate events & conditions before they occur. They must employ all
the instruments of statecraft at their disposal (development assistance & population planning every bit as
much as new weapon systems). Furthermore, instead of relying on the canard that the threat dictates one's
posture, they must attempt to influence the form that threat assumes."
… Literature prepared by USAID contractors, UN agencies, the World Bank, and a host of private & semi-
private family planning associations is redundant to the point of absurdity when it comes to the "problems"
encountered in administrating population campaigns. And virtually all of the tens or even hundreds of thousands of
reports & memos evaluating the "problem" over the last few years deal with the unpopularity of the services
& near-universal resistance to population planning. Of course, voluntarism is what these institutions, too,
would prefer to see. It would make their work far easier. But where voluntarism does not work, persuasion is tried.
And where persuasion fails, bribery, intimidation, and even outright force is sure to follow.
… This is not a new observation nor is there anything the least bit unique about the assumption that below-
replacement fertility in the west, combined with high birthrates in the south, will ultimately dislodge the current world
powers from their coveted place of preeminence. "[W]e must never lose sight of the fact that the world population
imbalance is heavily against us and is becoming ever more so," says a fairly typical National Security Council
memorandum written back in January of 1959 (NSC 902/1; 1 January 1959). In 1994, former Deputy Director for
Intelligence at the CIA Ray Cline wrote an entire book on the topic which was called The Power of Nations in the
1990s: A Strategic Assessment ((University Press of America, 1994). … But population, according to Cline, is
the single most important factor. "People exploit the raw economic resources of the territory the live in a develop
the political & social traditions that shape national cultures," he wrote. "A large territory, if accompanied by a
large population, almost automatically confers the status of power on a nation and will be so interpreted by
strategists & makers of foreign policy" (Cline, 1994).
Control is being exercised in ever more complex & varied ways. It has become evident since the beginning of
the 1980s that the purposeful impoverishment of the developing world has become the essence of the global
agenda. Mandatory structural adjustment schemes imposed by western-controlled lenders, the devaluation of
currency, inequitable trade practices, and self-serving "aid" projects have all visibly contributed to the breakdown of
the world's most vulnerable economies.
With the cold war now over, the old constraints against western intervention have evaporated, and the U.S. &
allied nations see themselves as free to intervene politically & militarily in ways that adversely affect local
stability. They increasingly pursue policies that lead to situations in which there is a power vacuum, as was the
case in Rwanda, knowing the horrendous outcome that is possible in the event some domestic crisis ignites an
orgy of spontaneous violence. And the resulting human catastrophe is inevitably exploited as "proof" that the local
populace is unfit for self-governance and in need of administrative control (meaning both political &/or military
supervision, as well as reproductive control) or even punishment.
To invoke the Genocide Convention as a way to validate this image is a perversion of the intent & meaning of
the treaty. It also diverts attention from the genocidal nature of western population programs and military/economic
intervention in the less-developed world. Indeed, the combined effect of this exploitation & aggression
demonstrates that reproductive interference is at the core of a much larger strategy to impede development and to
prevent the rise of other regions & blocs as competitors for power.
Report on European Trip 10.12.39 Breeding ground for bad ideas re Better for all the World 2.26.06 SD UT
… NYC based organization called the Pioneer fund … lengthy gilded pedigree. Begun in 1937 "to advance the scientific study of heredity and human differences", Pioneer Fund directors were openly sympathetic to Nazi race laws. … Founders incl New England textile fortune heir Wycliffe Preston Draper; Harry Laughlin, Congressional advisor & director of Eugenics Records Office at the Cold Spring Harbor biological research lab then funded by Carnegie Institute, future Supreme Court Justice John Harlan; NY scion of wealth Frederick Osborn.
Today, its directors incl John B. Trevor Jr.. The fund's tax-exempt charitable purpose is to give grants. The Oakton VA based New Century Foundation is among its grantees. This foundation publishes a newsletter called American Renaissance ; … |
2.17.01 early
morning decrepit Cambodian-registered ship "East Sea", loaded with 1000 Iraqi Kurds packed shoulder to shoulder, was intentionally beached in sandbank 20 yards off Boulouris Beach near resort of Nice.
from Camp of the Saints by Jean Raspail:
At the first signs of flight, my duty demanded that I order the army to take up positions along the coast. The result is that now, should we only choose to do so, we are perfectly able to repulse the invasion & destroy the invader. Assuming, that is, that we are willing to murder, with or without regret, a million helpless wretches. Past wars have abounded in just such crimes, but conscience back then hadn't yet learned to waver. Survival was all, and it condoned the carnage. Besides, those were wars of rich against rich. Today, it's the poor who are on the attack, with their ultimate weapon."
¹
We still haven't proved Malthus wrong
Ê
… Both Marxists & capitalists energetically bash that idea. Marxists don't believe people can ever be in
excess if the economy is just organized to use them properly. Capitalists mock Malthus for not foreseeing the
progress that now allows us to feed six times as many people as there were in 1798. … A new publication by the Worldwatch Institute is full of facts that show Malthus to be not dead, not wrong, maybe not right either. The patterns by which the human race reproduces itself are changing. Over another few decades, we will probably put old Malthus to rest at last. It's up to us to decide whether he'll rest triumphant or discredited.
The most striking global change is that population growth is slowing. The growth rate peaked in 1964 at 2.2
percent. In 1998 it is 1.4 percent. That's an amazing drop. The average number of children born to a woman in
India has gone down from 5.3 to 3.6. In China the average woman bears just 1.8 children, fewer than the average
in U.S.. In 32 countries, including Japan ¹, France, U.K. and
Spain, population growth is at or near zero. … These slow or no-growth countries contain 2 billion people,
about one-third of the world population. They are either rich industrial countries or past or present communist
countries. What they have in common is not wealth, but education.
But the other two-thirds of humanity is chillingly close to proving Malthus right. These are the countries we like to
call "developing," where virtually all population growth is now happening. Birth rates in most of these places are
dropping too, but slowly. They are growing by 80 million people a year, the equivalent of a whole new Mexico every
14 months. The UN expects them to add another 3.3 billion people over the next 50 years. The
Worldwatch booklet makes that forecast look impossible.
The best indicator of whether a state will swing Red or Blue? The cost of buying a home and raising a family. 2.11.08 Steve Sailer American Conservative
… First-time readers of Pride and Prejudice frequently remark that Austen’s romance novels are, by American standards, not terribly romantic. She possessed a hard-headed understanding of how in traditional English society, wedlock was a luxury that some would never be able to afford, an assumption that often shocks us in our more sentimental 21st century.
By practicing population control, the English largely avoided the cycles of rapid growth followed by cataclysmic famines that plagued China, where women married universally and young. The English postponed marriage and children until a man and woman could afford the accouterments suitable for a respectable married couple of their class. A half-century before Malthus’s gloomy and Austen’s witty reflections on life and love in crowded England, Ben Franklin pointed out that in his lightly populated America, the human condition was more relaxed and happy. In his insightful 1751 essay, “Observations concerning The Increase of Mankind,” Franklin spelled out, with an 18th-century surfeit of capitalization, the first, nonpartisan half of the theory of affordable family formation:
CNN reported in 2006:
Like male characters in a Jane Austen novel, four of my seven closest friends from my high-school class of 1976 got married and bought houses for the first time in their early forties.
Similarly, the cost of childrearing varies more across the country than ever before. A study of census data by the New York Times found that “Manhattan’s 35,000 or so white non-Hispanic toddlers are being raised by parents whose median income was $284,208 a year in 2005".
GOP “family values” resound more in states where people can more afford to have families. In parts of the country where “Families can be easily supported, more Persons marry, and earlier in Life.” Where it is economical to buy a house with a yard in a neighborhood with a decent public school, you will generally find more conservatives.
… the Dirt Gap: Republican regions simply have more acres of land per person. Even excluding Alaska, counties that voted for Bush are only one-fourth as densely populated on average as Kerry’s counties.
In recent years, the most expensive state for housing has been California. Although GOP presidential candidates carried California nine out of ten times from 1952 to 1988, they have not come close in the four elections since. The Mortgage Gap leads, in turn, to a third factor: the Marriage Gap. Sophisticated voting analysts have long noted that the celebrated “gender gap” is dwarfed by the obscure “marriage gap.” Democratic pollster Stanley Greenberg’s multiple regression analysis of the 2004 exit polls revealed:
… The white vote is the decisive swing vote.
… demographer Hans Johnson of the Public Policy Institute of California finds that American-born white women in costly California are having babies at a rate of only 1.6 per lifetime, while immigrant Latinas are having 3.7.
Women in higher social classes are more likely to avoid the troubles of giving birth out of wedlock. They often postpone marriage and children until they can afford the down payment on a house in a neighborhood with good public schools.
Howard
Garber,
Orange
Cty CA
eugenicist &
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cit. Geo. Bush the unauthorized biography Webster G. Tarpley & Anton Chaikin Farish, Draper and Gray. Private associations among these families led to the President's relationship to his closest, most confidential advisers. These alliances were forged in earlier Hitler project and its immediate aftermath … (& incl) obsession with supposed overpopulation … |
Uncle Sam would not seize Prescott Bush's Union Banking Corporation for another 7 months. Bush-Farish axis
began in 1929 the year Harriman bank bought Dresser Industries, supplier of oil-pipeline couplers to Standard
& other companies. Prescott Bush became director & financial czar of Dresser, installing Yale classmate Neil Mahlon as chairman. Geo. Bush would later name one of his sons after the Dresser executive.
Wm S. Farish was main organizer of Humble Oil Co. of Texas, which Farish merged into Standard Oil of NJ.
Farish built up Humble-Standard empire of pipelines & refineries in Texas. The stock market crashed just
after the Bush family got into the oil business. World financial crisis led to
merger of Walker-Harriman bank with Brown Brothers in 1931. Former Brown partner Montagu Norman & his
protégé Hjalmar Schacht paid frantic visits to NY that year and the next, preparing the new Hitler regime for
Germany.
Most important American political event in those preparations for Hitler was infamous "3rd Intl Congress on
Eugenics" at American Museum of Natural History 8.21-23.32 in NY, supervised by Intl Fed. of Eugenics Societies.
This meeting took up stubborn persistence of African-Americans and other allegedly "inferior" & "socially
inadequate" groups in reproducing, expanding their numbers, and amalgamating with others. It was recommended
that these "dangers" to the "better" ethnic groups and to the "well-born", could be dealt with by sterilization or
"cutting off the bad stock" of the "unfit".
Italy's fascist govt sent an official representative. Averell Harriman's sister Mary, "Entertainment" dir. for the
Congress, lived in Virginia fox-hunting country; her state supplied the speaker on "racial purity", W.A. Plecker, VA
commissioner of vital statistics. Plecker reportedly held the delegates spellbound with his account of the struggle to
stop race-mixing & inter-racial sex in Virginia. Congress proceedings were dedicated to Averell Harriman's
mother; she paid for founding the race-science movement in America in 1910, building Eugenics Record Office as
branch of the Galton National Laboratory in London. She & other Harrimans were usually escorted to the
horse races by George Herbert Walker; they shared with the Bushes & the Farishes a fascination with
"breeding thoroughbreds" among horses & humans.
Averell Harriman personally arranged with the Walker/Bush Hamburg-Amerika Line to transport Nazi ideologues
from Germany to NY for this meeting. The most famous among those transported was Dr. Ernst Ruaudin,
psychiatrist at Kaiser Wilhelm Inst. for Genealogy & Demography in Berlin, where Rockefeller family paid for
Dr. Ruaudin to occupy an entire floor with his eugenics "research". Dr. Ruaudin addressed the Intl Federation's
1928 Munich meeting, speaking on "Mental Aberration & Race Hygiene", while others (Germans &
Americans) spoke on race-mixing & sterilization of the unfit. Ruaudin had also led the German delegation to
the 1930 Mental Hygiene Congress in Wash.DC.
At Harrimans' 1932 NY Eugenics Congress, Ruaudin was unanimously elected president of Intl Fed, of Eugenics
Societies. This was recognition of Ruaudin as founder of German Society for Race Hygiene, with co-founder,
Eugenics Federation vp Alfred Ploautz. … Components of movement incl groups with overlapping leadership,
dedicated to:
In 1933, as what Hitler called his "New Order" appeared, John D. Rockefeller, Jr. appointed Wm S. Farish
chairman of Standard Oil of NJ (in 1937 he was made president & chief executive). Farish moved his offices to
Rockefeller Ctr, NY where he spent a good deal of time with I.G. Farben chairman Hermann Schmitz; his company
paid a publicity man, Ivy Lee, to write pro-I.G. Farben & pro-Nazi propaganda and get it into the U.S. press.
Now that he was outside of Texas, Farish found himself in the shipping business, like the Bush family.[ Samuel Russell legacy of means to control of intl trade ]
He hired Nazi German crews for Standard Oil tankers. And he hired Walker/Bush/Harriman Hamburg-Amerika Line
chairman Emil Helfferich as chairman also of Standard Oil subsidiary in Germany. Hamburg-Amerika board
member Karl Lindemann also became a top Farish-Standard executive in Germany. This interlock between their
Nazi German operations put Farish together with Prescott Bush in a small, select group of men operating from
abroad through Hitler's "revolution", calculating that they would never be punished.
In 1939, Farish's daughter Martha married Averell Harriman's nephew, Edward Harriman Gerry; Farish in-laws
became Prescott Bush's partners at 59 Broadway. Both Emil Helfferich & Karl Lindemann were authorized to
write checks to Nazi S.S. chief Heinrich Himmler on a special Standard Oil account. This account was managed by
German-British-American banker, Kurt von Schroeder. Per U.S. intelligence documents reviewed by author
Anthony Sutton, Emil Helfferich continued his payments to the S.S. into 1944, when the S.S. was
supervising mass murder at Standard-I.G. Farben Auschwitz & other death camps. Helfferich told Allied
interrogators after the war that these were not his personal contributions; they were corporate Standard Oil
funds.
After pleading "no contest" to charges of criminal conspiracy with the Nazis, Wm Stamps Farish was fined $5,000. Similar fines were levied against Standard Oil: $5,000 each for the parent company and for several subsidiaries. Farish acquired millions of dollars in conjunction with Hitler's New Order, as a large stockholder, chairman & president of Standard Oil. The U.S. govt sought use of patents his company had given to the Nazis, the Auschwitz patents, but withheld from U.S. military & industry. … Farish went before Senate committee investigating the national defense program. Committee chair Sen. Harry Truman, told newsmen before Farish testified: "I think this approaches treason". Farish began breaking apart at these hearings. He shouted his "indignation" at the Senators, and claimed he was not "disloyal". After March-April hearings ended, more from Justice Dept & U.S. Congress on Farish & Standard Oil:
Farish family was devastated by the exposure. Son Wm Stamps Farish, Jr., Army Air Force Lt., was humiliated by public knowledge his father was fueling the enemy's aircraft; he died in a training accident in Texas 6 months later. With this double death, the fortune comprising much of Standard Oil's profits from Texas & Nazi Germany was now settled upon 4 year old grandson Wm " Will " Stamps Farish III. Will Farish grew up a recluse, most secretive multi-millionaire in Texas, with investments of "that money" in a multitude of foreign countries, and a host of exotic contacts overlapping the intelligence & financial worlds, particularly in Britain.
Bush-Farish axis started Geo.Bush's career. After 1948 Yale and Skull & Bones graduation, he flew to Texas on a corporate airplane and was employed by his father's Dresser Industries.
In a couple of years he got help from his uncle Geo.Walker Jr. & Farish's British banker friends to set him up in the oil property speculation business. Soon thereafter, Geo.Bush founded the Zapata Oil Co., which put oil drilling rigs into locations of great strategic interest to the Anglo-American intelligence community. Will Farish at 25 years old was a personal aide to Zapata chair Geo.Bush in Bush's unsuccessful 1964 campaign for Senate. Will Farish used "that Auschwitz money" to back Geo.Bush financially, investing in Zapata. When Bush was elected to Congress in 1966, Farish joined the Zapata board. When Geo.Bush became U.S. VP in 1980, Farish & Bush family fortunes were again completely, secretly commingled.
… America's Scarlet Letter law, the ultimate double standard law, created by Walter Campbell, a
Democratic state senator, and passed in Florida last year. … requires women of all ages (incl
minors) who do not know the identity of their child's father to publish in newspapers sexual details about
themselves and their possible sexual partners before they are allowed to put the child up for
adoption.
… completely beyond the realms of logic. The result of this law is that many women who would normally give
birth to their babies then give them up for adoption might decide to have an abortion instead. Why should they go
through embarrassment & humiliation of having to list their description & their sex partners in the
newspapers? Ironically, it is the anti-abortion lobby which came up with this law in the first place. |
2.28.02 AP
One reason the welfare conversation is coming back to marriage is that some 80% of child poverty occurs
among youth from broken families or unwed parents. Nearly a third of all American children are being born out of
wedlock, and children raised by never-married mothers are 7 times more likely to live in poverty than those raised
by married, biological parents. Bush says kids in two-parent families are also less likely to drop out of school,
become addicted to drugs, have a child out of wedlock, suffer abuse or end up in prison. Conservatives would love
to see all those unwed mothers marching down the aisle for moral reasons, too. But some worry the "pro-marriage"
camp may get carried away about the benefits of matrimony. Bush insists he's a realist. "I understand there are some families that simply aren't meant to be," he said Wednesday. "On the other hand, we ought to aim for a goal, a goal that recognizes the power and importance of two-parent families in America. "Libertarians reject the whole idea of govt trying to steer people to the altar. "It's a bit silly," said Kimble Ainslie, a policy analyst at the Cato Institute. Of course, there are other ways to entice a reluctant parent down the aisle. The Heritage Foundation's Rector, for example, suggests using celebrities to "affirm the linkage between marriage and personal happiness." No less an authority than Donald Trump, two marriages down and perhaps a third to come, is happy to oblige. "Marriage is a great institution if you get it right," he said Tuesday on MSNBC's "Region in Conflict," of all shows. "When you get it right, there's nothing better; when you don't get it right, it is a mistake." |
Manhattan Institute slogan in service to NWO 3.1.02 Robt Lederman
What is the Manhattan Institute? |
Rudy Giuliani also claims to get all of his ideas directly from MI. Many of his policy ideas are directly based on
Murray's books. MI has spearheaded a decades long effort to make the goals of eugenics respectable again. The
Bush family, the Harriman family (the Wall St business partners of Bush in financing Hitler) and the Rockefeller
family are the elite of the American eugenics movement.
verif. David Frum assoc. w/ MI "Where Did the Sixties Come From? By David Frum Sr Fellow Manhattan Institute."
search MI website on David Frum; hundreds of
documents' pages relate to him.
|
Why Global Gag Rule undermines U.S. Foreign Policy & harms women's health
factsheet
Stop the Global Gag Rule
Washington Population Action International today urged HIRC to pass the Lee Amendment,
Rep. Barbara Lee D-CA sponsor, to repeal the global gag rule & reverse President Bush's family intl family
planning gag order which banned recipients of U.S. intl family planning assistance from providing abortions with
their own funds, counseling women on abortion or engaging in political speech on abortion. "The women who have
been gagged by this order need Congress to speak out for them," said Amy Coen, President of PAI. U.S. intl family
planning assistance provides women in developing countries with reproductive health services, incl contraception,
prenatal care and HIV/AIDS prevention. Already, Intl Planned Parenthood Federation and Ipas have lost millions of
dollars in family planning assistance. IPPF reports that they will have to cancel campaigns promoting safe sex
& contraception, esp. in Asia & Africa. Ipas has indicated that they will have to cancel programs to train
nurses & midwives in poor countries. Result of these cuts will be reduced access to family planning,
contributing to higher rates of unintended pregnancies, maternal death & abortion.
Legal Sleight-of-Hand 3.27.01 PAI
Bush budget silent on overseas family planning
President Bush's budget blueprint, released last week, leaves little room for the U.S. to meet commitments to
increase funds for international family planning assistance. Meanwhile, 3.8.01 PAI & CARE report illustrates the desperate need for
basic reproductive health services in the developing world. &3133; Bush budget proposal contains few specifics,
broad outlines for funding levels & priority pgms leave little room for much-needed increases in funding for
international family planning assistance. The President did propose a modest increase of $1.2 billion for intl affairs
spending overall. However, the President also proposed $1.3 billion in new funding for embassy security, $1.3
billion for the drug war in Colombia, and unspecified increases for HIV/AIDS, primary education in developing
countries, and military aid to Israel. … makes no direct mention of family planning whatsoever … in stark
contrast to earlier promises of support for intl family planning funding. Following global gag rule imposition,
Pres.Bush said he "is committed to maintaining the $425 million funding level provided for in the FY 2001
appropriation because he knows that one of the best ways to prevent abortion is by providing quality voluntary
family planning services."
… report data on reproductive health in 133 countries … never-before released: one in every 65 women
in developing countries will die from reproductive health-related causes during her lifetime, a rate 33 times higher
than the risk to women in developed countries. New estimates suggest that about 515,000 women die each year in
pregnancy … childbirth, or almost one death every minute, and millions more women become ill or disabled.
The new estimate confirms that maternal mortality remains a serious problem, particularly in sub-
Saharan Africa where half of all deaths from pregnancy-related causes occur. In countries with the highest
teen birth rates, including Angola, Niger, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Liberia and Sierra Leone, one in five
girls aged 15 to 19 give birth each year.
U.S. shirking its commitments
Powell, Whitman join opposition to Bush global gag rule
Bipartisan bill introduced in Congress to repeal gag order
2.28.01 PAI
… bipartisan family planning supporter coalition in Congress introduced "Global Democracy Promotion Act of 2001" bill that would repeal President Bush's global gag rule on family planning providers in developing countries. … by prohibiting President from refusing to fund organizations solely because they provide services that are legal in their countries & would be legal in U.S. Also blocks President from imposing on foreign orgs free speech restrictions that would be unconstitutional if imposed on Americans. Bill's lead sponsors incl Rep. Nita Lowey D-NY & Nancy Johnson R-CT, and Sen. B.Boxer (D-CA) & Olympia Snowe R-ME. Introduced in Senate 2.15.01, the date that the global gag rule went into effect with impressive bipartisan support. Senate version has 19 original cosponsors, incl 5 Republicans. House version had at least 66 original cosponsors, incl 7 Republicans. Bills referred to Senate Foreign Relations Committee & HIRCommittee. Supporters of family planning might also attempt to repeal global gag rule through amendment to Foreign Operations Appropriations bill later this year.
more key decisions for Bush
Bush decision threatens intl family planning
Global gag rule lifted
Washington … "Today's compromise marks a reprieve from five years of funding cuts, free
speech restrictions, audits, accusations, harassment and intimidation," said Amy Coen, PAI president. "It's a victory for women's health & for democracy." Facing a threatened veto by Pres.Clinton, Cong. leaders relented on Global Gag Rule and agreed to first increase in intl family planning assistance since Republicans took control of Congress in 1994.
"Depending on the voters' decision on Election Day, today's compromise may not be worth the paper it's written
on," said Lisa Moreno, PAI sr policy analyst. "It's no secret that Governor Bush would likely renew the family
planning restrictions of his father's admin." U.S.AID est. tens of millions of couples in developing world have used
family planning as a direct result of U.S. assistance, lowering rates of unwanted pregnancies, abortion, maternal
death, and HIV/AIDS transmission.
Family planning also helps to protect the environment and reduce poverty by stabilizing population growth. … Coen. "… Family planning is a simple, win-win solution to many complex problems".
Mexico City policy
In 1984 during UN Intl Conf on Population in Mexico City, Pres.Reagan by executive order announced ban on U.S.
govt financial support for U.S. & foreign family planning agencies involved in any way with provision of
abortion in foreign countries. This ban totally removed all U.S. govt funding from such agencies even though main
part of their budget involved simple contraceptive, family planning ed. & service delivery, and had no
involvement in providing abortions. … "During 9 years ban was in effect, funding increased substantially for
USAID population planning assistance, and 350 private, foreign organizations received aid." Intl Planned
Parenthood Federation & a few other agencies refused to conform to the Mexico City policy. They continued
to direct part of their budget to abortion provision, and to political activity to advocate for access to abortion. They
were denied all govt funding.
Opposition to the funding ban
Support for the funding ban
Reinstatement of the funding ban
Reaction was swift
links
"Foreign population aid & abortion (Mexico City Policy)
6.23.00 Pro-life Policy for Today TALKING POINTS Concerned Women for America
2 years ago 9.4.97 Rep. Paul offered his critical amendment to the Foreign Operations
Appropriations bill. This
amendment received 147
votes on the floor, and 2 members later changed their vote, for a total of 149 House members in support, a
significant pro-life victory. For the first time in history, entire House of Representatives had voted on whether or not
to completely defund … population control policies … in developing nations for over 30 years.
Examples of U.S.-funded intl population control horrors:
1995 BBC documentary entitled The Human Laboratory revealed
U.S.AID money been used through local contractors to conduct fertility experiments on poor women in Bangladesh
& Haiti slums. They received Norplant but were not told Norplant was experimental or that they were part of a
fertility drug trial. "Family planners" refused to remove the Norplant when many of these women went blind, bled
severely and had unbearable headaches. "We'll take it out of your dead body," one woman was told. These
women said they felt like human guinea pigs. "It's cheaper for them to use Third World women than to use
a lab animal in the West," said Farida Akhter, Exec. Dir.r for Research for Development Alternatives in
Bangladesh.
USAID gives U.S. tax dollars to population control programs in 67 countries (Asia, Africa, Latin America, the Middle
East and Eastern Europe). In 1995, USAID gave $21,491,811 to the Western Hemisphere region of the Intl
Planned Parenthood Federation, and $26,570,160 to Population Services International
intl pro-life organization Family of the Americas filmed interviews with poor women in Guatemala slums. Local Intl
Planned Parenthood affiliate encouraged these women to be sterilized yet never told them that sterilization was
permanent. Many other women interviewed were given contraception, but never told of the severe side
effects.
At 2 intl UN conf., Dr. Margaret Ogola of Kenya testified she cannot get the
penicillin she needs to treat dying children, but more expensive IUDs are readily available. She also described how
"family planners" have put so many condoms into Kenya that the children use them as balloons and play with them
in the streets.
Many nations are regularly coerced into accepting intl "population policies." At intl UN conf., many diplomats told
us they tried to refuse money for "population assistance" pgms but were told the funds were inextricably linked to
World Bank loans or other types of economic foreign assistance.
U.S. govt participating in population control pgms in Peru since mid-1960s. Dec.1999, Population Research Institute again sent investigators to Peru, who presented findings
at 3.14.00 cong, briefing. Although sterilization campaigns had subsided, family planning abuses were still
rampant: pressure to choose a contraceptive, threats to withhold health care, bribes, targets and quotas. Family
planning is now integrated into general health care. Consequently, women fear they may be sterilized or given
birth control without their knowledge. Physicians had also verbally abused women, calling them "stupid" &
"animals." Even the pro-abortion Center for Reproductive Law and Policy (CRLP), along with Caribbean Committee for the Defense of Women's Rights
(CLADEM), acknowledged & documented this fact in its joint report, Silence and Complicity
Pres.Clinton said his 2001 budget proposal will include $169million, 45% increase, for family planning services
overseas. U.S. currently contributes $394million toward intl population control, greater contribution than any other
country, with $372.5 million earmarked for USAID. Claim that women around world will die without U.S. "population" assistance is smoke screen for a population control agenda. "We cannot accept a world in which part of humanity lives on the cutting edge of a new economy, and the rest live on the bare edge of survival," said Pres.Clinton. Rather than advocating funding for basic survival needs, clean water, medicine, nutrition, he called for increased "family planning" funds.
3.11.98 PBS NewsHour
Rep. Lee Hamilton D-IN HIRC ranking member
HAMILTON I oppose this conference report for a lot of reasons. It micro-manages all over the place
in the State Dept. It intrudes on the president's ability to conduct foreign policy, it doesn't pay our bills that we owe
to the UN. It has many, many provisions in it that I think are intrusive in the foreign policy process. It's a bad bill and
I think would substantially hurt the President in his ability to carry out American foreign policy.
HAMILTON Well, they certainly are. It's not that our friends are anxious; they're just outright mad at
us. What we're doing is asking the world to take over all these burdens of peacekeeping. We're not going to pay
our share. We want them to pay the bill. And they don't like that. And I don't blame them for not liking it. We ought
to pay our bills on time in full. With regard to Mexico City, my view is that's a very important issue. Members feel
very strongly about it, but linking it to the question of the U.N. and to the other big question, international question,
International Monetary Fund, I just don't think makes good sense for American foreign policy. These issues of
payment of dues to the UN & payment of the quota for the IMF go right to the heart of the ability of
this nation to conduct its foreign policy. They are tough enough issues in & of themselves, as the differences
here have made very clear. But to link it to another very difficult issue, no matter whose fault it is, is just putting a
great obstacle in the way of the conduct of American foreign policy.
Difficult Straits … The women's vote, overwhelmingly pro-choice, is significant enough to the Democrats that Pres.Clinton is resisting Republican efforts to attach an anti-abortion restriction to a bill providing $18billion for the IMF & $1billion past due to the UN. cf "House GOP puts brakes on IMF Funds; Abortion restriction threatens Clinton veto & another standoff" Eric Schmitt NYTimes 3.12.98 pA10. In rejecting the Republican proposal, "the White House & its Democratic allies … suggested Pres.Clinton would veto the all important spending bill, despite furious lobbying by his foreign policy advisors … rather than buckle to Republican anti-choice demands."
Congress has adjourned until 1998 11.19.97 Michael Reagan RII Staff of career experts on population & related areas within USAID is unique among donor agencies. In addition, strong public-private partnership with U.S. based NGOs been key to USAID's ability to provide high quality technical advice & support to govts & indigenous NGOs in developing countries. … In the 1980s, domestic political debates on abortion spilled over into intl population assistance policy. Foreign aid funds used for abortion or for coercive programs has been prohibited by law since the passage of the Helms amendment in 1973, and support for biomedical research on abortion was banned in 1981. But the Reagan Admin imposed addtl policy restrictions on pgm in 1984 with Mexico City Policy which denied U.S. assistance to a foreign NGO if it had any involvement in abortion, even if paid for with non-U.S. funds. In addition, Reagan & Bush admin withheld U.S. contribution to UNFPA between 1986 & 1992 because of its projects in China. In 1993, Mexico City Policy was overturned by Pres.Clinton. U.S. contribution to UNFPA was restored after existing law was reinterpreted by the Clinton admin and after Congress approved safeguards disassociating the U.S. from any coercive practices and ensuring that no U.S. funds would by used by UNFPA in China. During 104th Congress, anti-choice opponents of family planning have sought repeatedly to reimpose Mexico City Policy and to cutoff U.S. funding of UNFPA. Congress first appropriated funds for population assistance in 1965. Funding rose fairly steadily to a peak of nearly $600 million in 1995 before suffering a drastic 35 percent funding reduction in 1996. But even before this congressionally imposed funding cut, effects of inflation and increases in the number of women of reproductive age have meant that the growth in U.S. funding for family planning and other reproductive health programs has failed to keep pace with the demand for high quality services around the world. |
Wal-Mart ordered to carry 'morning-after' pill
Lawsuit filed over Massachusetts Board of Pharmacy ruling that chain must carry drug 2.16.06 MSNBC
Wal-Mart was ordered this week by the Massachusetts Board of Pharmacy to carry the morning after pill, commercial emergency contraceptive. The directive came after 3 women, backed by abortion rights groups, sued Wal-Mart to carry the pill in its Massachusetts stores. Dr. Rebecca Guy, one of those women, w/ her atty Sam Perkins, discuss case w/ Tucker Carlson.
Carlson: Doctor, why should govt be telling businesses what they can and cannot sell? Or why should anyone be forcing businesses to sell things they don‘t want to sell?
Dr. E. Guy , : Emergency contraception pill is not like stocking Colgate versus Crest tooth paste. A pharmacy is a medical, it‘s part of the healthcare system. It‘s dispensing medications that are crucial to patient care. The prescription that a patient goes to a pharmacy with is part of a physician-patient contract. A patient, when he goes to the medication, expects to be able to get that medication.
Carlson : Wal-Mart is owned by its stock holders. Why shouldn‘t they get to decide what Wal-Mart sells?
Dr. E. Guy : What they sell on their shelves other than the pharmacy. The pharmacy is critical to patient care. Whether stocking medicines to treat diabetes or hypertension, when a woman walks in to a pharmacy, she is getting a medication that she may need. Carlson : She can go somewhere else and buy it. Or she can‘t. But the fact is that it‘s not up to her what Wal-Mart sells. Mr. Perkins, you could make the same argument about grocery stores. I need to eat to live. But I‘m not allowed to tell a grocery store what has to sell, and neither is govt yet.
Standard corporate argument since at least Ronald Reagan presidency to reverse social regulation to 100+ year old antecedent of permitting soiled of spoiled meat & produce, reducing commercial liability to caveat emptor. ] Carlson As defined by whom?
Carlson : Emergency contraception pill is not a pill that saves a woman‘s life. The crux of it‘s controversial. Some people believe this pill is immoral. This is tantamount to forcing people to perform abortions. Some people think abortion is fine, and some don‘t.
Dr. E. Guy : Emergency contraception is just that. It‘s contraception that works not through an abortion fashion. It‘s often confused with RU-486, which is an abortion pill. But emergency contraception is the same medication that is in most common contraception and works, as you may know, the same way that breast feeding and the IUD and other things work.
Carlson : I don‘t have a problem with it. Some people think it‘s immoral. They have a right to believe it‘s immoral. You‘re forcing people to commit an act they believe is immoral … the power of the state of Massachusetts to make people sell something they don‘t want to sell.
S.Perkins Esq. : This is a regulated industry.
Restoration of Mexico City Policy
USAID
"This policy recognizes our country's long history of providing intl health care services, including voluntary family
planning to couples around the world who want to make free & responsible decisions about number &
spacing of their children." 1.22.01 Pres. GWBush announced reinstatement of so-called Mexico City policy that required NGOs to "agree as condition of their receipt of Federal funds that such organizations would neither perform nor actively promote abortion as a method of family planning in other nations." The President is committed to maintaining the $425 million funding level provided for in the FY 2001 appropriation because he knows that one of the best ways to prevent abortion is by providing quality voluntary family planning services. The President's clear intention is that any restrictions do not limit organizations from treating injuries or illnesses caused by legal or illegal abortions, for example, post-abortion care. This position has wide Congressional support.
Since 1965 beginning, USAID family planning pgm involved in all major innovations in intl family planning. Agency
is recognized for its leadership in the field. USAID support for family planning helped developing countries providing
family planning services to more that 100 million couples and has contributed to over 40% decline in av. family
size in 28 countries since 1965. This decline contributed to meeting global health goals of halving maternal
mortality rates, reducing child mortality by one-third and decreasing the rate of new HIV infections by 15%
Since 1973 with Helms Amendment enactment, USAID legally prohibited from supporting or encouraging
abortion as family planning method. USAID has strict procedures to ensure no USAID provided funds are used
for abortion, incl legally binding contracts with orgs receiving funds, separate accounting procedures to ensure
that no USAID funds support prohibited activities, close technical monitoring, and regular financial audits by outside
nationally-recognized accounting firms.
WHouse PressSec on Mexico City Policy restoration USAID … This policy recognizes our country's long history of providing intl health care services, incl voluntary family planning to couples around the world who want to make free & responsible decisions …
1.23.01 USAID BOUCHER Okay. A couple of things to go through. What is called the Mexico City Policy, I think. Most of you are familiar with the history of this, so I won't go over it again. In addition to issuing, announcing the executive order yesterday, the White House also issued a statement on policy that says the President is committed to the $425 million funding level that is provided for in the Fiscal Year 2001 appropriation, because they know that one of the best ways to prevent abortions is by providing quality voluntary family planning services. Support at that level for voluntary family planning services remains part of our policy. … discussion over the years has ranged, revolved around funding fungibility issue, so if we provide money to organization, in Clinton admin they said, well, that can be used only for the purposes of voluntary family planning, not to support or promote abortions. People on the other side have said, but money is fungible; if you fund this side of the organization they have more money to do whatever they do with regard to promoting abortion. The Mexico City policy here, as it applies to organizations, is to not provide funding to organizations that promote or advocate abortion. That is the policy that this Administration has adopted. There are some 450 non-US based grantees, meaning organizations, that receive US aid funds. The vast majority of these organizations will probably consent to the Mexico City restrictions, and thus would choose not to lose their funding. Q Does that mean that these are people that do right now provide some kind of abortion services, whether it is, well, some kind of abortion services that will now stop doing that in order to continue to get US money? BOUCHER Or people who don't provide any abortion services at all already. Q Already? BOUCHER So among those 450, we don't have any way of measuring it right now until we have heard back and talked to the organizations. But based on previous history of this issue, we would expect a vast majority of these organizations to be able to comply with this directive. There will be some unknown number of organizations that may not accept the Mexico City restrictions. But as the announcement said yesterday, voluntary family planning remains important, and we will continue to fund that.
Q When you said, "voluntary family planning", usually part of these family planning counseling
includes the option of abortion. Are you saying that when these organizations offer these services and give the
family the option, are you saying that abortion is not supposed to be one of the options that they present? Whether
they provide -- even if they don't provide the services, some clinics just give the counseling.
Q Has this building had any communication with your European Union counterparts on this subject,
either on Sunday or since then, given that the European Commission on Welfare and (inaudible) I think it says has
basically accused President Bush of turning reproductive rights back 20 years with this decision?
Q Richard, within this building, is this decision seen as a foreign policy decision, or simply a -- or
mainly a reflection of a domestic policy that has kind of leached out into an area that you guys are involved in?
Q Okay, well, can I -- and along the lines of my other question about the MidEast, can we see here
now a shift from the last Administration to this Administration, and a shift in terms of whether this Sec.State is as
convinced that this kind of thing, that reproductive health and women's health is as much of a priority as the last
Secretary of State thought that it was in terms of foreign policy?
Q You don't think that it is a reflection of a change in the commitment to -- in the overall
commitment, in terms of foreign policy, to reproductive health?
Q Can you tell us how this foreign policy decision fits with Sec. Powell's previously stated position,
as I understand it, which is to be pro-choice?
Q Richard, if some of these groups do drop out, as is very possible, and refuse your offer of
assistance, what will you do to ensure that the funding does remain at that level? I mean, will you actively go out
and find other programs to finance, or will you -- I mean, what is the value of this commitment to 425 if you are
essentially likely to cut off some of the groups which are now receiving that money?
Q You will actively seek ways of spending any extra money left over?
Q Did the White House give a -- did they give a deadline as to when people have to -- was it
immediate? Do they have to say, yes, we want to continue -- we will drop our abortion services and we want to stay
in, or is that just something that is -- I mean, when does this take -- obviously it takes effect immediately, but when
does it actually take effect on the ground?
Q One more on this, if I may. Sec. Powell said yesterday that one of his aims was not to shove US
policy down the throats of other countries. Given the fairly harsh reaction that has come out of Europe already
today to this, is this not really rather a bad way to start off his foreign policy decisions?
BOUCHER First of all, the reaction out of Europe -- all I saw is, I think, one statement by one
commissioner. So I'm not sure that Europe as a whole has taken it. But, in any case, I think the point is that this is a
decision about the disbursement of American money, and I think the U.S. has a right to decide how we
disbursed our funds.
Q Can I get one more in on this? This means that as -- okay, and I want to just do this comparison
again between Friday and yesterday. On Friday, you had people from -- hypothetically going to have people from
USAID going -- or whoever disburses this money -- saying, okay, here is your money; do with it what you will. And
today, those same people are going to be going out to those same groups and saying, okay, here's the money, but
you can't have anything to do with -- there can't be anything to do with abortion or you don't get anything. Is that
correct, basically? Layman's terms?
Q Right, but generally it is the same person. Have you -- and I mean, it is basically going to be the
same office in the embassy doing this, right? And so what I am wondering is, have you had any complaints back
from the embassies about this? Any resignations? Anyone jumping up and down for joy saying, thank God, it has
finally come?
Q Is there a State Department role in this case involving the American-born twins over whom there
is a custody battle and who are now in the care of the British govt?
Q New subject? Do you have anything more on the Congo? Are you ready to
welcome the peaceful transfer of power to the son of former president Kabila?
Q Is there any consideration going to lifting the authorized departure since things don't seem to be
particularly grave?
Q And have we heard anything new on the possibility of the Lusaka participants
meeting in Mozambique?
Q A question of drug certification or certification of drug problem countries across your radar scope
at all. Sec. Powell seemed hostile toward that process when he testified last week, and I think the certification
deadline is coming up pretty soon.
Q Can we go back to the Congo for a second? Is there anything to lead you to believe that the
govt under the son will be any different than the govt under the father, the policies?
WHouse memorandum for U.S.AID Acting Administrator
… for immediate implementation. … language to be incorporated into the standard provision entitled
"Voluntary Population Activities (March 1999)" contained in CIB 99-6. Note that when amending an existing grant or
cooperative agreement that contains the "Voluntary Population Planning (June 1993)" standard provision,
Agreement Officers must:
CIB 01-03 cancellation re voluntary pop. activities Voluntary Population Activities Restoration of Mexico City Policy CIB 01-03 USAID
2.25.97 USAID admin J. Brian Atwood Rep. Ben Gilman chair I'm sure you have seen -- I asked Madeleine Albright this when she was before our committee recently, and she had not seen it. She was very candid in her comments. But I'm sure you have seen the Vision 2000 statement that IPPS, based in London, issued back in 1992. And it says, and I quote, very simply, "To bring pressure on govts and to campaign for policy and legislative change to remove restrictions against abortion." Fred Sye (ph), who was the former chairman or president of IPPS said, "Now for the first time, the IPPS strategic plan, Vision 2000, outlines activities at the both secretariat and family planning association level to further IPPS's explicit goal of increasing the right to access to abortion."
They put it ahead of human rights, they put it ahead of feeding people, they put it ahead of child survival efforts
because what is the bottom line, a lower number seems to be what it's all about.Mr. Atwood, I would ask you, you
know, you won the victory -- you won the vote the other day. It was somewhat mixed in that members also voted for
legislation that I offered, but we all know that the prospects for that legislation are seriously dimmed as a result of
the House vote. Let me advise you, though, that it was won at a cost. There are a number of members who were
intending on voting against the president who were pressured as I've never seen pressure before, and I've
had this told to my face so I'm not making anything up here, and you can check this out. You probably know who
they are. But it was a pyrrhic victory.
MR. ATWOOD First, I want to say that from a personal point of view, I abhor abortion. I am a
Catholic. I've just had my daughter baptized as a Catholic. I have my own personal beliefs about these matters.
And I can say to you from that perspective that it is not our goal to try to overturn laws in various other countries
against abortion. It is not our goal to have any influence whatsoever over what other countries do on this very, very
serious and very sensitive matter. As a matter of fact -- and I think this is why the statement you read relating to
IPPF's 1992 statement is mitigated considerably -- all nations that adopted the Plan for Action that was adopted in
Cairo, agreed that this was a sovereign matter and that there would be no effort to try to overturn abortion laws of
one sort or the other.
So I believe that our family planning programs reduce abortions; that if we continue to see cuts in those programs,
we're going to see more unintended pregnancies, more abortions and more maternal deaths as a result. I
understand your position with respect to IPPF. IPPF has never, ever, even during the days of the Mexico City
policy, spent more than 1 percent of its budget on abortion-related things. And when I say abortion-related, a lot of
what they do is to help people that have had botched abortions. We've had such a situation during the Mexico City
policies that women would come into our clinics who have been experiencing botched abortions and the
doctors wouldn't even be able to help them. Now that, it seems to me, is an over-reaction to the issue. I do think
that we need to understand that an international organization like IPPF operates in many different countries, that
they abide by the laws of all of those countries. They do not use a single dime of American govt money to
perform abortions or to do anything related to abortions. And that is our position. I realize that we're going to
continue to have a disagreement on those issues. I hope it will continue to be a civil one as it always has because I
very much appreciate your support for other aspects of our program, Mr. Smith. REP. SMITH As you know, Mr. Atwood, the botched abortions have always been completely permissible and I think there's a moral duty for us to provide help to those women who may be experiencing that. That -- under the Mexico City policy, that was always included and anticipated and my language explicitly included that under what we would be willing, not only to allow someone else to do, but to use our own U.S. funds because we do have an obligation to help those women. So that really isn't an issue. That ought to be off the table. We would help those women in those situations. In terms of what IPBS does overseas, as you know, they are the chief lobby force in most of these countries in trying to bring down these pro-life laws. And they will have successes if they are made very effective by huge donations by the U.S. and perhaps our other allies in doing this. Now, your not for abortion. I'm not for abortion. We need to be talking about consequences. How do we make the world abortion-free rather than having free abortion. And what's happening is that in planned parenthood documents, and people have said this over and over, in every country where abortion is liberalized and made permissive, the numbers skyrocket and then level off. Ours went to 1.5 million and now its about 1.3 to 1.4 million. And that's the expectation for every country. So if we contribute to those organizations that have an abortion manifesto called Vision 2000 to bring down these right-to-life laws, you can take it to the bank that in every one of these countries where they succeed ultimately, there will be a skyrocketing of abortion. We ought to be working to make the world abortion-free.
Wanda Franz, Ph.DWomen & Children First. Natl Right to Life president; developmental psychologist & child psychology professor W.VA Univ.
… Currently, there are about 1.2 million abortions a year. The abortion industry defends these as serving high
moral purpose: "Every child, a wanted child," Planned Parenthood slogan. In other words, the "unwanted" child is
better off being dead: we are doing the child a favor. Planned Parenthood advertisement from 1985 proclaims: "The
right to choose makes all other rights possible." Since I am speaking to Catholic Press Assoc., it is appropriate to
present the counter view as expressed by Pope John Paul II. He declared "the right to life" to be "the most basic
& fundamental right and the condition of all other personal rights." Planned Parenthood is, of course, not
above appealing to baser motivations. An advertisement from its Minnesota affiliate blares: "Babies are loud, smelly
& expensive. Unless you want one." In fact, according to Planned Parenthood's own figures, only 3% of
abortions are done for sake of mother's health; another 3% are done because of health problems of the baby;
and 1% are reported for rape or incest. Vast majority of abortions, 93%%, are done for social reasons,
because "babies are loud, smelly & expensive" and inconvenient. What we have then is killing on a massive
scale as a form of birth control.
Legalized abortion on demand places the unborn child in America today as much in jeopardy as a disabled person
in Nazi Germany except that abortion does not even involve the pro-forma review by a panel of experts which the
Nazi pgm required. Indeed, the unborn child has no rights whatsoever. There is no provision for defense on behalf
of the victim, and there is no presumption of innocence until proven guilty; in fact, the victim's innocence is
completely immaterial. The only thing that matters is "wantedness." Social justice is impossible if our right to life
and our personhood are contingent upon somebody else wanting us to exist. "Every child, a wanted child"
ultimately implies "every person, a wanted person," and that implies the end of liberty and a state of injustice. The
social injustice generated by abortion is also evident when you look at who gets aborted. Survey for 1994 &
1995 in July/Aug. 1996 issue of Family Planning Perspectives journal reveals a heavy racial and ethnic bias. While
black women made up only 14% of child-bearing age women, they accounted for 31.1% of all abortions.
Hispanic women constituted only 10.6% of that age group, but accounted for 20.2% of all abortions. These
two minority groups alone suffered over 51% of all abortions although these minorities together amounted
to less than 25% of women of child-bearing age.
Catholic women had abortion rates very close to the national average. Non-Hispanic, white Catholic women,
however, had a 43% lower abortion rate than the national average. Heavy promotion of abortion among
Hispanic Catholics that raises the overall "Catholic" rate to the national level. If you look at the history of eugenics
& abortion rights movements in this country have heavy prejudice against minorities & Catholics. Aborting
Catholic Hispanics satisfies both prejudices. According to Centers for Disease Control, percentage of abortions on
Hispanic women nearly doubled from 1990 to 1996. This reflects Planned Parenthood's increasing effort to target
this ethnic minority. These numbers are no surprise when you remember that abortion advocacy in this country has
its roots in eugenics. Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger remarked "all our problems are the result of
over-breeding among the working class." While Planned Parenthood does not openly admit to systemic prejudice
against poor & non-white minorities, it admits its "core clients" are "young women, low-income women, and
women of color."
Before Rev. Jessie Jackson became Democratic presidential nomination candidate, he denounced preferential
abortion of African-Americans as a genocidal practice. As soon as he ran for office he found it more advantageous
to promote himself as "pro-choice." Similar tactics were employed by others pursuing Democratic Party
presidential nomination. For example, Democratic House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt used to vote pro-life until
he concluded that the nomination politics in his party required him to be pro-abortion. Similarly, VP Al Gore voted
mostly pro-life when he was in the House. Once he reached for national office, he became abortion rights promoter.
Now, he is presidential candidate endorsed by the abortion lobby. Mary Meehan documented in 3 part series of
articles in 1996 Our Sunday Visitor how American eugenics & birth control movement engaged in long-term
population control campaign that to this day targets the poor & the members of non-white races here &
abroad.
For decades, many of America's super-rich & their foundations have been obsessed with promoting population
control in developing countries. Now, however, their private efforts are massively aided by the power & money
of U.S. govt. After World War II, population control in developing countries was promoted as a means to secure
America's access to raw materials in these countries. Under Nixon admin, public moneys began to fund
population control programs run by U.N. & private groups. Even though 1973 Helms Amendment prohibited
use of U.S. foreign assistance funds to pay for abortions or promote them, organizations performing abortions
continued to get as much as 90% of their budget from the U.S. taxpayer. Policy was changed during
Reagan/Bush admins. In 1984, President Reagan instituted "Mexico City Policy" that stopped the flow of funds to
organizations performing and promoting abortion as a method of family planning. One of Clinton-Gore admin first
acts was to rescind Mexico City Policy in Jan. 1993. Ever since, this admin actively promoted abortion in
developing countries.
4.1.93 WHouse spokeswoman Dee Dee Myers told reporters abortion was to be "part of the overall approach to
population control." On 5.11.93, State Dept official Timothy Wirth told reporters the admin was insisting on access
to abortion as a reproductive choice and that foreign govts may not "hide behind the defense of sovereignty." In a
1.22.94 story, 21st anniversary of Roe v. Wade, Steven Greenhouse in NYTimes: "Administration officials said that
the population strategy was perhaps the most concrete sign of VP Al Gore's influence on foreign policy." In fact,
Gore went to great length to attend the UN sponsored 1994 Intl Conf on Population & Development in
Cairo. Gore had ruptured an Achilles tendon and hobbled around on crutches. That did not stop him & large
American delegation from exerting relentless pressure on developing countries representatives to accept abortion
as family planning even when it was contrary to their laws, customs and religions. Threat to withhold U.S. foreign
aid money & funds from intl bodies was used as a club. The Vatican denounced this campaign as a form of
"cultural imperialism."
…Message Mother Teresa sent to Cairo conference: "When we die, we will come face to face with God, the
Author of life. Who will give an account to God for the millions & millions of babies who were not allowed a
chance to live, to experience loving & being loved?" …
Has America lost her moral gag reflex? excerpts
… school testing firms, staffed by behavioral psychologists, have always known full well that "test" questions and follow-up curricula significantly intrude into students' beliefs, contrary to their public statements otherwise, and, second, that these "educators" always knew they were on thin legal ice.
… the controversial parent component of the New Freedom Initiative on Mental Health, a nationwide project to screen the entire U.S. population for mental illness and provide a cradle-to-grave continuum of quasi-mandatory therapeutic "services" for those identified as mentally ill or even at risk of becoming so.
…The goal of parent licensing, Westman insists, is noble: It would acknowledge, by govt fiat if necessary, the United Nations tenet that "all persons, including children, should be free from abuse, oppression, and rejection".
Eugenics has come full circle from elimination of the feebleminded, the criminally inclined, alcoholics, schizophrenics, to purging the more modern rejects, the hyperactive, the attention-challenged, the substance abuser and a variety of so-called learning disabled, through "pro-active," "reproductive counseling" in birth control, abortion and sterilization.
This, according to both Lykken & Gordon, is largely because of the high incidence of single parenthood, illegitimacy, among the black population. Lykken views single mothering as the primary exacerbating circumstance leading to full-blown sociopathy which, he says, accounts for much of the difference in crime rate between blacks & whites.
… Nov./Dec. 1996 issue of the social science journal Society is suddenly making the rounds not only among professionals but in Congress. The issue covers a symposium on parent licensing that took place earlier that year.
On 10.4.04, another staggering pronouncement from the mental health community was made at a Texas Committee hearing on Psychotropic Drugs and Foster Care Children. Even some politically liberal human-rights advocates were stunned when psychiatrist Joe Burkett informed the committee, which was investigating allegations of mass-drugging of children in foster care, that one of the main reasons so many foster kids need to be on psychotropic drugs is that they are from a bad gene pool. |
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UN agency regrets as 'disheartening' US withholding of funds over abortion 9.16.05 UNNS
UN Population Fund (UNFPA) said today U.S.' decision to withhold $34 million for purported abortion-related reasons was especially regrettable when leaders at the World Summit now meeting at NYC UN HQ were stressing the need to act together on global concerns.
U.S. is the only country to ever deny funding to UNFPA for non-budgetary reasons in the agency's entire 36 years of operation. The Administration's stated reason for withholding funds appropriated by Congress for the fourth straight year is simply incorrect, as an assessment team sent to China by the Administration itself found no evidence that UNFPA supports coercive abortions or sterilization, the Fund stressed.
"I hope U.S. will rejoin the family of nations that support our multilateral work to eliminate maternal deaths, prevent HIV/AIDS, empower women and reduce poverty," she added. "Our task is made more urgent by the fact that more than 300 million poor women in the world suffer from short- and long-term illnesses related to pregnancy or childbirth, with more than half a million of them dying each year."
It also found that, despite advocates' claims, no reliable evidence exists whether the programs work. "Most studies
of abstinence ed pgms have methodological flaws that prevent them from generating reliable estimates of
program impacts," the report said.
[ The fecund little bastards won't sit still long enough to be tested
]
Given the restrictions, states across the country debated whether to take the abstinence-only money. Eventually
every state took the money, although California later dropped out. In 1999, about half of high school
students and nearly two-thirds of graduating seniors reported having had sex. That's a small drop from earlier
years, but the report cited a lack of evidence that the abstinence-only programs were responsible for the decline.
The report, written by independent researchers who are evaluating the initiative, also found:
Many programs try to bridge the gap in parent-child communication by trying to engage parents in programs and
trying to get teens to feel more comfortable talking to their parents about sex. There's been little success.
"Despite widespread parent enthusiasm for programs, getting more than a small fraction actively involved has
proven to be a major challenge for virtually all programs," the report said.
Others said teen-agers can sort it out and advocated programs that encourage abstinence but also teach about
birth control in case kids have sex anyway. "Why can't we tell kids the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the
truth?" asked Rep. Jim Greenwood, R-PA who said he wants his 2 teen-age daughters to be taught about
abstinence & contraception. "Why can't we trust kids?" |
re OTC 'morning after' birth control pill 1.9.07 January W. Payne Wash. Post
3 months after the Food and Drug Administration decided that emergency contraception should be available to women 18 and older without a doctor's prescription, the over-the-counter version of Plan B, the “morning after” pill, began appearing in drugstores nationwide last fall. Manufacturer Barr Pharmaceuticals shipped the drug after repackaging it to meet federal labeling rules for OTC medications.
Q What is Plan B?
Plan B will not work if the egg is implanted before the drug is taken, the FDA reports.
Q How soon do I need to take Plan B for it to be effective?
Q Where is Plan B available?
Q For whom is it intended?
Doctors emphasize, however, that Plan B is not meant to be used as a substitute for primary birth control methods such as condoms, birth control pills, the birth control patch or vaginal ring. Also, Plan B does not protect against sexually transmitted diseases.
Q If I buy it now just to have it on hand, how long will it stay effective?
Q How much does Plan B cost? Will my insurance cover it?
Q Is Plan B safe?
Q Can a pharmacist refuse to dispense Plan B, citing religious reasons?
Q Is there any way I can legally buy Plan B if I'm under 18? Can my boyfriend, husband, family member or friend buy Plan B for me?
Q What is the difference between Plan B and RU-486?
UK scientists invent male 'pill' that can be taken hours before sex
11.27.06 Fiona Macrae Daily Mail
British scientists have developed a revolutionary pill that men could take as a one-off contraceptive just before a date. The tablet would prevent a man from being able to impregnate a woman, but within a few hours his fertility would return to normal.
various posts re article
The protein antagonist is in first stage human testing and they're still having troubles with it causing permanent sterility in a significant number of cases … ~ 5%. While it does have few side effects, the ones it does have are NASTY!
ƒ ² … so much easier to prevent pregnancy through women since they have a well regulated cycle and only 1 egg. Conversely, men release 10,000's of thousands of sperm, not a small number.
The hormone-free 'male pill' was inspired by two medicines already in use and so the scientists hope it could be on the market within as little as five years. Experts believe it could transform family planning by allowing couples to share the responsibility for contraception, a role that traditionally falls to women.
Critics argue, that men lack women's motivation to prevent pregnancy, making it hard for women to trust them to take a contraceptive pill. Other male pills are under development but many of them are based on hormones that trick the brain into switching off sperm production. These are typically being developed as injections, implants and patches.
Men could take one daily, just like the female pill, or have one a few hours before sex as a one-off contraceptive.
Sexual satisfaction is not affected and the absence of hormones means that a man's fertility should return to normal within hours of stopping the treatment.
Fellow researcher Dr Christopher Smith said: "If the man was taking the pill over a period of several months and decided to come off it, we would expect his fertility to return just as quickly as if he had taken it on a one-off basis."
Currently, men who want to take responsibility for contraception have limited choice, with their options extending to condoms, a vasectomy, or simple abstinence. Professor John Guillebaud, one of Britain's leading experts on contraception, described the pill as "a brilliant discovery". He said its strength lay in its ability to prevent pregnancy without using hormones which could cause side-effects such as hot flushes and moodiness.
If the male pill is successful it could bring in huge amounts of money to King’s College, which owns the rights to
the discovery. Annual world-wide sales of the female Pill are worth £21billion a year. |
Yeast infection basics medically reviewed 10.26.04 4.18.02 Joseph Apuzzio MD, Gloria Bachmann MD Healthology, Inc
Most women are familiar with the dreaded yeast infection. An estimated 50% of U.S. college women are diagnosed with at least one yeast infection by the age of 25. Yeast infections are fairly easy to treat. But it's important to remember that there are a number of vaginal infections whose symptoms mimic those of a yeast infection, and should be ruled out before treatment begins.
Q What exactly is a yeast infection?
Q Which women are more prone to yeast infections?
Q What are some of the environmental causes or lifestyle habits that may
precipitate a yeast infection?
Q Are women who are HIV-positive also more at risk?
Q What are some of the symptoms, for those women who have not experienced a yeast
infection?
Q Are these symptoms the same for every woman that you have seen in your practice?
Q If a woman has these symptoms that you've mentioned, does she definitely have a
yeast infection, or could it be something else?
Q So getting an accurate diagnosis is the first step?
Q If someone comes in with these complaints, do doctors perform these cultures or
examine these slides as a matter of course?
Q So let's say you get the right test and the results come back positive. You have
a yeast infection. What sorts of treatments might be undertaken at this point?
Q Why do some women choose the pill over the cream or vice versa?
Q When should a woman consider treating herself? It's certainly easy to do. Any
drugstore carries a number of these products.
Q And if a woman has any doubts or concerns about what her symptoms may really be,
even if she thinks this might be a yeast infection, she's had one before, what do you recommend?
Hysterectomies: Dr. Reichman shares her story
There was a time when if a woman bled too much, had any pelvic mass, an abnormal Pap, hurt or felt pressure “down there”, she was told that the best way to ensure her gynecologic health was to “take it out”, to get a hysterectomy. When I trained at the University of Chicago decades ago, hysterectomies were the most common surgical procedure scheduled in our gynecologic operating rooms.
Reasons most hysterectomies are performed
The most common symptoms leading to hysterectomies are heavy or irregular uterine bleeding, pelvic pain and pelvic pressure. Most hysterectomies are performed in women between the ages of forty and forty-five. But in the last two years we have actually seen a decrease in overall hysterectomy rates in these relatively young women and an increase (by up to 45%) in women older than age 75 (I fall in between).
In most cases they are silent and won’t require intervention. But if they become very large, like a four-month pregnancy or greater, cause significant pain, pressure and/or abnormal or heavy bleeding, they require therapy. Hysterectomy is the final solution, but there are often alternatives for symptoms of bleeding. These include: birth control pills, anti-hormones (GnRH, which can stop periods and shrink the fibroids)and an intrauterine system that slowly releases progestin (Mirena).
There are also new non-invasive procedures such as MRI directed ultrasound to destroy the core of the fibroids and shrink them and minimally invasive techniques in which uterine vessels are embolized in order to block blood flow to the fibroid.
Depending on their size, and placement, fibroids can also be surgically removed (myomectomy). This can be performed through a laparoscope (using small incisions in the abdomen), or, if the fibroids “poke through” the endometrium, through a hysteroscope which is inserted through the cervix. Fibroids can grow back and do recur (and cause clinical problems) about twenty percent of the time and may then require a repeat procedure or, if “enough is enough”, a hysterectomy.
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Women often have a combination of symptoms. In my case, I had recurrent, growing fibroids (I had a myomectomy years ago) and over the past year they caused bleeding and cramping. In addition I had developed prolapse, probably from my two previous deliveries. My daughters however, were definitely worth it!
23% of hysterectomies were total vaginal hysterectomies. The vaginal route is considered preferable to abdominal surgery because it’s a “ no scar” procedure. The post-operative hospitalization, pain, risk of bleeding, need for transfusion and recovery time are at least half that of abdominal hysterectomy.
Pelvic or uterine prolapsed, Non-invasive cervical cancer and Fibroids that are not too large and can be removed (with the uterus) vaginally are all indications for this procedure. There are three variations on the above procedures:
Vaginal hysterectomy allows most patients to be nearly pain-free after a week and return to work after three weeks. Next, in terms of recovery, laparoscopic assisted vaginal or laparoscopic abdominal hysterectomy allow for a 3 to 4 week recovery (as compared to 6 weeks for an open abdominal incision).
Patients need to know that fatigue can last longer then incision healing time. In my case, even though I went back to work in less than 3 weeks, I didn’t feel that my usual energy had returned until I was 6 weeks post op.
I must point out that the laparoscopic procedures may take longer in the operating room, which means a longer time under anesthesia, often cost more since a lot of expensive disposable instruments are used and require special surgical expertise.
A patient decides whether she needs a hysterectomy, and if so, how, and by whom by asking her physician about medical alternatives, and if available and feasible, try them first. If they don’t work or are inappropriate, she should consult with a gynecologist (or if she has cancer, a gynecologic oncologist) about the various surgical approaches.
She should also ask about the surgeon’s personal preference and expertise.
Studies show that for most women a hysterectomy improves the quality of their lives and may be life saving. In my case, it did.
7.3.01 Reuters
Lausanne, Switzerland Most European nations are carrying out more test-tube baby procedures,
but there are fewer multiple births, scientists said on Tuesday. The latest figures on in-vitro fertilization (IVF) in 18
countries in Europe, presented at the European Society of Human Reproduction & Embryology meeting on
Tuesday, showed treatments increased by 14 percent to 232,225 in 1998 compared to the previous year. The
pregnancy rate per embryo transfer rose to 27 percent from 26 percent -- but the number of twins, triplets and
quadruplets decreased to 26.3 percent from 29.6 percent.
Iceland tops league
study:Test-tube babies show no emotional problems
LAUSANNE, Switzerland Babies born with the help of fertility treatment grow into emotionally and
socially well-adjusted children, according to new research announced on Tuesday. The world's first study that
followed in-vitro, or test tube, babies to the brink of adolescence showed that youngsters who had been conceived
through fertility treatments do not suffer any more psychological problems than other children. Since Louise Brown,
the world's first test tube baby, was born 23 years ago, more than a million children worldwide have been born
using assisted reproductive technology (ART).
no differences
The technique can produce mature human eggs, although the experiment was terminated when the follicles, the
egg-containing sacs, were 10 days short of full maturity. Mature follicles were thought be too large for the mice and
to produce mature eggs may require a larger host animal, such as a rabbit. The latest mouse studies will
investigate human egg development and the risk of passing on cancer from the stored ovarian tissue. Prof Gosden
does not have a licence to fertilise these eggs and stressed that he did not intend to seek one. However, plans are
already under way in America to use animal incubators to grow human eggs. Prof Gosden said that there would
have to be careful research on the risk of animal diseases passing to the egg and thus to any foetus. Mr Critser said that the elephant egg, in theory, could be fertilised in a test-tube and then transplanted into a female elephant. However, procedures to isolate and fertilise eggs from elephants and the techniques of transferring embryos into live animals, will require additional investigation and development, he said. Mr Critser said: "We know a great deal about a few species, such as mice, humans and sheep. But as you begin to look at the simple, fundamental reproductive biology of a tiger or a cheetah or an African elephant, very little is known."
1.29.98 Robert Uhlig News Telegraph UK However, he said that once people overcome their initial reservations, most accept his proposal, which has won ethical approval from his local animal research committee but has not been presented to the equivalent committee for humans.Dr Short has applied for funding from the U.S. National Institute of Health to transplant spermatagonial stem cells, which produce sperm, from human testes into mice.
Whereas many female infertility problems can be overcome, men with low sperm counts have little chance of
making their partner pregnant. Dr Short believes that if the reason for infertility is a genetic fault in the Sertoli cells
that nurture developing sperm, transplanting human spermatogonial stem cells into a mouse with healthy Sertoli
cells could allow mature human sperm to form. |
Birth by test tube turns 25
Now routine, more than 1 million people born in vitro, procedure began life amid disapproval, risk and chance
events 7.24.03 Rosie Mestel L.A.Times
They came from all parts of Britain, traveling separately and telling no one but nearest & dearest where they
were bound. At night, they lay in the clinic listening as the scientists padded in & out of the laboratory,
conducting tests to tell them when each woman's time had come.
The product 7.25.78 was not some sinister monster, but simply Louise Joy Brown, first test-tube baby and an
instant sensation. Chubby & yelling, baby Louise could never have been naturally conceived, her mother's
fallopian tubes were hopelessly blocked, cutting off eggs from sperm. But egg & sperm did meet in a dish in a
lab in a gray English town, introduced to each other by the scientist-doctor team of Robert Edwards & Patrick
Steptoe.
The technology is costly, $10,000 or more per attempt, and many couples still leave clinics empty-armed. But the
reach of in vitro fertilization has broadened beyond all early predictions, making biological fathers even of infertile
men and allowing women well past menopause to bear babies.
It was a risky, uncharted terrain trodden by scientists who thumbed their noses at their colleagues' disapproval, and
women who were willing to take sizable medical & emotional risks, so strong was their yearning for children.
"We knew it might never work, but we all had this one, main thing in common, the desire above anything else in the
world to have our own baby," said 56-year-old Grace MacDonald of Denny, Scotland, mother of Alastair, world's
second test-tube baby.
In ancient Egypt, doctors tested for blockages in women by inserting garlic cloves in their reproductive tracts, then
searching for a garlicky smell on their breath. Renaissance physicians prescribed a diet of testicles & livers of
young stags to infertile men. Sperm & egg were observed directly with microscopes, and scientists came to
understand that the two must unite to start new life.
That is not the least of the puzzle since each species has its own foibles and those of humans were especially
mysterious. "Even as a man walked on the moon, no one knew when a woman ovulated," Edwards, a tall, unruly-
haired biologist, once mused. It took him years of research, for instance, to learn that human eggs needed about 37
hours to ripen and be ready for fertilization after a signal had been sent from the brain.
It took still more tinkering before the fertilized egg would divide into cells. Edwards even tried growing the embryos
in the rabbits, leading to dark rumors in the press about rabbit-human life. New nutrients eventually did the trick,
coaxing fertilized eggs to split into two, four, eight cells, and then into 5 day old hollow balls called blastocysts.
"It was unbelievable," Edwards recalled, speaking from his office near Cambridge. "There they were, four
blastocysts floating lightly in fluid, four beautiful blastocysts."
From the very beginning, the work was deemed controversial. "It was all very sort of dubious; that's how the
scientific establishment regarded it. There were some big heavyweights, Nobel prize-winners in Cambridge, who
were very critical of the program," recalled Jones Institute for Reproductive Medicine scientific dir. Roger Gosden in
Norfolk VA, former graduate student of Edwards'.
Concerns were of every stripe: moral, philosophical, religious and medical. In vitro fertilization would erode the
specialness of life. It would kill embryos, potential people. Women would participate thinking they would suffer no
harm and bear healthy babies, but there was not enough evidence to be sure of this.
"My husband always used to describe me as thrawn, a really good Scottish word meaning that nobody can tell me I
can't do something," she said. One evening in 1975, her husband James, a musician, was playing his violin at the
home of a doctor friend. MacDonald started idly leafing through a copy of a medical journal, The Lancet. "I just
picked it up, thought 'I'll have a wee glance at this while I'm listening'; it was as odd as that," she said.
MacDonald's mother, watching her daughter's covert comings & goings, was convinced she had cancer and
was seeking secret treatment. MacDonald had an operation to clear away bits of tissue obscuring her ovaries. She
gave 3 to 4 blood samples a day and dutifully collected every last drop of urine in a bottle so that Steptoe &
Edwards could know, from the hormones in it, when her one monthly egg would be ready for harvesting.
One by one, other women learned that their bids to have babies had failed. They packed their bags, wished
MacDonald good luck and rode home. There had been only 4 pregnancies. One woman miscarried several weeks
after implantation. The scientists discovered the fetus was abnormal, carrying three sets of each chromosome
instead of the normal two. Another woman miscarried after 20 1/2 weeks.
There was an 18-month lull, then a stutter of births, and finally, an explosion. Acceptance after the early births was
by no means automatic. The first U.S. in vitro fertilization clinic opened in 1980 at Eastern Virginia Medical School
in Norfolk, after a hearing packed with busloads of antiabortion activists & medical students, who came in
support of the clinic. The clinic one day received a picture of Louise Brown in the mail inscribed with the
message: "She has no soul."
Today, the once-sensational has become the routine. On a slow morning in July at USC's assisted reproductive
technologies clinic, eggs have already been taken from one patient and will be harvested from another in half an
hour. Now it is time for an embryo transfer. Sr embryologist Mary Francis, clad in blue scrubs, stands waiting in a
small laboratory. Incubators nurture embryos in their commercially manufactured media until they've developed
their requisite 3 to 5 days and are ready for returning to the patients.
He expels the tiny clusters of cells, then hands back the catheter to Francis, who checks it under the microscope to
make sure that the embryos were delivered. The patient will lie for an hour, then go home. Normalcy in the clinic
has been mirrored by acceptance in society, but not entirely: The National Right to Life Committee says it remains
opposed to in vitro fertilization as practiced today because excess embryos are often destroyed or donated to
research. Protesters still sometimes tread the streets near the Norfolk medical school. |
But Watson's fear of deformed "mistakes" has gone by the wayside. Louise Brown's unusual beginnings led to
lifelong public scrutiny: She was corralled by cameras each time she cut a tooth or walked a step. Weary of the
attention, she & her family declined to talk to news media this year except at a "baby party" scheduled for
Saturday at the clinic founded by Edwards & Steptoe in 1980.
For Alastair MacDonald, No. 2, life was kinder. After the initial hullabaloo at his birth, the most he endured was the
occasional schoolyard query about his ability to climb out of test tubes. He was 4 when his parents separated. He
was 9 when he came to understand why he was "special" and had always known a girl named Louise.
Now he is looking forward to Louise Brown's party since at long last many of the "babies" attending are old enough to think philosophically about their beginnings instead of running off to play. "I think it'll be good to gel with
everybody," he said. "At the last party, when I was 16 or 17, to them it was just a day of fun, while to me it was a
day of finding things out and asking questions."
He knows that the technology has now grown ordinary and that everybody, anyway, is the product of incredible
chance. But for him, there was that extra layer of chance, of the violin, the medical journal, the scientists' work and his mother's single-mindedness.
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