Category Archives: Embryology

Art Made with Human DNA Explores the Future of Genetics in Birmingham – Labiotech.eu (blog)

Gene Craft: Art in the Biogenetic Ageopened this week at Birmingham Open Media (BOM) in the UK. Aiming to explore thesocial, economic and emotional implications of the most recent breakthroughs in genetics, the exhibition features two living art piecescreated with human DNAby bioartists Laurie Ramsell and Gina Czarnecki.

After theHuman Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) approvedthe technology to create three-parent babies in the UK last December, many have started to question the broader implications of genetic technologies. The Gene Craft exhibition elaborates on this concept by presenting living artwork that makes visitors imagine a future of bioengineered beings built and controlled by humans.

The first piece is by British artist Laurie Ramsell,who explores the genetic relationship between humans and model organisms. One of them is the zebrafish, which is routinely used in research to understand basic molecular processes that can then be extrapolated to human biology.

Laurie Ramsells Homdanio Birminghamensis

Homdanio Birminghamensisis a sculpture taking the shape of a zebrafish embryo made from bacterial cellulose and the artists own DNA. The piecewas created in collaboration with professor and bioartist Simon Park. As part of the 100,000 Genomes Project, it is intended to raise public awareness about research into the human genome being pioneered at the University of Birmingham.

The second piece featured in the Gene Craft exhibition is Gina Czarneckis Heirloom, a living portrait of the artists daughters. Skin cells from the girls are cultured and grown onto glass casts of their faces, creating paper-thin portraits with their own DNA.

Gina Czarneckis Heirloom

Heirloom invites visitors to imagine a future where our own cells are grown on demand for medical applications. But, at the same time, it intends to highlight the ethical implicationsof these procedures regarding the ownership of our own biological materials.

Gene Craft: Art in the Biogenetic Age will be open until May 13 in Birmingham. During that time, the BOM gallery will host a series of talks and workshops to bring together artists and scientists and discuss the issues raised by the bioart pieces exhibited.

Images via BOM and Gina Czarnecki

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Art Made with Human DNA Explores the Future of Genetics in Birmingham - Labiotech.eu (blog)

4H Celebrates Achievement Night – The Stokes News

Lizzy Robertson receives award at 4H Achievement Night.

Courtesy photos

Stokes County 4-H held their annual Achievement Night on Feb. 16 with a back to the 80s theme.

Courtesy photos

4-H Agent Taylor Furr presents award to 4-Her, Hunter Smothers.

Courtesy photos

On February 16th, Stokes County 4-H had their annual Achievement Night celebrating the success of 4-Hers during the 2016 year. We had a great attendance of 56 adults and youth. We gathered at the Stokes County Cooperative Extension office with the auditorium decorated in bright colors for out theme of Back to the 80s. Dr. Brad Rice, the Superintendent of Stokes County Schools, attended our event and assisted the County Council Officers with delivering awards for 4-Hers. We recognized our outstanding 4-Hers, as well as our outstanding Volunteer Leaders.

Stokes County 4-Hers received awards from their projects and activities they accomplished throughout the year. We awarded a Stokes County 4-Her of the Year award, which went to a 4-Her who makes the best better, uses their head for clearer thinking, their heart for greater loyalty, hands for larger service and their health for better living. This 4-Her learns by doing and represents the Stokes County 4-H Program well. We presented this award to Hunter Smothers. He will receive a 4-H Summer Camp scholarship.

We also awarded a Stokes County 4-H Club of the Year award, which went to a club who demonstrates service, leadership, are active, and have a growing membership. This club is one others can receive ideas from to better their own. We presented this award to the 4 Paws 4-H Club. This club will receive $150 towards club needs.

Our 4-H Volunteer Leaders who received awards for their time and hard work with Stokes County 4-H were Abbie Smothers, Joy East each have been volunteering for 3 years, Leslie Brewer volunteering for 16 years, and Pam Davis volunteering for 17 years.

Upcoming Events:

February 27th: 4-H Embryology beginning at King Elementary and London Elementary.

March 6th: Stokes County 4-H County Council Meeting 6:30PM Stokes County Cooperative Extension Office.

March 25th and 26th: North Central District Teen Retreat at Betsy Jeff Penn 4-H Center, Reidsville, NC RSVP by March 7th 336-593-8179

For more information on the Stokes County 4-H Program, please contact Taylor Furr at [emailprotected] or 336-593-8179.

Lizzy Robertson receives award at 4H Achievement Night.

http://thestokesnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/web1_4Paws4-HCluboftheYear.jpgLizzy Robertson receives award at 4H Achievement Night. Courtesy photos

Stokes County 4-H held their annual Achievement Night on Feb. 16 with a back to the 80s theme.

http://thestokesnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/web1_CountyCouncil.jpgStokes County 4-H held their annual Achievement Night on Feb. 16 with a back to the 80s theme. Courtesy photos

4-H Agent Taylor Furr presents award to 4-Her, Hunter Smothers.

http://thestokesnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/web1_HunterS_4-H-eroftheYear.jpg4-H Agent Taylor Furr presents award to 4-Her, Hunter Smothers. Courtesy photos

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4H Celebrates Achievement Night - The Stokes News

Extremism in Defense of Autonomy – Townhall

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Posted: Feb 23, 2017 12:01 AM

When confronted with opposition to abortion, many feminists reflexively assert that it is (Their) body and, therefore, (their) choice. Notice that I have used the term assert instead of argue. In order for an assertion to become an argument it must be accompanied by evidence. There simply is no evidence to support the position that the unborn is merely an extension of the womans body.

There are two ways to respond to this unsupported assertion. One is to simply quote from embryology textbooks, which uniformly conclude that the unborn is a distinct, living, and whole human being from the point of conception. Another is to share images of what the unborn child looks like at the earliest stages when surgical abortion is performed, which is around seven weeks after conception. By choosing this latter option, one can simply count the clearly discernible fingers on the blob of tissue and see that more than one body is involved. Pregnant women dont have four hands and twenty fingers.

Using scientific evidence to point out that it is not merely her body and her choice will usually force the pro-abortion choice advocate to modify her position with something like the following: Ok, there is another body involved but its still my choice. In other words, I dont care about the other body. My bodily rights still prevail!

Philosophically speaking, this is a hard position to defend. In effect, using a bodily autonomy argument to defend abortion is tantamount to saying that one can advance bodily autonomy through the act of dismembering bodies. At some point, this kind of thinking produces more than mere cognitive dissonance. It leads to a crisis in our conception (sorry) of human equality.

It should go without saying that you can use this justification for abortion only if a womans right to bodily autonomy is absolute. The absurdity of such absolutist claims should be obvious. If they are not, please consider a thought experiment originally offered by pro-abortion choice blogger Paul W. (paraphrased and modified slightly by yours truly).

First off, imagine that a woman enjoys being pregnant. And dont laugh. I have a good friend who has had eight children with his wife. Whenever I see her and she is pregnant she is beaming. When she is not pregnant she will tell you that she wished she were pregnant. In fact, she is never happier than when she is pregnant.

Now, just imagine that a new form of technology comes into existence, which allows a woman to remain pregnant as long as she wants. In other words, it stops the baby within her from developing past a certain point. All she has to do is to take a pill or get some sort of injection and the baby will stop growing and remain within her womb forever.

Further, also imagine that a woman gets pregnant at the age of 20, takes advantage of the new technology, remains pregnant, and lives until the age of 90. For 70 years, there is a tiny dwarf living inside of her who is fully aware of whom he is and who wants to escape to live a normal life. But, alas, he cannot. She has boldly proclaimed, It is my body and my choice! Nobody passes through my vagina without my permission! So her dwarf baby remains inside her womb trapped in involuntary servitude in rigid adherence to the principle of bodily autonomy.

The thought experiment proffered by Paul W. may well produce the objection that it doesnt apply to abortion, as the fetus is neither aware of its surroundings nor desirous of escape. But the solution to that is pretty simple. Just as one injection could stop the baby from growing, a second injection could knock it out as soon as it starts developing self-awareness. There would be no violation of human rights as long as the little human didnt know what was happening. In a sense, the bodily autonomy zealot could just borrow a page from the playbook of the rapist who sedates his victims in advance.

The bodily autonomy justification for abortion is indeed barbaric. But, unfortunately, it is often made to sound defensible by a much more famous thought experiment. That well-known hypothetical will be the subject of a future column.

To be continued.

Breaking:Alan Colmes Passes Away At Age 66

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Extremism in Defense of Autonomy - Townhall

Embryology program started by Lincoln Northeast Kiwanis Club – Lincoln Journal Star

Lincoln Northeast Kiwanian Dick Earl, who recently passed away at the age of 95, managed a hatchery in Lincoln. He thought learning about embryology would be a great educational tool for kids and helped start the program in 1975. Dick worked with the Lancaster County Extension Service to get this program started. Lincoln third graders have benefited from Embryology in their classroom for over 40 years.

What started out in three classrooms at one school has turned into every third-grade classroom in the Lincoln Public School system as well as Waverly, Norris and many parochial schools.

Embryology has been a part of the core (required) science curriculum in LPS since 1993. Students learn about embryonic development and the life cycle during the 21-day incubation process of chicken eggs. They care for the eggs, witness the hatching process and then care for the baby chicks for 23 days. Last spring, 3,513 third graders from 165 classrooms and 54 schools participated during three sessions. Last fall, a new session added four new schools and 137 students in home schools.

This year, Embryology plans to increase to 186 classrooms. Each classroom receives one dozen fertilized chicken eggs. Students turn the eggs three times a day and provide water for humidity in the incubators.

After seven days of incubation, Extension staff candle the eggs with the students. By candling (shining a bright light) on the eggs, students can see if the eggs are developing (viable), have stopped developing (died), or were never fertile.

This is an exciting time for students and teachers with much anticipation of what they will see. For many students, this is the first time they have experienced seeing a developing embryo and for many, it is the first time theyve experienced life and death. Students are also learning respect for living creatures.

Because the program grew so much, a partnership was formed with a hatchery in Iowa which donates nearly 200 dozen eggs per year. Kiwanis club members from Lincoln Northeast drive 200 miles to Spencer, Iowa, three times a year to get the eggs so we can keep Dick Earl's dream alive for thousands of third graders each year.

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Embryology program started by Lincoln Northeast Kiwanis Club - Lincoln Journal Star

How to make a ‘three-parent’ baby – Science News for Students (blog)

A baby born in April 2016 may have opened the door to a new world of reproductive medicine. This boy became one of the first intentional three-parent babies. The vast majority of this boys DNA came from his mother and his father. A small bit of extra DNA came from an unrelated woman. This child got some of his genetic inheritance from each of these adults.

Because of that bonus DNA from the unrelated woman, some people say babies like this boy have three parents.

Scientists didnt go to all of the effort to mix the DNA from these three people as an experiment. In fact, they did it to overcome a problem in the boys mother. That woman had a problem with her mitochondria (MY-toh-KON-dree-uh). These are important little structures or organelles present in her cells.

Many cells, including those that make up humans, contain special components that function like little organs. That gives rise to their name, organelles, which actually means little organs. Organelles perform special tasks for their parent cells. And one of the more notable of these organelles is the mitochondrion. Its main job is to help power its cell. To do this, the mitochondria harvest energy contained in the bonds linking atoms in the cells fuel (such as glucose). Mitochondria then use that energy to create another molecule, known as ATP (for adenosine triphosphate). That ATP actually serves as the energy source for cells.

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Mitochondria, one of several types of organelles found within the cytoplasm of a cell, contain a small amount of DNA. A mutation in that DNA can cause disease.

ttsz/iStockphoto

But some of the mitochondria in the boys mother have a mutation. That genetic alteration causes Leigh syndrome, a fatal disorder. Most of her mitochondria work properly. That's whythe mom does not have the killer disease. But she can pass on DNA from the faulty mitochondria to her children. And this can put them at risk of Leigh syndrome. Two of her children had already died from the disease. She also had suffered four miscarriages.

It was in hopes of giving this couple a healthy baby that doctors worked to find healthy mitochondria to substitute for her unhealthy ones. Normally, a woman passes on her mitochondria to her offspringthrough her egg (dads sperm dont contribute any). These organelles also contain a small amount of DNA just 37 genes. (Most of the roughly 20,000 protein-producing genes needed to make a human are stored in a compartment called the nucleus.) Mutations in some mitochondrial genes most often pose a risk to organs that need lots of energy, such as the brain and muscles. There is no cure or effective treatment for many of these mitochondrial diseases.

The technique used to create the baby boy is new and controversial. His birth, though, caps nearly three decades of work to to produce healthy human eggs by manipulatingthe organelle. The new baby appears to have been saved from a deadly genetic disease. Still, there are ethical and safety concerns about his three-parent heritage.

And a three-parent baby girl born in January raises even more concerns in part, just because she is a girl.

Researchers first began swapping mitochondria between egg cells to treat infertility problems almost 20 years ago. Jacques Cohen was one of those researchers.

Hes a scientist who studies human embryos. In the late 1990s, he and colleagues at Saint Barnabas Medical Center in Livingston, N.J., were looking for a way to help women who were unable to have children by in vitro fertilization. Also known as IVF, this process involves taking egg cells from a woman and sperm cells from a man, then incubating them in a dish. Some of those eggs and sperm will combine to form embryos the first stages of creating a new individual.

With in vitro fertilization, or IVF, an embryo that developed in a laboratory dish is transferred into a womans womb where it may develop into a baby.

herbap/iStockphoto

Doctors then transfer some of those embryos into the womans womb. With luck, one or more will develop into a baby. But some couples embryos never developed normally. No one knows why. Cohens group thought a dose of cytoplasm the jellylike guts of a cell from a donor egg might give the implanted embryos a better shot at success.

Cytoplasm is the most complicated fluid in the universe, says Cohen. It contains mitochondria, other organelles, proteins and other molecules that do the work of the cell. The mother's egg normally supplies all the goodies an embryo needs to live for the first few steps of development. But Cohen thought that some of his patients eggs might need extra help.

So he extracted 10 to 15 percent of the cytoplasm from an egg donated by another woman. He injected this along with a single sperm cell into a recipient egg. From 1996 to 2001, he performed the procedure 37 times. And this technique proved quite successful. It produced 17 babies for 13 couples!

Cohen later tested eight of the children born this way. Two carried some mitochondria that had come from the donor. That was in addition to some that came from the childs actual mother. Some of the other six children may have had donor mitochondria at levels too low for his tests to see back then, Cohen now says. But the finding made him curious.

So Cohen and his colleagues tracked down 13 of the 17 children. All were now teenagers. In surveys, their parents said that the kids seemed basically healthy. Cohen doesnt know whether mitochondria or other parts of the cytoplasm played a role in producing the children. His group stopped performing the technique in 2001 (because of regulatory issues).

Other scientists have also tried to replace faulty mitochondria more intentionally. The first such attempt in 1983. And it involved mice.

Pronuclei are the central, DNA-containing parts of fertilized eggs. One comes from the egg and another comes from dads sperm. At this early stage in development, the two have not yet fused into a single nucleus. (Nuclei is the plural form of nucleus.)

In a technique known as pronuclear transfer, researchers fertilized the mother mouses egg and a donor egg at the same time. The pronuclei were removed from the donor's fertilized egg and discarded. Those from the mothers fertilized egg were sucked out and then injected into the empty donor egg.

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Pronuclear transfer was the first technique that scientists tried in their attempts to keep diseases due to faulty mitochondria from being passed from a mother to her child.

T. Tibbitts; Third scientific review of the safety and efficacy of methods to avoid mitochondrial disease through assisted conception, Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, June 2014

Talk of applying thistechnique in humans promptly raised a few concerns.

Some people claimed that it is not ethical. They argued that it manipulates maybe even destroys two embryos.

Thats one issue. Scientists have a more technical one. They note that mitochondria tend to glom onto the nuclei. So unacceptably high numbers of mitochondria from the mothers egg including disease-carrying ones may still find their way into the donor egg, notes Shoukhrat Mitalipov. He is a mitochondrial biologist at Oregon Health & Science University in Portland.

Last June, scientists reported they had refined pronuclear transfer to reduce the number of disease-carrying mitochondria that could enter embryos. Fewer than 2 percent of the mitochondria from the mothers egg made it into the donors egg. But an earlier study suggested that even a half that amount might be dangerous. Thats because mutant mitochondria may copy themselves. Eventually, they might take over the cell and cripple its energy production.

Fertility clinics in the United Kingdom are allowed to use pronuclear transfer to make human babies where there was a high risk of mitochondrial diseases. In fact, none has done so. yet New York fertility doctor John Zhang is involved in the new baby boys case. He tried the pronuclear-transfer technique with colleagues at Sun-Yat Sen University of Medical Science in Guangzhou, China. That was more than 10 years ago. Five embryos that were made this way were implanted into a 30-year-old woman. Three grew into fetuses. None, however, survived to birth. Zhang published these results last year in Reproductive Biomedicine Online.

In January 2017, doctors in Ukraine announced that a baby girl was born from this method. Her parents had tried IVF. But, like Cohens patients, the couples fertilized eggs never grew into an embryo that could be implanted. Instead of adding cytoplasm from a donor egg as Cohen had, fertility doctor Valery Zukin at the Nadiya Clinic in Kiev instead used pronuclear transfer. And they report success a baby girl.

Labs in Ukraine and Germany confirmed that most of the babys DNA is from her mother and father. Only her mitochondrial DNA comes from an egg donor. Zukin used the same technique again. Another couple is now expecting a baby boy next month.

Some people are concerned that these babies might have health problems later. Some people also may see this as an ethical problem. Why? The technique was not used to prevent mitochondrial diseases, but instead as a type of fertility treatment.

Marcy Darnovsky is one of the critics. She is executive director of the Center for Genetics and Society in Berkeley, Calif. Doctors such as Zukin are selling unproven and possibly dangerous services to customers, she charges. This is the ugly face of commercial and status incentives driving unscientific human experimentation, she said in statement about the baby girls birth.

Doctors used a different technique spindle transfer to produce the baby boy born last April. The bodys genes reside in the DNA found in the bodys 46 different chromosomes. When a cell divides to create egg or sperm cells, it splits those 46 chromosomes into two equal sets of 23. To get portioned out properly, those chromosomes attach themselves to protein fibers. Those fibers are known asspindles. The new transplant technique gets its name from those fibers.

The technique starts with two unfertilized egg cells. One comes from the mother and the other from a donor. In both cells, a membrane surrounding the nucleus has broken down. The spindle in each has not, however, completed a separation of the chromosomes.

Researchers removethe spindle and its attached chromosomes from the donor egg and discardthem. Then they dothe same to the mothers egg except that they keep her spindle and chromosomes. These they injectinto the donors nearly empty egg. Then the researchers add the dads sperm cell into this egg to fertilize it.

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The three-parent baby boy born last year was created using a this technique, called spindle transfer.

T. Tibbitts; Third scientific review of the safety and efficacy of methods to avoid mitochondrial disease through assisted conception, Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, June 2014

Mitalipov in Portland pioneered spindle transfer. In 2009 he showed that he could produce healthy baby monkeys with it. Those experiments showed that fewer of the moms mitochondria made it into the donor egg than with pronuclear transfer. Typically, the carryover amounted to 1 percent or less.

But Mitalipov would like to do even better. This 1 percent is haunting us, he says.

Spindle transfer has another possible downside: Chromosomes may fall off the spindle. That could result in an embryo with too few chromosomes or too many if some are left in the egg from the donor. Both cases usually result in abnormal development. Of the five embryos on which Zhang performed spindle transfer, only one developed normally. That was the baby boy born last April.

Tests reportedly found that he has 1 percent of his moms mitochondrial DNA. At 3 months old, he appeared healthy. What his health will look like, long-term, however, is unknown. Besides the risk of even trace levels of mitochondria ballooning, another study suggests that the childs health, over time, might be affected by mismatches between the parents nuclear DNA (which is not from mitochondria) and the donors mitochondrial DNA.

Some researchers take issue with the moniker three-parent baby. Cohen, for one, says the term is wrong. Mitochondrial DNA does not contribute to a persons traits. So, he argues, the person who donates mitochondrial DNA is hardly a "parent."

Andrew R. La Barbera agrees. He is chief scientific officer of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine. A persons essence as a human being comes from their nuclear genetic material, he says, not their mitochondrial genetic material." So children conceived using mitochondrial transfer have just two parents, he maintains.

But there are bigger controversies here than what makes a parent. Opponents of these techniques worry that none has been fully tested.

Darnovsky says, We wish the baby and family well, and hope the baby stays healthy. But until these techniques are shown to be safe, she says, I have a lot of concerns about this child and about future efforts to use these techniques.

Zhang also drew fire for going to Mexico to perform the procedure. In America, researchers are banned from doing things that could alter human DNA in a way that can be passed from generation to generation. Spindle and pronuclear transfer both do this. The worry is that genetic changes of future generations wont stop with preventing diseases. Policy makers wanted to outlaw efforts to make genetically enhanced designer babies.

However, a panel of experts said in February 2016 that it is ethical to make three-parent baby boys. But not girls. Why? Fathers almost never pass mitochondria on to their babies. So baby boys born through such techniques should never pass along the donors mitochondria.

A baby girl, though? That would be a very different story.

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How to make a 'three-parent' baby - Science News for Students (blog)

Yes, abortion is a human rights violation – Eagle News

Everyone would agree that abortion kills something. That much is clear.

But given that abortion does kill something, shouldnt we determine just what it is that were killing before we advocate for the right to kill it? It would be reckless for a hunter to shoot at a rustling in the bushes without knowing what he is shooting at. In the same way, the right to choose isnt the right to choose anything. Before we talk about whether one is entitled to make a certain choice, we must first know what is being chosen.

We all want people to have all of the liberties that they are entitled to have. At the same time, even the most ardent defender of choice would agree that some choices are wrong and should be restricted. Sound public policy decisions must discriminate between those choices that are good and those that are bad.

If the unborn are as pro-lifers claim human persons, then the choice to have an abortion is tantamount to murder. On the other hand, if the unborn are not human persons, then women ought to be allowed to do what they want with their own bodies. The entire abortion debate hinges on the identity of the unborn, not choice.

So whats the right answer? One might be tempted to think that there is no way to resolve this question. Not so. It might surprise many people to learn that the science of embryology overwhelmingly supports the claim that the unborn are human beings. This is affirmed in numerous embryology textbooks. There is a clear scientific consensus that conception results in the existence of a living, distinct and whole human being. True, the unborn arent able to think like us or do many of the things that an adult can do, but our value as human persons doesnt depend on how were currently able to function. All human beings possess equal moral value in spite of inequalities in size, development, intelligence and dependency. An embryo cannot actually reason, but neither can newborns or those in a deep sleep. A fetus may not be able to survive outside of its mothers womb, but neither can those on dialysis or life support survive apart from sophisticated machines. Our equal value must be rooted in our common humanity, not the unequal expressions of our humanity.

If the unborn are in fact human which the scientific evidence suggests then abortion simply is a human rights violation.

There are, of course, hard cases. In tackling these cases, we must take seriously the humanity of the unborn. Procuring an abortion in response to rape or incest only adds another victim to an already tragic crime: the unborn child. We ought to punish the criminal, not an innocent third-party who has perpetrated no wrong. The unborn are just as innocent as their mothers.

Appeals to bodily autonomy, liberty and the right to choose are mistaken. If, as I have argued, abortion takes the life of a human person, then the scope of liberty simply does not extend to abortion anymore than it extends to murder. There is no right to have an abortion, period. To argue that abortion needs to be safe, legal and rare in order to minimize harm from illegal back-alley abortions is like saying that we need to make bank robbery safe, legal and rare in order to minimize harm to bank robbers. Neither practice should be legal to begin with. Speaking of safe abortions makes as much sense as speaking of safe murder.

The images displayed are indeed shocking and horrific. That is the reality of abortion. It is an inherently violent procedure, one that needs to be brought out into the light and exposed for what it truly is.

Youll notice that I havent appealed to any religious teaching in this article. Thats because abortion isnt inherently a religious issue, but a human rights issue. A strong case for the pro-life position can (and has) be made on the basis of science and moral philosophy. What I have offered here is only a very rough sketch of what such an approach might look like, but it is enough to dispel the myth that opposition to abortion can only be religiously motivated.

The Center for Bio-Ethical Reform should be commended for bringing to light one of the worst human rights violations of all time.

Timothy Hsiao

Department of Communication and Philosophy

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Yes, abortion is a human rights violation - Eagle News

Norfolk County 4-H offers embryology project resources – Wicked Local Sudbury

The Norfolk County 4-H office has announced that they will be continuing to work with local educators who teach youth in grades kindergarten and up by providing resources for embryology science projects.

The Norfolk County 4-H office has announced that they will be continuing to work with local educators who teach youth in grades kindergarten and up by providing resources for embryology science projects.

Curriculum, supplementary materials and posters explore embryology from incubation to hatching and incorporate activities that focus on reinforcing the scientific method of learning. Preregistration by April 14 is required for participation in this popular program.

Fertilized eggs will be available for pickup on April 25 in Walpole when pre-ordered. Incubators will also be available for rental.

For more information on how to register for the Embryology Program, or how you can become involved in 4-H as a member or volunteer, contact the Massachusetts 4-H Office at 508-668-9793 or email 4-H Educator Jay Field at jfield@umext.umass.edu.

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Norfolk County 4-H offers embryology project resources - Wicked Local Sudbury

Free embryology workshop offered – The Union of Grass Valley

An embryology workshop for educators will be offered 4:30 to 6 p.m. Feb. 28 by the University of California Cooperative Extension of Placer County.

The agency has conducted the Embryology Outreach Program for 20-plus years. Teachers throughout the county reaching 4,000 youth in the past year have utilized this program.

Come and learn to teach the development of life science skills through Embryology. The free workshop will be at the Placer County UCCE Office, located at 11477 E Ave., (Building 306, DeWitt Center) in Auburn.

The embryology project provides numerous opportunities for young children to learn, through observation and hands-on activities, the value of life as well as information about chickens, ducks, eggs, and embryonic development. The lesson can be adapted for use in school classrooms, home schools, after school programs, and 4-H or other organization project meetings.

Registration for the workshop is at http://ucanr.edu/survey/survey.cfm?surveynumber=19563. The deadline to register is Monday or call the Placer County UCCE Office at (530) 889-7385

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Free embryology workshop offered - The Union of Grass Valley

Norfolk County 4-H offers embryology project resources – Wicked Local Dedham

The Norfolk County 4-H office has announced that they will be continuing to work with local educators who teach youth in grades kindergarten and up by providing resources for embryology science projects.

The Norfolk County 4-H office has announced that they will be continuing to work with local educators who teach youth in grades kindergarten and up by providing resources for embryology science projects.

Curriculum, supplementary materials and posters explore embryology from incubation to hatching and incorporate activities that focus on reinforcing the scientific method of learning. Preregistration by April 14 is required for participation in this popular program.

Fertilized eggs will be available for pickup on April 25 in Walpole when pre-ordered. Incubators will also be available for rental.

For more information on how to register for the Embryology Program, or how you can become involved in 4-H as a member or volunteer, contact the Massachusetts 4-H Office at 508-668-9793 or email 4-H Educator Jay Field at jfield@umext.umass.edu.

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Norfolk County 4-H offers embryology project resources - Wicked Local Dedham

Leader comment: Clarity needed on gene science – The Scotsman

The Norrie Russell Roslin Institute has revealed they have created a group of genetically modified hens that can lay eggs from different poultry breeds and are helping scientists set up a "frozen aviary" to conserve rare and exotic birds.

06:00 Saturday 18 February 2017

The uses to which genetic modification can be put seem almost limitless. Today we report on Scottish scientists who are using genetically modified hens that can lay eggs from different poultry breeds to create a frozen aviary to conserve rare and exotic birds.

The team from the University of Edinburghs Roslin Institute say it acts like a seed bank for poultry, and will be used to preserve rare chicken breeds that may be resistant to infections such as bird flu or have desirable traits such as high meat quality.

But this type of science in all fields is not without controversy. Recently the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority gave the go-ahead for clinics to apply to create three parent babies. The approved technique allows doctors to replace an eggs defective mitochondrial DNA with healthy DNA from a female donor to prevent children suffering debilitating conditions such as muscular dystrophy. It was described as opening the way for designer babies.

And the Scottish Government is opposed to the cultivation of GM crops in this country saying they could damage Scotlands rich environment and would threaten our reputation for producing high quality and natural foods.

It is clear that genetic modification holds out the promise of massive advantages in many fields. It is also clear that there are deep-seated concerns about some possible unforeseen side-effects. But it seems that the opportunities might be sliding by while the debate and the opening up of information simply is not happening. The potentials around this new science are so vast that the debate really does need to be front and centre.

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Leader comment: Clarity needed on gene science - The Scotsman