Baby Leif and Baby Kintyre Witness to Canada’s Schizophrenia Regarding the Unborn

From http://votelifecanada.blogspot.com

In a story entitled “At last, a chance to rest” the National Post reported yesterday on a “unique” funeral held Friday for an infant found mummified and wrapped in an 82-year-old newspaper.

Although no family came to see him off, an infant found mummified under the floorboards of a downtown Toronto home in July got the dignified burial that children's advocates were hoping for yesterday morning. Baby Kintyre -- so named by the home renovator who found him curled in fetal position and wrapped in an 82-year-old newspaper on Kintyre Avenue in the city's east end -- was buried as part of an unusual ceremony held to draw attention to the plight of abandoned babies.

This case raises a host of questions about the dead child. Although the story indicates they “found him curled in fetal position” the urgent question of whether the child was actually a “fetus” or an “infant” was immediately answered in the second paragraph.

Investigators never did find Baby Kintyre's next of kin, or a cause of death, although Ontario deputy chief coroner Jim Cairns determined the infant was born alive by looking at the air sacs in his lungs.

So obviously by outward appearances it was not possible to say whether the mummy was a fetus or an infant. [I guess there can't be THAT much difference between these two entities, can there?] In fact the original July story identified the mummy as either a fetus or a “young baby.” A medical examination was necessary. This crucial determination paved the way for a huge memorial service with all the bells and whistles, along with headline media coverage.

What do you think might have happened to this little child’s remains had the coroner not been so sure that Baby Kintyre had made it through to birth? In that case, the child would have actually been a “fetus” and I’m guessing the discovery would hardly have qualified for much more than a line or two buried somewhere on page B14.

Fetuses, after all, have no legal standing in Canada. Legally they are not considered persons. Small wonder then that after nearly forty years of such confusion some Canadians even question whether they are truly human beings. We really don't seem to know what they are.

No one would have risked entry into the “A-word” debate by highlighting the strange death of a mummified fetus by means of a funeral , even though it might have only been days away from drawing air into its lungs. Imagine suffering the wrath of the advocates of “choice” who do everything in their power to de-humanize the unborn child at every stage of its life, right up to that “magic” moment of birth whereupon a “blob of tissue” miraculously becomes a fully formed “wanted” baby, complete with personhood.

In Canada no abuse of unborn children is actually possible under the law since mothers hold supreme power over the growing mystery entity within their bellies, consigning them even to the butchery of an abortionist’s knife or suction machine if it suits their circumstances. Note in the following quote what is considered as “the very first stage of abuse” for children.

Yesterday's elaborate funeral was arranged by The Canadian Centre for Abuse Awareness as part of its ongoing campaign to honour children who have been abandoned, what the centre considers the very first stage of abuse. It is also using Baby Kintyre's funeral as an opportunity to advocate for legislative reform.

What would happen I wonder, if Baby Kintyre had turned out to be a fetus and some pro-life group had decided to hold a grand funeral pageant like this one in order “to advocate for legislative reform?” I can hear the howls now from “poor-choicers” but then again, perhaps they wouldn’t have heard about it because the media would have suddenly had better and more important matters on which to report.

Apparently in Canada today the “children’s advocates” referred to in the first paragraph of the story have a very selective understanding of the term “children” and “babies.”

In a unique agreement with the cemetery and the coroner's office, the centre will now receive babies from across Canada, give them a name and arrange their funerals. This way, the discarded infants will not end up in minimally expensed municipal graves, or "paupers' graves," as Dr. Cairns calls them.

Discard in dumpsters or incinerators more than 100,000 dead and bloodied “fetuses” violently killed in the womb and we are not expected to be the least bit concerned about a decent and respectful burial. But abandon a baby and we rush to create a national funeral centre to avoid “pauper’s graves.”

Kill the child in the womb, right up to 9 months—no problem. Kill the child the first day of his/her infancy—it’s a clear-cut case of abuse, even murder.

But both our semantics and our heartlessness are catching up with us. Unsurprisingly, the line now appears to be blurring with respect to what is and is not infanticide.

Still, the call for similar measures resonates in Canada every time there is a fatal case of newborn abandonment, or another crime where a troubled mother kills a newborn. After a 15-year-old girl gave birth to a healthy girl in the bathroom of her parents' home in Brampton in 2002, then stabbed it in the neck, police opted for a second-degree murder charge instead of infanticide.

What might we next consider to be tolerable—Peter Singer’s take on infanticide?

In considering our tragic duplicity in Canada, try to grasp this statement by Ellen Campbell, the centre’s founder:

These little babies, I just think they're screaming from their graves about abuse of children.

No doubt Ms. Campbell is a well meaning and compassionate individual. She may even be a “pro-lifer.” And the fact is that abandoned children, like Baby Kintyre, do suffer terrible abuse at the hands of their parents, as Ms. Campbell rightly laments.

Yet—we are permitted no sympathy or pity for the more than 100,000 “little babies” killed in the womb “legally” in Canada every year but for these who are abandoned, she (along with the rest of Canada) says,

It's a huge statement about how we value children and the dignity of life.

Kinghorn, the home renovator who found Baby Kintyre, described for us near perfectly in one sentence Canada’s schizophrenia:

I can't fathom murder ... I want to think it was natural.

The Chimeras Are Coming

By Albert Mohler @ http://www.albertmohler.com

For some time now ethicists have warned that the development of real animal-human combinations -- known as chimeras -- was nearing on the horizon. Now, according to some reports, the future has arrived.

As William Saletan reports in The Washington Post:

We've been transplanting baboon hearts, pig valves and other animal parts into people for decades. We've derived stem cells by inserting human genomes into rabbit eggs. We've created mice that have human prostate glands. We've made sheep that have half-human livers. Last week, Britain's Academy of Medical Sciences reported that scientists have created "thousands of examples of transgenic animals" carrying human DNA. According to the report, "the introduction of human gene sequences into mouse cells in vitro is a technique now practiced in virtually every biomedical research institution across the world."

Human stem cell research is driving this latest push, since therapies for use on humans must first be tested on animals. This means far more than the use of a pig valve. This means tampering with combinations at the level of cells, genes, and chromosomes.

Look closely at how Saletan updates the research:

So far, our mixtures are modest. To make humanized animals really creepy, you'd have to do several things. You'd increase the ratio of human to animal DNA. You'd transplant human cells that spread throughout the body. You'd do it early in embryonic development, so the human cells would shape the animals' architecture, not just blend in. You'd grow the embryos to maturity. And you'd start messing with the brain.

We're doing all of these things.

Got your attention? These things are being done now. The British report reveals that "researchers have constructed ever more ambitious transgenic animals" -- and this is just the start.

The scariest part of this research is directed at work done in hope of curing or treating diseases of the human brain. Scientists have already produced humanized mice with symptoms of Alzheimer's disease. Now, scientists at Stanford University propose to put human brain cells in mouse brains in order to replace dying neurons. In reality, that would mean a human/mouse brain.

Saletan reports that ethicists at Stanford at first rejected the proposal, but have since come to approve it, allowing the researchers to produce mice with "some aspects of human consciousness or some human cognitive abilities."

This raises the frightening prospect of a human brain within an animal species. The proposed at Stanford would not reach that point, but granting a mouse brain "some aspects of human consciousness or some human cognitive abilities" should be enough to set off the ethical alarms.

At present, there is no set of firm ethical guidelines to regulate this research.

Writing in 2003, Dr. Nancy L. Jones of The Center for Bioethics and Human Dignity and the Wake Forest University School of Medicine warned:

The creation of animal-human chimeras as a means of deriving human tissue and organs highlights the deeper issues facing our generation: the new biological genomic revolution and the resultant power that may permit scientists to redesign various species and biological life. We must not allow such an ability to outstrip the ethical analysis that must accompany it.

She also considered how Christians should think about the development of transgenic animals (chimeras):

What principles may Christians invoke to guide them in formulating a response to the possibility of such animal-human chimeras? Some concern should certainly be expressed for the experimental animal's suffering; however, Christians do believe that they have been given stewardship over animals and are permitted to use them to benefit humanity. Another concern would be zoonotic transmission of disease, which occurs when pathogens cross the traditional species barriers of disease transmission. When human and animal tissues are intertwined so closely, potential mutations of once species-specific pathogens may gain a unique ability to infect organisms of other species. A more fundamental Christian concern involves violation of the divinely created order. The Bible tells us that God designed procreation so that plants, animals, and humans always reproduce after their own kind or seed. (Gen 1:11-12, 21) In the biblical view, then, species integrity is defined by God, rather than by arbitrary or evolutionary forces. The fusion of animal-human genomes runs counter to the sacredness of human life and man created in the image of God.

Dr. Jones' assertion that "species integrity is defined by God, rather than by arbitrary or evolutionary forces" is crucial to our understanding of this issue. Any effort to violate species integrity -- no matter how noble with respect to medical treatments -- must be seen as suspect in this light.

We need a set of rules and policies in force right now -- before a mouse really does come up and ask for a cookie.

__________________________

SEE ALSO: Nancy L. Jones, "Could Animal-Human Chimeras Be on the Way?," The Center for Bioethics and Human Dignity, January 9, 2003.

Another version of William Saletan's article is available at Slate.com [see here].

"Promiscuous Teleology" -- Is This Why So Many Reject Evolution?

By Albert Mohler @ http://www.albertmohler.com

A pair of psychologists at Yale University have a new explanation for why so many people reject the theory of evolution -- our minds are hard-wired from birth to see design in the world around us. Paul Bloom is a psychologist at Yale and Deena Skolnick Weisberg is a doctoral candidate in psychology. Together, they argue that the roots of an anti-evolutionary impulse lie in childhood.

Their argument, found in the essay, "Why Do Some People Resist Science?" is published at Edge: The Third Culture, a Web site associated with a group known as The Reality Club. That organization, by the way, humbly describes itself as including "some of the most interesting minds in the world."

Those interesting minds are interested in knowing why so many Americans reject the theory of evolution. Bloom and Weisberg acknowledge that most evolutionary scientists assume that the rejection of evolution is rooted in theistic beliefs and a lack of scientific knowledge. If these were the reasons for this rejection, the advance of secularization and the massive increase in scientific knowledge should overcome this rejection. It is not happening that way.

As the authors explain:

We believe that these assumptions, while not completely false, reflect a misunderstanding of the nature of this phenomenon. While cultural factors are plainly relevant, American adults' resistance to scientific ideas reflects universal facts about what children know and how children learn. If this is right, then resistance to science cannot be simply addressed through more education; something different is needed.

They go on to propose a different understanding of the problem:

The main source of resistance to scientific ideas concerns what children know prior to their exposure to science. The last several decades of developmental psychology has made it abundantly clear that humans do not start off as "blank slates." Rather, even one year-olds possess a rich understanding of both the physical world (a "naïve physics") and the social world (a "naïve psychology"). Babies know that objects are solid, that they persist over time even when they are out of sight, that they fall to the ground if unsupported, and that they do not move unless acted upon. They also understand that people move autonomously in response to social and physical events, that they act and react in accord with their goals, and that they respond with appropriate emotions to different situations.

These intuitions give children a head start when it comes to understanding and learning about objects and people. But these intuitions also sometimes clash with scientific discoveries about the nature of the world, making certain scientific facts difficult to learn. As Susan Carey once put it, the problem with teaching science to children is "not what the student lacks, but what the student has, namely alternative conceptual frameworks for understanding the phenomena covered by the theories we are trying to teach."

This is a fascinating argument. Bloom and Weisberg believe that the minds of children are, in effect, hard-wired to see design in nature and the world around them. The "intuitive psychology" they describe means that children infer a design in the world they experience. They assume an intelligence behind what they observe, and assume that a creative intelligence is a necessary part of any explanation of why things are as they are.

This, they argue, leads to a basic resistance to science:

Our intuitive psychology also contributes to resistance to science. One significant bias is that children naturally see the world in terms of design and purpose. For instance, four year-olds insist that everything has a purpose, including lions ("to go in the zoo") and clouds ("for raining"), a propensity that Deborah Kelemen has dubbed "promiscuous teleology." Additionally, when asked about the origin of animals and people, children spontaneously tend to provide and to prefer creationist explanations.

Just as children's intuitions about the physical world make it difficult for them to accept that the Earth is a sphere, their psychological intuitions about agency and design make it difficult for them to accept the processes of evolution.

Just as obviously, Bloom and Weisberg, speaking on behalf of the scientific establishment, assume that there is no purpose or design behind the cosmos. Thus, to use their own examples, there is no purpose for lions or clouds. Their naturalistic worldview leaves no other option. Lions and clouds just are, and they must be explained in purely materialistic terms.

These psychologists also deny any mind-body dualism and any notion that humans possess any "soul" or consciousness apart from the merely physical and biological operations of the brain as an organ. As with evolutionary theory, they are frustrated that the general public rejects this worldview.

They go on to argue that deference to authority has much to do with this. When the public understands that these scientific claims are contested, they are likely to defer in their judgment to others. What frustrates Bloom and Weisberg is that so many persons defer to non-scientists.

From their article:

In sum, the developmental data suggest that resistance to science will arise in children when scientific claims clash with early emerging, intuitive expectations. This resistance will persist through adulthood if the scientific claims are contested within a society, and will be especially strong if there is a non-scientific alternative that is rooted in common sense and championed by people who are taken as reliable and trustworthy. This is the current situation in the United States with regard to the central tenets of neuroscience and of evolutionary biology. These clash with intuitive beliefs about the immaterial nature of the soul and the purposeful design of humans and other animals -- and, in the United States, these intuitive beliefs are particularly likely to be endorsed and transmitted by trusted religious and political authorities. Hence these are among the domains where Americans' resistance to science is the strongest.

While the authors acknowledge that the public is not stupid, they do believe that the public is wrong. In an incredibly revealing pair of sentences, they argue:

The community of scientists has a legitimate claim to trustworthiness that other social institutions, such as religions and political movements, lack. The structure of scientific inquiry involves procedures, such as experiments and open debate, that are strikingly successful at revealing truths about the world.

So we are supposed to see modern science as holding "a legitimate claim to trustworthiness" that other authorities -- including religious authorities -- lack. In the end, they propose that scientists combat resistance to science by convincing the public that scientists are worthy of trust.

I am not a scientist, but I would suggest that this falls short of a winning argument. The attorney who asks a jury, "What are you going to believe, my argument or what you see with your own eyes?," has a fool for a client.

Bloom and Weisberg have written a truly fascinating essay. One of the most interesting aspects of their argument is the absolute dichotomy it affirms on the issue of design -- you either believe in design and purpose or not. This is exceedingly clarifying.

In other words, this essay leads to the inevitable conclusion that you must indeed choose between Sunday School and modern science. If modern science insists that lions and clouds are purely accidental products of purely natural causes, this sets modern science in direct and unavoidable conflict with the claim that God made lions and clouds for a purpose -- and ultimately for His own glory.

The earliest lessons taught in Sunday School are filled with what Deborah Keleman calls "promiscuous teleology" -- the teaching that God's design lies under every aspect of nature. The hard-wiring for design these psychologists identify as the problem may well be yet another sign of the imago Dei -- the image of God that distinguishes humanity from all other creatures (another claim directly rejected by the scientific establishment).

This is precisely what Bloom and Weisberg, speaking for the scientific community, reject out of hand. These authors make that point clearly. Their argument also shows once again why "theistic evolution" is an incoherent proposal. The dominant model of evolution rejects any claim of design -- end of argument.

Many polls indicate that a majority of Americans reject the dominant evolutionary theory and believe in some form of divine creation. This frustrates the evolutionary scientists to no end. But they are asking Americans to reject what they learned in Sunday School in favor of a theory that insists that this the universe is a great cosmic accident. It's not just children whose brains are hard-wired to reject that.

"In the Womb" -- One Look and Your Eyes Are Opened

From Albert Mohler @ http://www.albertmohler.com

The public discussion about the power of ultrasound and modern imaging technologies has revealed something fascinating -- the pro-abortion movement does not want us peering into the womb. The view inside the womb transforms the moral debate over abortion. Once that image is seen, the vocabulary necessarily changes.

This gestating creature is a baby, a child, a person -- and a wonder to behold. That wonder is beautifully depicted in a book released just recently by the National Geographic Society, In the Womb. Put simply -- the book is one of the most amazing volumes my eyes have ever seen.

The book's author is Peter Tallack, a geneticist and science writer who, along with scientific modeler David Barlow and ultrasound expert Professor Stuart Campbell, brings together absolutely incredible "four-dimensional" images and photographs of the developing baby.

As Tallack explains, "For obstetricians, the development of 3D and 4D scans has been the medical equivalent of the Hubble Space Telescope, allowing researchers to scrutinize fetal development and behavior in unprecedented detail."

The book starts at the very beginning, with an incredible photograph of a human sperm actually fertilizing a human egg. That one picture and film sequence has been described as "the greatest purely optical magnification in motion-picture history."

From that point onward the book traces the development of a baby girl through the sequence of trimesters. Her physical development is breathtaking in its beauty. But the biggest surprise for most readers may well be the revelations about fetal behavior. Babies are learning to sleep, taste, smile, cry, and suck their thumbs -- all while in the womb.

A Tallack observes, the images reveal "that the fetus behaves in a much more serious way than previously imagined." For most readers, that will likely be an understatement. In Tallack's words, "During her odyssey in the womb, she will smile, recognize her mother's voice, and maybe even dream."

At just twenty weeks of gestational age -- half a normal pregnancy -- a baby can grimace, smile, and even laugh.

In the Womb, the book, is based upon In the Womb, the television documentary. The documentary is also breathtaking, and it offers the additional benefit of seeing these unprecedented images in motion. The book and the DVD together represent a scientific education of sorts. Parents will want to watch the DVD and read the book with their older children.

The development of these sophisticated imaging technologies is reshaping the abortion debate. Once these images are seen, they can never be forgotten. For the first time in human history, this generation has been given the gift of seeing inside the womb. Once these images are seen there is no way to deny what we see -- the miracle of life.

What we see with our own eyes is the fact that every single human being is "fearfully and wonderfully made."

As the Psalmist declared:

For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother's womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them. [Psalm 139:13-16, English Standard Version]

We can now see the "unformed substance" being formed. These images allow us to see the wonder of the human baby in development. The proper response to these images is not mere wonder, however, but the worship of the Creator who reveals His glory in the womb.

____________________

Parents will want to note that both the film and the book mention evolution early in the story. Nevertheless, this is not a matter integral to the story of the baby's progression and development. I would strongly suggest that parents read the book and watch the DVD, and then share these with their children, allowing for generous discussion and parental instruction. These images and photographs hold the promise of helping children and youth to understand the miracle of life in a whole new way. That is exactly what the pro-abortion movement should fear.

____________________

Other helpful resources include Lennart Nilsson's pioneering book, A Child is Born, first published in 1986. Nilsson's incredible photography inside the womb represented a revolution in themselves. Along with others, Nilsson has more recently produced Life, which traces the entire human life span. Nilsson shocked the world with his 1965 photograph of a living human embryo -- a photograph that landed, appropriately enough, on the cover of Life magazine.

Canada's Conservative Government Would Give $300 Million to Provinces for Controversial HPV Vaccinations

A Timely Warning for Canadian Parents

Dear Friend of the Family,

As you know, Restore Marriage Canada is a project of United Families Canada, the Canadian affiliate of United Families International (UFI). In a recent UFI newsletter, President Carol Soelberg has written a very timely article on pressures to immunize young girls against Human Papillomavirus (HPV). Just two weeks ago, Parliament approved the government’s budget which includes $300 million for the provinces for HPV immunizations.

I am forwarding this on to you because it is something that all Canadian parents should be aware of. It will be especially important to watch for any efforts by your province to require these immunizations.

Sincerely,

Jill Cahoon
President, United Families Canada

www.UnitedFamilies.org

Mandated HPV Vaccinations
Pose Challenge to Parental Rights


Dear Friend of the Family,

Despite the eradication of many diseases, the 21st century is a difficult time for parents, grandparents and others entrusted with the care and guardianship of children. We must be constantly vigilant as national and international trends challenge our rights to oversee the nurturing and care of our children.

Front and center today is the attempt by state governments in the United States to mandate Human Papillomavirus (HPV) vaccinations for young girls, directly challenging parental rights. On Tuesday, the Conservative Government of Canada included in its budget proposal $300 million for these vaccinations. The proposal calls for each province or territory to determine whether or not vaccinations would be mandatory or voluntary.

Let's set the stage for this controversy. In June 2006, the U.S. Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices recommended HPV vaccinations for girls ages 11 and 12. Last month, Texas Governor Rick Perry set off a firestorm of controversy when he issued an executive order mandating that all females entering the sixth grade receive the vaccine, with some exceptions, for the prevention of HPV. Many parents were furious, and Texas House Bill 1098 was introduced in an attempt to overturn the executive order.

More than half of U.S. states are now attempting to mandate or legislate vaccination requirements for girls as young as 11.

HPV can only be contracted through sexual activity and is America's most common sexually transmitted infection. The virus is most frequent among U.S. women in their early 20s, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The disease causes genital warts, cervical dysplasia and occasionally cervical cancer. The infection typically disappears within two years, and most infected people don't even realize they have the virus. This vaccination addresses just four of the more than 100 types of HPV.

There was a time when vaccinations served the public interest in an attempt to prevent polio and other diseases contracted through no fault of their own. Now we see governments attempting to force vaccinations upon people for behavior which can be prevented. The HPV vaccine does not prevent all forms of cervical cancer, but it may give a false sense of security while encouraging risky behavior.

Mandating vaccinations for this disease is a very troubling attack on parental rights. It clearly undermines parents' authority to determine their children's health care and it inhibits their ability to encourage positive child behavior. Many parents fear that requiring the vaccination, like compulsory "safe-sex" education, sends the wrong message to students.

Vaccinations may give a false sense of safety leading to higher sexual activity, risking disease and pregnancy. Furthermore, vaccinations are not necessary for every girl, many of whom abstain sexually until marriage and will not be subject to the risk of STDs. Certainly, when government requires a vaccination to prevent a disease that can be completely avoided by abstinence it undercuts the importance of abstinence programs that are also government funded.

The vaccinations are costly, approaching $1,000 in some regions. Of valid concern to parents is the fact that the only vaccine currently approved, marketed by Merck under the name Gardasil, has not been tested for pre-teens. The attempt to fast-track this drug for marketing raises significant ethical questions. Taxpayer-supported public schools could punish students for non-compliance and incur resulting legal actions. Mandatory vaccines would result in windfall profits for Merck.

Two prominent organizations are calling for restraint on mandatory vaccinations:

* The American College of Pediatricians is opposed to "any legislation which would require HPV vaccination for school attendance. This would amount to a precedent-setting action that trespasses on the right of parents to make medical decisions for their children as well as on the rights of the children to attend school. Most 9-12 year old children are not sexually active; many have not entered puberty. Forcing a parent to forsake his/her better judgment and discuss this information with the child would be inappropriate and unnecessarily intrusive."
* The National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC), a leading vaccine safety and informed consent advocacy organization, is urging state legislatures to investigate the safety and cost of mandating Merck's HPV vaccine for all pre-adolescent girls before introducing legislation amending state vaccine laws. NVIC reports that testing of the drug resulted in numerous health problems, including loss of consciousness, seizures, arthritis joint pain and Guillain-Barre Syndrome.

The National Conference of State Legislatures carries a complete list of legislative action on HPV vaccines. Check your state and contact your lawmakers to voice your concerns about the problems with forced vaccinations.

Additionally, parents may want to consider discussing human sexuality with their children in a way that is consistent with their family's values at a time they deem appropriate. Parental involvement is highly important in an era when schools often portray human sexuality to children in ways that families find inappropriate.

Sincerely,

Carol Soelberg, President
United Families International

How Worldviews Work -- An Urgent Illustration

By Albert Mohler @ http://albertmohler.com//graphics/icon-smallpermalink.gif

Worldviews work at multiple levels in each individual. Every person operates out of a basic set of convictions about reality, truth, meaning, and how the world works. Disagreements between individuals and groups on controversial issues can almost always be traced back to a fundamental difference in worldview, recognized or not.

Very often, a difference in worldview becomes apparent when a decision of fundamental importance has to be made. When severe and significant disagreement becomes obvious, parties to the disagreement often find themselves genuinely surprised that anyone could hold the position they now confront.

Consider this truth in the case of a married couple deciding what to do with frozen embryos they do not intend to have implanted in the wife's womb. Should they be offered for adoption, stored indefinitely at great cost, donated for medical research, or destroyed?

The January 30, 2006 edition of USA Today takes us right into such a situation. Just consider how the story is introduced:

Ingrid Jansson peers through a vapor of liquid nitrogen at frozen embryos conceived for her in a petri dish four years ago. It's the first time she's eyed the surplus from the in vitro fertilization procedure that brought her son Dylan, now 3, into the world.

"It's surreal," says Jansson, 39, as an embryologist fishes out the thin straw containing eight embryos stored at a fertility clinic where she was treated and now works as a nurse. "I don't think about them much, because I have two (children) at home that keep me busy."

Then:

Jansson, who is not religious, wants to donate her embryos for research. She says giving them to an infertile couple is "not an option" because it "would be like giving away my own child, my own DNA." Gardner is Catholic, and he objects. He says stem cell research, which dismantles embryos, is "destroying human life" and opposes it for his "son's siblings." Says Jansson, "It's very difficult for us to decide."

This disagreement could hardly be more basic. The wife would destroy the embryos rather than allow someone else to raise "my own child, my own DNA," while her husband opposes the destruction of human embryos and refers to their own embryos as their "son's siblings." Which is it? Insignificant biomatter or siblings? How's that for a difficult marital moment?

The paper also features yet another couple in disagreement:

Alexandra Chisholm-Chait, calls herself "a person of faith" but says government should not be "instituting religious morality on research." After $250,000 in fertility treatment, including 14 rounds of IVF and a daughter born through a surrogate mother, she is weighing what to do with four embryos.

Chisholm-Chait, 44, is leaning toward giving them to another infertile couple. About 150 babies have been born that way since 1998, Levin estimates. Chisholm-Chait's husband, Nicholas Abboud, wants to donate them for stem cell research so more people could benefit. One thing they agree on is that they must come to an agreement. "What good is it serving anybody in a state of frozen perpetuity?" she asks. "They're not going away, so you have to decide what to do with them."

Let's hope that this mother does not allow the destruction of these embryos, but what does she mean when she argues that the government should not employ "religious morality on research?" What morality would she prefer? Or, is she implying that only a religious morality (specifically a Christian morality) would care about the disposition of these embryos?

Hundreds of thousands of frozen human embryos lie in a frozen state in American IVF clinics. Thus, thousands of couples now face the question that divides these two couples. Human dignity hangs in the balance.

The practice of creating multiple human embryos for IVF treatments -- embryos in excess of those implanted in the womb -- is itself an immoral practice. This is but one of the most significant moral complications inherent in the IVF technology.

But the worldview dimension of this debate is particularly instructive. In both cases, these couples are divided by their deepest beliefs -- beliefs about what it means to be human and what responsibility we bear to protect human dignity. They reach their conclusions through the filters of their own worldview. These differences are so deep that one spouse refers to the embryos as his son's "siblings" while the other speaks of "my own DNA" as the only significant issue.

The Christian responsiblity is to develop an authentically Christian worldview, based in God's self-revelation and in thoughtful conversation with other faithful Christians.

Beyond this, the disagreements between the spouses in these two marriages should serve as a reminder and illustration of why Christians are commanded to marry other Christians, rather than those who do not know Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord. Just imagine this level of disagreement over a question of this urgency. Worldviews matter.

The Tragedy of Untethered Science -- Chilling Examples

By Albert Mohler @ http://albertmohler.com

Science and technology, once detached from moral constraints, can and will produce nightmares. Untethered from moral accountability, science becomes a threat to human dignity, rather than a means to knowledge and human happiness.

Consider these developments gathered from reports in major media in recent days. Standing alone, each would represent cause for deep moral concern. Taken together, these developments point to disaster.

ITEM ONE:

In Germany, a twelve-year-old boy was allowed to become the world's youngest transsexual. Tim, now known as "Kim," had declared himself a girl early in life. As The Telegraph [London] reports:

Tim was diagnosed as a transsexual two years ago, when doctors and psychiatrists concluded that his claims to be "in the wrong body" were so deeply felt that he required treatment. The therapy involves artificially arresting male puberty, with a series of potent hormone injections before the administration of female hormones to initiate the development of features such as breasts.

Now aged 14, and officially registered as a female, Kim looks like a typical girl of her age. She dresses in fashionable clothes, has long blonde hair and blue eyes and dreams of moving to Paris to become a fashion designer. Her parents, who initially assumed their son was going through a temporary phase, eventually grew accustomed to seeing him as a girl.

Der Spiegel [Germany] added further details:

Kim's is a classic case, according to Bernd Meyenburg. "Transsexual development is extremely rare, and very few youth psychiatrists have any experience with it. The families wander from one psychiatrist to the next" -- until they wind up in his office, or in the office one of his colleagues at the university hospitals in Hamburg and the southern city of Ulm. Germany has only a few experts on child transsexual development, and Meyenburg heads the Psychiatric Special Outpatient Clinic for Children and Adolescents with Identity Disorders at the University of Frankfurt Hospital.

The doctor claims this to be a "classic case" but acknowledges that there is no scientific test for what is called transsexualism:

It's impossible to determine whether a person is transsexual by using standard diagnostic tools like hormone level testing or computer tomography (cross-section images of the body). Psychiatrists base their diagnoses on how long a person has been living as a member of the opposite sex and how convincing he or she is in that role. In adults, medical standards require years of psychotherapy and a trial run as a member of the opposite sex before hormone treatment can start. Children in puberty have little time to satisfy these requirements.

Even the doctor has doubts about the larger ethical issues:

Should doctors second-guess nature because of a teenager's wishes? Can't puberty change everything? And what if it all turns out to have been the wrong decision? Meyenburg has mixed feelings about the fact that more and more -- and younger -- patients are coming to him for advice these days.

"From a purely medical standpoint we are dealing with the mutilation of a biologically healthy body," says Meyenburg. "We face a real dilemma. If we do something about it, it's irreversible. And if we allow nature to take its course, that too is irreversible."

Welcome to the carnival of postmodern gender consciousness. This is what is comes down to -- 12 year old transsexuals undergoing hormone therapy to switch pubertal development (at least partially). Once gender is separated from physical sex, anything goes. Add the age's unbounded commitment to personal autonomy -- even for children --- and Tim becomes "Kim," now waiting until 18 for sex reassignment surgery.

ITEM TWO:

In Spain, a 67-year-old woman who gave birth to twin boys last month now admits that she lied to the IVF clinic in Los Angeles in order to receive the in vitro treatments that made her bizarre pregnancy possible. Furthermore, she now realizes she needs help in caring for the boys and that the boys need a dad. Fine timing.

As The Times [London] reports:

Ms Bousada, a retired shop worker, had lived with her own mother all her life until her mother died in 2005, aged 101. She is said to have decided to get in-vitro fertilisation after seeing magazine articles about the success of increasingly elderly women in getting pregnant.

Ms Bousada told the News of the World: "I think everyone should become a mother at the right time for them. Maybe things shouldn't have been done in the way they were done but that was the only way to achieve the thing I had always dreamt of.

"I would have loved to have got pregnant with a man by my side but it didn't work out that way. Now I've got to look for a dad for the kids. I'd like to meet someone a bit younger than me. They'd have to like the children, of course."

Defying natural limits and lying to the IVF clinc, Ms. Bousada has the audacity to suggest that "everyone should become a mother at the right time for them." Well, not everyone can become a mother at any time -- at least not yet. Her argument flies in the face of human experience, human development, and natural human ability. Ms. Bousada did not just decide to become a mother, she had to obtain the embryo or embryos from a clinic.

So here is the picture. A 67-year-old woman with newborn twin boys now looks for a (preferably younger) man to serve as dad to the boys. From a moral perspective, everything (yes, everything) is backwards here.

Ms. Bousada went through menopause 18 years ago. From the moment her pregnancy began, the boys were endangered by her advanced age. Doctors barely kept the pregnancy going long enough for the boys to be born seven weeks early, and barely over three pounds each.

News of the World [London] also reported this kicker:

Carmela, who speaks little English, went home to Spain to allow her body to get used to its new state before flying back to LA last May for the final stages of the process.

There, in a sterile doctor's office, she chose the donor parents -- eggs from a pretty, brown-haired 18-year-old and sperm from a blond, blue-eyed Italian-American.

She recalled: "I picked them from photos in a catalogue. It was a bit like studying an estate agent's brochure and choosing a house. I wasn't bothered about what sort of jobs they had or how much they earned as long as they were healthy. I picked people who were different looking as I wanted a mixture.

Eggs and sperm chosen as if from a real estate catalogue. Scared yet?

These are but two examples of what science has now made possible. Where are the moral limits. If a twelve-year-old boy can declare himself a transsexual, why not a ten-year-old? If a 67-year-old woman can get away with having twin boys by IVF, why not an 80-year-old?

Once science and technology are untethered from moral constraints, the only question is when and where such things will happen. The Christian worldview understands that some natural limits are for our good. The fact that God made humans male and female is for our good, and for His glory. The gift of marriage is for our good, and the gift of pregnancy and children is to be received within that institution. Age is also a gift, and every age comes with its season -- challenges and blessings together. Humans were not made so that 67-year-old women can become mothers 18 years after menopause. The human race is in big trouble.

A Haunting Specter -- Modern Science Without Moral Limits

By Albert Mohler @http://albertmohler.com

Modern science most often operates under a cover of moral neutrality. It is probably safe to assume that most Americans think of science as a morally neutral enterprise -- one that can as easily be used for good as for evil. Nevertheless, this impression of moral neutrality is a myth . . . and a dangerous myth indeed.

Yuval Levin makes this point in his important essay, "The Moral Challenge of Modern Science," published in the Fall 2006 issue of The New Atlantis. Levin, a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, DC, sums up his argument with these words:

The real challenge lies not in the tools that science gives us, but in the attitudes it forms in us. The trouble is not that technology can be used for both good and evil, but that people in the age of technology may have real trouble telling the difference between the two. The moral challenge of modern science is, like every genuine moral challenge, a hazard to the souls of men; and the danger that confronts us in the scientific age arises not from our tools or our machines but from our own assumptions and attitudes.

He is right, of course. In this age of technology, many persons (including both scientists and non-scientists) have difficulty seeing the moral realities and challenges presented by many advanced technologies.

Furthermore, science is no longer just about science. As Levin observes:

The moral challenge of modern science reaches well beyond the ambiguity of new technologies because modern science is much more than a source of technology, and scientists are far more than mere investigators and toolmakers. Modern science is a grand human endeavor, indeed the grandest of the modern age. Its work employs the best and the brightest in every corner of the globe, and its modes of thinking and reasoning have come to dominate the way mankind understands itself and its place.

Resigning himself to a change in economic philosophy, President Richard M. Nixon once famously referred to John Maynard Keynes, the father of massive government spending, and quipped, "We're all Keynesians now." Well, we might say that we are all scientists now. Science is a worldview, a way of life, and a mode of thinking that effects every other discipline and dimension of thought. For many moderns, science has replaced Christianity as a touchstone for understanding reality.

Here is the heart of Levin's argument:

Many of us nonetheless think of science as neutral because it does not match the profile of a moral enterprise as understood in our times. Put simply, science does not express itself in moral declarations. It is neutral in the very way in which neutrality is seen to be a good thing in a free liberal society: science does not tell us what to do. It takes as its guides the needs and desires of human beings, and not assumptions about good and evil. Our desire for health, comfort, and power is indisputable, and science seeks to serve that desire. It is driven by a moral imperative to make certain capacities available to us, but it does not enforce upon us a code of conduct. It can therefore claim to be neutral on the question of how men and women should live.

But a project on the scale of the modern scientific enterprise cannot help but affect the way we reason regarding that fundamental moral question. Modern science, after all, involves first and foremost a way of thinking. It is founded upon a new way of understanding the world, and of bringing it before the human mind in a form the mind can comprehend. In forcing the world into this form, science must necessarily leave out some elements of it that do not aid the work of the scientific method, and among these are many elements we might consider morally relevant.

Science forces itself to consider only the quantifiable facts before it, and using those facts it forms a picture of the world that we can use to understand and overcome certain natural obstacles. The more effectively the scientific way of thinking does this, the more successfully and fully it persuades us that this is all there is to do. The power and success of scientific thinking therefore shape our thinking more generally.

Only when we understand modern science primarily as an intellectual force can we begin to grasp its significance for moral and social thought. The scientific worldview exercises a profound and powerful influence on what we understand to be the proper purpose, subject, and method of morals and politics.

But Levin also warns that we are prone to "moral forgetfulness." We are not adequately attentive to the moral dimensions of modern science and, before long, all that is left is a sense that whatever science produces is good -- end of subject.

As Levin explains:

Modern science and technology stand to exacerbate and worsen this forgetfulness, both by taking away some of those things that now and then make us remember--the child whose potential is a great surprise to us, the limits that respect for others must place upon our vanity, the truths and lessons we can only learn by growing old--and by accustoming us to a mode of thinking and learning that always seems to know more today than it knew yesterday. Rightly enamored by the possibilities and achievements of forward-looking science, we are often blinded to the possibility of progress through remembrance and tempted to believe that we can rise beyond the limits and constraints that the past always seeks to remind us are necessary. This forgetfulness risks leaving us knowing much less than we knew yesterday, even about science.

Finally:

This, in the deepest sense, is the moral challenge presented to us by modern science: to advance the great moral good of relieving man's estate while remaining ever mindful of other, and perhaps greater, moral goods. It is a challenge to our sense of what matters most, to our commitments to equality and self-government, to our appreciation of the necessarily varied sources of wisdom and authority, and to our grasp of the right questions to ask.

The reality and seriousness of this challenge is readily apparent in so many contemporary debates. Why not use and destroy human embryos in the quest for therapies from human stem cells? Why not create chimeras (human-animal hybrids) or new transgenic species? Why not allow human cloning and customized human infants?

In reality, many Americans simply assume that whatever science is able to do is good -- because science is morally neutral. This is one of the most dangerous myths of our times. The incredible wonders that have come to us through modern science -- so many wonderful developments that have transformed human lives for good -- can blind us to the reality that other technologies and applications can be inherently evil. The myth of moral neutrality in modern science is a myth we cannot afford.

TV programme reveals the REAL Frankensteins

By DAVID LEAFE - The Daily Mail

head transplant pioneer Robert White

Hidden deep in a Russian forest, and guarded by soldiers with orders to shoot intruders on sight, the medical research laboratories on the outskirts of Moscow were one of the Soviet Union's best-kept secrets.

So the carefully-vetted journalists who were allowed past the forbidding perimeter fence on a cold February morning in 1954 were both apprehensive and curious about what lay ahead. Led to a courtyard outside an austere brick building, they waited in the bright winter sunshine to find out why they had been summoned. For a few minutes, only the sound of birdsong and the rustling of leaves filled the air but then a door slowly opened to reveal experimental surgeon Vladimir Demikhov - accompanied by the strangest looking animal they had ever seen.

Blinking unhappily in the daylight as Demikhov paraded it on its lead, this unfortunate beast had been created by grafting the head and upper body of a small puppy on to the head and body of a fully-grown mastiff, to form one grotesque creature with two heads. The visitors watched in horror and fascination as both of the beast's mouths lapped greedily at a bowl of milk proffered by Demikhov's assistants.

Resembling something dreamed up by Mary Shelley's Dr Frankenstein, it seemed literally incredible. But as the Soviet propaganda machine informed the world, this canine curiosity was both very real - and a scientific triumph.

As revealed in a National Geographic documentary to be screened later this month, the creation of the two-headed dog was the first step in an astonishing race by Cold War scientists to achieve the seemingly impossible - the first ever human head transplant. In pursuing this medical goal, Vladimir Demikhov - and his American rival, Robert White - may seem to be the epitome of immoral scientists who ignored all ethical considerations in their pursuit of scientific advance. But in their own minds, they were brilliant pioneers prepared to think the unthinkable for the greater good of mankind.

Whichever view you take, they cannot simply be dismissed as gruesome fantasists for, as the programme warns, the obstacles which held them back from their ultimate goal are fast being eroded by modern science, and we may have to confront the reality of the first human head transplant much sooner than we care to think.

Although the world's first face transplant has already taken place, the notion of taking the head of one person and transferring it to the body of another still seems far-fetched. But back in the Fifties, despite being utterly incredible to many, it was a branch of science pursued by some of the most respected doctors of the day.

A Soviet hero, Vladimir Demikhov was renowned for his work in the Red Army hospitals during World War II. When peace came, he joined an elite team of Russian doctors ordered by Stalin to beat the West in the field of medicine at any cost. Labouring far from inquisitive eyes in a secret research complex outside Moscow and experimenting freely in his search for new ways of prolonging life, Demikhov was prepared to go where others did not dare.

He believed for example that it was possible to transplant organs like hearts and lungs in human beings. In those days, such a procedure seemed scarcely credible - but Demikhov proved it could be done. Often preferring to work in the dead of night, he showed that the heart and lungs could be taken from one dog and survive in the chest of another.

This laid the groundwork for such landmark operations as the first heart transplant, conducted by South African surgeon Dr Christiaan Barnard, nearly 20 years later. But Demikhov didn't stop there.

He was determined to prove that any human organ could be successfully transplanted, even the brain. To that end, he set about the challenge to create a two-headed dog.

The lights of his laboratory shone into the small hours of that February morning in 1954 as he and his team set about the intricate task of stitching the upper half of the puppy to the larger animal and connecting their blood vessels and windpipes.

As dawn approached, they waited to see if their creation would regain consciousness. Their first sign of success came when the puppy's head woke up and yawned. It was quickly joined by the larger 'natural' head of the mastiff, which gave its new addition a puzzled look and tried to shake it off.

The composite dog was ready to be revealed to the world. Though it had no body of its own, the smaller animal's head was reported to have kept its own personality, remaining as playful as any other puppy, according to Soviet propaganda.

Even the American magazine Time reported the experiment with grudging admiration, describing how the puppy's head alternately growled and snarled with mock ferocity, or licked the hand that caressed it.

"The host-dog was bored by all this but soon became reconciled to the unaccountable puppy that had sprouted out of its neck," their correspondent wrote. "When it got thirsty, the puppy also got thirsty. When the laboratory grew hot, both host-dog and puppy panted to cool off."

After six days, the bizarre hybrid died. But it had survived long enough to worry America, which was desperate to outdo the Soviets in all aspects of science and technology.

Soon the U.S. had a radical transplant programme of its own, led by Robert White, a brilliant and ambitious brain surgeon who, like Demikhov, had seen active service in World War II. In the South Pacific, he had see many men paralysed from the neck down and he was fired with a determination to help these paraplegics live more productive lives. Following Demikhov's triumph with the two-headed dog, the American government helped Dr White establish a brain research centre at the county hospital in Cleveland, Ohio. By day, he performed surgery on people with all kinds of brain injuries and illnesses, but away from his clinics, animals were the focus of his attention.

One key experiment Dr White carried out in 1964 involved removing the brain - though not the head - from one dog and sewing it under the neck skin of another dog.

With its blood vessels connected to those of the host-dog, Dr White managed to keep the isolated brain alive for days, proving not only that the brain could survive away from its own body but that it was immunologically sound - meaning that, unlike a kidney, it could be transplanted without the likelihood of the new 'body' rejecting it.

This was a great breakthrough, but it posed much bigger questions. Did a brain isolated in this way still have the power of thought? Could it in any way be described as 'conscious'?

Since the transplanted brain had no means of expressing itself, Dr White could not answer this question and he seemed to have reached an impasse. But in 1966 he received help from a most unexpected direction.

With Stalin long dead, and the USSR creeping towards economic and technological collaboration with the West, Soviet scientists invited him to visit their laboratories and operating theatres.

During his trip, White learned of new Soviet experiments, in which a severed dog's head had been kept 'alive', not by stitching it onto another dog's body, but using special life-support machinery. Most remarkable of all, the isolated head had continued to show signs of consciousness - its eyes blinking in response to light, and ears pricking at the tap of a hammer on the cases it was in.

This inspired White to take Demikhov's original two-headed dog experiment a stage further: not merely grafting one animal's head on to another's body, but completely replacing one animal's head with another.

This highly complicated operation took White three years to plan and he knew many people would find it morally repugnant. But in the late afternoon of March 14, 1970, he went ahead with the world's first true head transplant, using two rhesus monkeys.

Decapitating both animals, the surgeon successfully managed to stitch the head of one monkey on to the body of the other. He and his team then faced a nervous wait until finally the 'hybrid' monkey regained consciousness, opened its eyes and tried to bite a surgeon who put a finger in its mouth.

The team clapped and cheered as their creation moved its facial muscles, followed their movements with its eyes and even drank from a pipette. But though White regarded the operation as a major success, he knew it had one major limitation.

Because its spinal cord had been severed as part of the operation, the monkey was paralysed from the neck down and it was impossible for the surgeons to reconnect the hundreds of millions of nerve threads necessary for it to regain any bodily movement.

Still, White insisted that such surgery might help a very particular kind of human patient - those paraplegics who faced imminent death because their heads were trapped on bodies failing due to the long-term medical complications which often accompany extensive paralysis.

With a head transplant, these people, he reasoned, would remain paraplegic but their new bodies, 'donated' by patients who were brain dead but otherwise physically healthy, would give them a new chance of life. White never got a chance to pursue this idea. When he went public with the results of his monkey head transplants two years after the event, it earned him only universal condemnation.

Shunned by the scientific establishment and threatened by anti-vivisectionists, he was forced to seek police protection for himself and his family and was denied funding for his work. He went from pioneer to pariah.

Despite the controversy caused by his research, he remains convinced to this day that head transplants for humans may one day be viable. And only now, 35 years after his first experiments on monkeys, does it seem that science may be about to prove him right.

Last year, researchers at University College, London, announced plans to inject the spinal cords of paralysed patients with stem cells taken from the human nose.

These are cells capable of regenerating themselves and adapting to many different purposes within the body and it is hoped they might create a 'bridge' between the disconnected ends of the spinal nerves, enabling paralysed patients to regain full control of their bodies.

If severed spinal cords can be restored in this way, perhaps head transplants might eventually become a scientific possibility - without leaving the unfortunate 'patient' permanently paralysed. Whether such operations would ever be deemed ethical is another matter - and the psychological and emotional implications simply beggar belief.

But we live in an age when French surgeons have already carried out a partial face transplant, and in which British surgeon Dr Peter Butler has been granted permission by the Royal Free Hospital in North London to perform the first complete face transplant in the near future.

Will a full head transplant be the next question for medical ethicists to consider? It's a prospect that raises many disquieting questions, not least whether our souls reside in our minds or in our bodies, and whether a person's head, living on another body, would still be the same person.

One thing's for certain. With surgical techniques improving at such a rapid rate, the issue will shortly be not whether we could carry out a human head transplant, but, much more importantly, whether we should.

When the Gender Line Isn't Clear?

By Albert Mohler @ http://albertmohler.com//blog.php

The New York Times ran a major article on transgender children on December 2, adding considerable visibility to an issue that had, until recently, hardly been mentioned in public. [See my article of October 18, 2006, "Gender Confusion in the Kindergarten?"]

In "Supporting Boys or Girls When the Line Isn't Clear," reporter Patricia Leigh Brown explained:

Until recently, many children who did not conform to gender norms in their clothing or behavior and identified intensely with the opposite sex were steered to psychoanalysis or behavior modification.

But as advocates gain ground for what they call gender-identity rights, evidenced most recently by New York City's decision to let people alter the sex listed on their birth certificates, a major change is taking place among schools and families. Children as young as 5 who display predispositions to dress like the opposite sex are being supported by a growing number of young parents, educators and mental health professionals.

This reporter ventures rather deeply into the issue, noting that in addition to allowing children to pose, dress, and be recognized as the opposite of their birth sex, some parents have gone so far as to use "blocking" drugs to delay puberty. As Brown explains, this raises "a host of ethical questions."

The reporter also acknowledges a divide within the community of activists and specialists dealing with the question. In her words, "The prospect of cross-dressing kindergartners has sparked a deep philosophical divide among professionals over how best to counsel families. Is it healthier for families to follow the child's lead, or to spare children potential humiliation and isolation by steering them toward accepting their biological gender until they are older?"

The appearance of this article in the Times, along with the acknowledgment of a split among the authorities it cites, perhaps indicates that even a considerable percentage of Times readers are not ready for cross-dressing kindergartners--especially their own children and grandchildren.

The reporter suggests that the parents of these children bear the authority, at least at present, to determine how their child is to be recognized. As Brown explains, "Legal trends suggest that schools are now required to respect parents' decisions."

The article contains some amazing statements. A first-grade teacher in the Boston area laments the fact that many teachers were "unnerved" when a boy showed up wearing a dress. Some teachers, she explained, did not see first-graders as "sophisticated enough to verbalize their own feelings."

Tom Little, director of the Park Day School in Oakland, California (where at least one cross-dressing kindergartner has been enrolled) explained that teachers at his school are taught a "gender-neutral" vocabulary and are told to line up children by sneaker color instead of by gender.

His comment takes the cake: "We are careful not to create a situation where students are being boxed in. We allow them to move back and forth until something feels right."

One specialist cited in the article, Dr. Kenneth Zucker, who has treated about 500 children dealing with this issue, claims that about 80 percent of these children grow out of the behavior. His approach is to help children "be more content in their biological gender."

Contrast that with Dr. Edgardo Menvielle, who takes the opposite approach: "The goal is for the child to be well adjusted, healthy and have good self-esteem. What's not important is molding their gender."

As a society, we are falling (or diving) deeper and deeper into gender confusion. A considerable percentage of the policy-making elite has bought into the ideology of fluid gender and absolute self-expression. Once that idea takes hold, the reality of cross-dressing kindergartners becomes inevitable.

This is where the Christian worldview runs into direct collision with the new sexual ideologies. Christians see the reality of biological identity as a gift--one important way the Creator has told us who we are and how we are to glorify Him with our lives. No one should suggest that negotiating the gender issues in a fallen world is easy. And I am hard pressed to imagine a more difficult parenting challenge than that faced by the parents interviewed for this article. But surrendering to the confusion cannot be the right answer -- leaving young children "to move back and forth until something feels right."

That Was Then . . . This is Now? A Nazi Nightmare

By Albert Mohler

A horrible discovery was made last week near the German town of Menden. The lack of media attention about this in the United States should serve as an alarm in itself.

As Deutsche Welle reports, the skeletons of twenty children and five adults were found as a cemetery site was being excavated. It appears that these skeletons represent victims of the Third Reich's policy of euthanizing persons with handicaps or other problems.

As the paper reports, the site is very near to the location of a World War II hospital run by Adolf Hitler's personal physician, Dr. Karl Brandt.

From the paper's report:

The children, aged from one to seven years, were found alongside the bodies of five adults, Hans-Bernd Besa-von Werden, a spokesman for the district administration said.

Investigations of two of the children's skulls indicated the victims might have been handicapped.

More:

-Some 70,000 people with physical or intellectual disabilities perished in the euthanasia program, which the Nazis believed was necessary to cleanse the German people of racially unsound elements.

-Those who were deemed "unworthy to live" by showing symptoms of mental retardation or physical handicap were sent to the so-called killing facilities, where they were murdered by lethal injections or exposure to carbon monoxide gas.

-The Nazi euthanasia program, which became an open secret in the Third Reich, was officially terminated in 1941 in the wake of protests from members of the German clergy.

-The practice, however, clandestinely continued until the end of World War II with an ever wider range of victims, which included geriatric patients, bombing victims and forced laborers.

-Karl Brandt, who was in charge of the program, was executed for war crimes in 1948.

The German practice of euthanizing those considered unworthy of life did not begin with the Third Reich. German doctors began the practice under the liberal Weimar Republic, with doctors defining those considered inferior as Lebensunwerten Lebens -- life unworthy of life.

Those identified as Lebensunwerten Lebens were simply killed -- sometimes after being subjected to inhumane medical experiments.

How is this definitively different from the current practice of selecting out "inferior" embryos or of aborting "defective" babies in the womb? These, too, are assaults on human dignity. How long will it be before some later generation excavates our own moral landscape?

The truly frightening aspect of all this is the fact that the German people allowed it to happen. The logic of euthanasia is so seductive and the concept of Lebensunwerten Lebens is so convenient. Simply define those difficult to care for as unworthy of life. Select one racial profile to be considered superior to all others. Sacrifice human dignity for the promise of a perfect race -- free from all those we would rather not see.

We can't say that it can't happen. Consider this -- why are so few babies with Down syndrome born today? Imagine what Dr. Brandt could have done with today's prenatal genetic tests.

Clearly, a good many modern Americans have bought into Dr. Brandt's logic to some degree. The past haunts us because it is not safely put away. The past threatens to erupt into the present in the form of modern euthanasia. This is a Nazi nightmare taking a new and seductive form.

[The photo is of Dr. Karl Brandt at his trial for crimes against humanity.]