U.S. Implants Human Tissues in Lab:
In a series of experiments, scientists have created laboratory mice with tiny human organ structures — lungs, intestines, pancreases, lymph nodes, thymuses, livers and immune systems.
The animal, whose organ tissues are derived from those of human fetuses, “provide a singular opportunity to gauge the effectiveness of various antiviral drugs” The mice have been successfully infected with the AIDS virus and with two viruses that cause leukemia.
Researchers plan next to infect the mice with cytomega-lovirus, which can damage the brains of unborn children. After that will come infections with the viruses of influenza, chronic infant diarrhea, genital wart and hepatitis.
The mice were developed by Dr. J. Michael McCune, an immunologist who treats AIDS patients at San Francisco General Hospital. Because human fetal tissues are being implanted into animals and not humans, Dr. McCune and his colleagues, whose work is funded largely by the US National institute of Health, are not subject to the Federal ban on the use of such tissues in medical research.
To create mice with human immune systems, “Dr. McCune takes the thymus, liver and lymph nodes from the human fetuses less than 22 weeks old and divides them into hundreds of pieces, each about the size of a grain of rice.”
“Using a microscope, he implants a piece of each organ under the kidneys of young mice. Within days, the mouse’s blood vessels move into the human tissue, nourishing it and encouraging it to grow. In a month or two, the human organs are the size of blueberries and are able to engender the cells of the immune system.” Though small, the organs are functionally complete, Dr. McCune said (New York Times, Oct. 30, 1990).
Malaysia and Singapore Want More People:
Malaysia and Singapore are both “involved in a feverish … campaign to encourage families to have more children.”
Malaysia broadened its national family planning board to include programs that promote population growth. Singapore went a step further and disbanded its family planning board altogether.
Mahathir Mohamad, Malaysia’s prime minister, wants to increase the population of his resource-rich country from the present 17 million to 70 million by the year 2100. Setting a goal of economic independence via the development of a large domestic market, Mahathir believes his country’s population is too small for its land size.
In the neighboring tiny island-republic of Singapore, measures are being implemented to reverse the low rates of marriage and births among their country’s well-educated women.
Concern over Singapore’s fertility rate, which currently stands at 1.75, caused the government to drop one of the world’s most “successful” birth control programs. Singapore officials said that “50,000 births annually must be achieved consistently to turn demographic trends around.” One official of the population planning unit responsible for implementing Singapore’s new population policies, warned that otherwise “the current population of 2.6 million will start shrinking precariously in 2010 and nosedive towards eventual extinction” (Development Forum, Nov.-Dec. 1990, the United Nations Department of Public Information for the joint U.N. Information Committee).
U.S. Funds Australia Abortion Advocates:
Over the past year (1990), thanks to specific funding from Family Planning International Assistance (FPIA), Children by Choice (CC) has been engaged in intense political action for abortion liberalization. FPIA, which began its operations in 1971 under a grant from USA- ID, is the international division of Planned Parenthood Federation of America. In 1987, FPIA’s program budget was $20,000,000 (Inventory of Population Projects in Developing Countries Around the World 1988-89, UNFPA, p. 814).
FPIA members traveled from New York in March 1990 to meet with CC members and discuss the opportunity for the repeal of the abortion laws that had been created by the election of the Australian Labor Government in Dec. 1989.
FPIA offered funding for a campaign to encourage the new government to uphold its policy of repealing the laws if CC would take up the challenge to promote the right climate (Annual General Report 1990, Children by Choice Association, Windsor (Queensland).
England’s Schools Have Over 1 Million Empty Places:
Primary schools in England and Wales have nearly one million surplus places according to figures published by the Audit Commission. The survey estimates that the vacant places — technically amounting to one desk in five— are costing local authorities at least 140 million pounds a year in wasted costs for heating, maintenance and other services.
The report reveals that there are 900,000 surplus places, caused by the decline in the birth rate, and that the true figure is likely to be higher because some popular schools are overcrowded. The Department of Education estimates that there are a further 600,000 empty places in secondary schools. The commission’s survey bears out a long-standing trend which has led it to call for the pace of school closures to be accelerated in recent years (The Guardian, Oct. 6, 1990).
Demographic Collapse Threatens Hong Kong:
In 1961 the average family size in this densely populated territory was 5.0 children. In 1991 it has fallen dramatically to just 1.2 children, the lowest figure in South East Asia. At the end of World War II the population of Hong Kong was about one million. Now, thanks to natural growth and a flood of immigrants from Mainland China, it is 5.6 million. This great number of hard-working and ingenious people has brought prosperity, not poverty, to this former British colony but it has created space difficulties for the citizens. This, however, will be instantly solved when the territory reverts to Chinese control in 1997.
But this is a prospect that Hong Kong residents look forward to with trepidation. On the other hand they have achieved by their own free choice what the repressive Chinese Government has been trying to enforce on its own people, namely, the one-child family.
It has done this through the familiar mechanism of contraception, sterilization and abortion. In 1973 there were about 5,000 abortions; in 1983, 15,000; in 1990, 20,000. The birth rate is a record low of 11.8 per 1000 (“Tragedy in Hong Kong,” Dr. H. Pat Dunn).
Zimbabwe’s Future in Jeopardy From Aids:
President Robert Mugabe said at the rate the menace of the acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) was spreading in Zimbabwe, the nation’s future was “placed in great jeopardy.”
He said that 25 percent of all AIDS cases in Zimbabwe were children under five years, while 60 percent were adults between the ages of 20 and 40 years. Mugabe noted that “In spite of… vigorous research being undertaken worldwide, there is still no effective cure or vaccine against AIDS. We must, therefore, all be determined to fight to reduce and stop the further spread of AIDS virus through change in our behavior,” he said (Nigerian Tribune, Nov. 26, 1990).
Text of the Council of Europe’s Declaration ‘On Poland’:
“The undersigned, members of the Assembly, hereby express their concern over the bill prohibiting abortion shortly to be submitted for examination by the Polish parliament.
At a time when Poland is preparing itself to re-enter the family of Europe surely it should avoid adopting legislation which virtually all the members states of the Council of Europe have long since banished from their body of law, as archaic and lacking respect for human rights.
While understanding the concern that has no doubt inspired the drafters of the bill, namely the need to put an end to a previous practice of systematic abortion, the undersigned:
(i) draw attention to the established fact that illegal abortion is never sufficiently dissuasive to prevent women in distress from resorting to abortion, with tragic consequences at a social and family level and often placing their lives at risk,
(ii) consider that the principle of respect for life invoked to justify a general and unqualified ban on abortion also applies to women whose right to choose whether or not to bear children must be recognized,
(iii) consider that the introduction of a system of coherent family planning, sex education and efficient contraception offer the most appropriate solutions as amply demonstrated by experience everywhere in Europe.”
COUNCIL OF EUROPE SIGNATURES: BEIX, STOFFELEN, HAWLICEK, DE PUIG, BANKS, MORRIS, ROWE, THOFT, EKMAN, WORMS, HJORTNAES, NUNEZ, PECRIAUX, VIAL-HASSAT, KOLLVELTER, HALLER, PETITPIERRE, PONTILLON, S. GUSTAFFSON.
Philippines NGO Council in Action:
The Philippine NGO Council ran print ads campaign on population and development in response “to the mounting propaganda of the pro-life groups against the population problem.” All of the NGO Council materials carried the theme of ‘Pro-choice, pro-quality life’ which “capsulizes the council’s thrusts in its programs and projects.”
The ads, which ran in the Philippine Daily Inquirer, the People’s Journal, and People’s Tonight, were endorsed by various pro-choice (i.e. pro-abortion) advocates, including Sr. Christine Tan of the Religious of Good Shepherd.
Sr. Tan, who lives among the urban poor of Leveriza district in Manila, stressed the effects of overpopulation on the job market, environment and resources of the country (NGO Newslink, Vol. I, No. 4, Sept.-Oct, 1990, p. 3).
U.S. Backs Off on Abortion-Pill Threat:
The government, urged by pro-life groups, warned the World Health Organization that it risked “negative consequences” on U.S. funding if it continued its research on abortion pill RU 486, but withdrew the threat under international pressure.
“Any organization that is involved with RU 486… runs a significant risk of becoming a focal point in the United States abortion debate,” Dr. Duff Gillespie, agency director for population in the U.S. government’s Agency for international Development, told the meeting of the committee of the Special Program of Research, Development and Research Training in Human Reproduction.
“Moreover,” he added, “this visibility could lead to specific negative consequences, even to pressure to reduce the United States contribution to WHO. WHO’s involvement with RU 486 places it in a vulnerable position.”
The American threat, however, was withdrawn after Gillespie was challenged by other representatives to the committee — notably Great Britain — and after letters signed by more than 70 members of the U.S. House and 26 senators were sent to the Geneva meeting urging members “in the strongest terms to continue the World Health Organization’s firm commitment to family planning through aggressive research on RU 486 and related methods” (San Antonio Light, June 30, 1991).
