Pro-Family Conservative Lands White House Post

President Bush has tapped Claude Allen, currently deputy secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), to be his new domestic policy adviser, the White House announced on Jan. 5.

Pro-family groups hailed the selection.

“Focus on the Family is tremendously pleased with Claude Allen’s appointment,” said Peter Brandt, the ministry’s senior director of government and public policy. “Claude has a distinguished history as a champion for policies designed to build strong families and strong marriages, going back to his days in the state government of Virginia. He has been very strong as the number two man at HHS, and we believe Claude will serve the president well.”

In his new White House position, Allen will be responsible for helping shape the administration’s policy on domestic issues.

“Claude has a great grasp of the things that need to be done domestically,” Brandt said, “from promoting the sanctity of marriage and promoting healthy lifestyles to bringing policies on a wide variety of other issues. He is definitely the man for the job.”

– (CitizenLink/EP News)

PCA Pastor Dies Preaching About Heaven

“And when I go to heaven …” were the last earthly words out of the mouth of the Rev. Jack Arnold, pastor-at-large of Covenant Presbyterian Church (PCA) in Oviedo, Fla.

Arnold collapsed Jan. 8 while preaching a sermon about future glory. Several members of the congregation tried to revive the pastor, but he died instantly of cardiac arrest. Arnold, 69, had been the senior minister at Covenant Presbyterian until the late 1990s when he began traveling to Africa and the Middle East to train pastors. Before he collapsed on Sunday, Arnold quoted John Wesley who said, “Until my work on this earth is done, I am immortal. But when my work for Christ is done … I go to be with Jesus.”

–(EP News)

Scientist Proposes ‘Moral’ Embryonic Stem Cells

A member of the President’s Council on Bioethics is promoting a proposal he says might allow scientists to create the equivalent of embryonic stem cells without destroying embryos.

Dr. William Hurlbut, a bioethicist at Stanford University and a staunch opponent of research on human embryos, is trying to win support for the idea. Results of his efforts, though, are mixed. Though some bioethicists find the idea at least intriguing, others say it is likely unethical because it would initiate the development of a created human entity—one purposefully made for research.

The procedure, called altered nuclear transfer, would fertilize a human egg to generate embryonic stem cells, but would theoretically do so without ever forming an embryo. It has already been used with animals.

Dr. David Prentice, the Family Research Council’s (FRC) analyst on biomedical issues, said the idea involves “knocking out, or altering the genes of, a skin cell nucleus, but then transferring that nucleus into an egg that has had its chromosomes removed.

“It’s the same type of nuclear transfer, in a way, that was used to create the cloned sheep Dolly,” said Prentice, a former professor of life sciences and science adviser to members of Congress. “The proposal itself would be that, by knocking out this particular gene, you would somehow not be creating a human embryo, so that you could still obtain embryonic stems cells, but you would not have to destroy embryonic life.”

Prentice said the goal of the technique, essentially, is “to try to create, more or less, a tumor mass, instead of an embryo.”

Prentice and Focus on the Family Bioethics Analyst Carrie Gordon Earll, say they are very concerned about the proposal’s implications.

“It’s laudable that this is being proposed to try to come to a compromise,” Prentice said, “but I have deep concerns about this proposal because, in one sense, all you’re doing is creating a disabled or a crippled embryo—specifically creating it for that purpose so that you can then harvest the cells from this young life.”

Earll, meanwhile, expressed the concern that by continuing to focus on embryonic stem-cell research, the public’s attention is being diverted from where it should be—use of adult stem cells and such sources as umbilical cord blood. Doctors in South Korea, she said, just announced they had helped a paralyzed woman walk through use of such cells.

“We know of at least three cases of women who were paralyzed who have received stem-cell transplants either from umbilical cord blood or from their own nasal cells, that are walking again, with the aid of braces and canes, but nevertheless walking,” Earll said.

“We are seeing almost miraculous recovery in patients such as these, in addition to patients being treated for about 70-plus different conditions using adult stem cells. That is where, if we’re serious about alleviating the suffering of humans, we should be putting all of our dollars and all of our science and all of our discussion in that totally ethical arena.”

– Pete Winn (CitizenLink/EP News)