(back of) newsletter 15th February 2015

RESPONSORIAL PSALM: You are my refuge, O Lord;

                                                          You fill me with the joy of salvation.

IMPULSES FOR PRAYER:  2 Kings 5:1-14;   Mark 14:34-36;   Phil 2:5-11

MEDITATION:

By his glorious cross, Christ has won salvation for all people. He redeemed them from the sin that held them in bondage. ‘For freedom Christ has set us free’ (Gal 5:1). In him we have communion with the ‘truth that makes us free’ (cf John 8:32). The Holy Spirit has been given to us and, as the Apostle teaches, ‘where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom’ (2 Corinthians 3:17). Already we glory in the ‘liberty of the children of God’ (Romans 8:21).

Catechism of the Catholic Church

Mass Intentions for Week 5 in Ordinary Time

Saturday 14th February, 6pm: Special Intention

Sunday 15th February, 10am: Special Intention

Sunday 15th February, 11.30am: Ron Collins, RIP

Monday 16th February, 10am: Special Intention

Tuesday 17^th February,10am: Special Intention

Wednesday 18^th February, Ash Wednesday, 10am: Special Intention

Wednesday 18^th February, Ash Wednesday, 7.30pm:

Thursday 19^th February, Thurs after Ash Wednesday, 10.00am: Special Intention

Friday 20th February, Friday after Ash Wednesday, 10am: Special Intention

Saturday 21st February, Saturday after AshWednesday, 10am: Gerard Cashman, RIP

OUR PARISH NEWSLETTER CAN ALSO BE READ AT http://staroftheseahastings.blogspot.co.uk/

DIVINE MERCY DEVOTIONS ON MONDAYS IN THE PRESBYTERY AT 2.30pm:

Do join us on 16^th February, 2^nd March and 16^th March

SOUL AND MOTOWN NIGHT

For friends, parents and staff of St Richard’s Catholic College. On Saturday 7th March, 7.30pm to 11.30pm, in the college hall. Featuring Soul Man Sam. £8 per ticket. Licensed bar. Tickets on sale in Reception or phone (01424) 731070

Points for possible inclusion in your letters and emails to members of the House of Lords

re allowing the genetic manipulation of babies:

It would be callous not to recognise the deep desire of women whose children may be affected by mitochondrial diseases to bear healthy children of their own. However the issues of safety and legality still remain outstanding whatever view one takes of the ethics of one or both of these procedures. How can it be right to push ahead with a procedure which one world authority, Professor Stuart Newman, has described as “inherently unsafe?”. Another warned that “the UK is on the verge of an historic mistake.” The Chief Medical Officer, Dame Sally Davies, who supports the proposals, told Peers this week: “no-one will guarantee that it is safe”. GM experiments using animals have had some horrifying results. Work was done in exactly the area of manipulation of human beings through mitochondrial ‘donation’ in China over a decade ago. It led to the Chinese Government outlawing the use of these techniques because of the appalling, tragic outcomes.

Stuart A Newman writes (in GeneWatch):

The British Parliament appears poised to give the go-ahead to a set of techniques for generating infants which, if implemented, would constitute the first cases of large-scale human genetic engineering. These techniques are widely referred to - by their scientist-creators and other proponents, by journalists, by bioethicists, by members of regulatory panels, by legislators, and even by some critics of the procedures - as "mitochondrial transfer" or "mitochondrial replacement." These scientifically inaccurate descriptions have been instrumental in easing the way to public acceptance of these manipulations.

What exactly are these techniques? An isolated nucleus from the egg of one woman is inserted into an enucleated (nucleus-lacking) egg of another woman. Done before fertilization, it is called "maternal spindle transfer" (MST). Done after, it is called "pronuclear transfer" (PNT). In fact, no transfer of mitochondria (the organelles that extract energy from fuel molecules and make it available for the cell's functions) is involved in these "three-parent" procedures. So why are they referred to as mitochondrial "transfer" or "replacement"?

Since it is true that nuclear genes of an affected woman or couple will eventually find themselves in the presence of mitochondria from a second woman, from the viewpoint of the first woman the mitochondria of her egg are "replaced." But this is only mitochondrial replacement in the sense that someone who moves into a new home may experience "refrigerator replacement," i.e., only by employing a highly idiosyncratic (and misleading) use of the term.

Focusing only on mitochondria ignores the other significant features of the second woman's egg such as its cytoplasmic and membrane composition and structure. In fact, the manipulation of the second woman's egg (i.e., the egg that will actually be implanted) constitutes a "genome transfer" or "genome replacement."

 Like cloning, the techniques involve replacement of an egg's nucleus by a nucleus from another cell.. Some human embryos constructed by MST unexpectedly had unbalanced chromosomal duplications (aneuploidy). This is the case because unlike the sorts of cellular aberrations repeatedly encountered over the course of evolution - breaks in DNA, the unfolding of protein molecules - the experimental combination of fragments of two broken cells generated by cloning or the two proposed techniques have no inbuilt mechanisms to correct the range of functional and developmental defects inevitably associated with their construction.

It is unfortunate that few science journalists have the training or inclination to assume a critical stance toward the assertions of the scientists they interview. It is therefore common to see these procedures described in the popular and scientific press as the mere replacement of the 37 mitochondrial genes (compared to the 20-25,000 of the nucleus). The scientists who promulgate the transfer/replacement imagery and those bioethicists who do the same know better. Indeed, bioethicists should be scrutinizing the scientists' practice and language as opposed to promoting their fantasies and business models. Their collusion in these deceptions is inexcusable.

Mitochondria are not mere energy-providing organelles. The very existence of mitochondrial DNA mutations affecting hearing, vision, pancreatic function and neuromuscular activity (the justifications of the entire enterprise), would be enough to tell us this.