NEW ORLEANS (CNS) — Adult stem cells, easily harvested from human bone marrow, umbilical cord blood and fat tissue, have a successful track record in treatments for more than 90 medical conditions and diseases, including sickle cell anemia, multiple myeloma cancer and damaged heart tissue.

Stem cells can be retrieved and used in treatments while doing no harm to donor or recipient.

So why do so many Americans, including some physicians, continue to champion research involving embryonic stem cells when this type of intervention has no documented cases of improving health and also requires the destruction of human life in its youngest form?

That question was pondered by David Prentice July 10 at the National Right to Life Convention during his presentation “Adult Stem Cells: Saving Lives Now.”

Prentice, vice president and research director for the Washington-based Charlotte Lozier Institute — the education and research arm of the pro-life Susan B. Anthony List — reported that more than 70,000 patients throughout the world are receiving adult stem-cell transplants annually, with an estimated 1 million total patients treated to date.

“How many people have been cured using embryonic stem cells?” Prentice asked his audience. “Zero,” he answered, noting that misinformation in the media and the Internet continues to promote “fairy tales” about the promise of embryonic stem cells in curing disease and being the elusive “fountain of youth” for mankind.

“You’ve got to destroy that young human being to get the embryonic stem cells,” Prentice said of the over-hyped technology.

Conversely, adult cells — undifferentiated cells that already exist among the differentiated cells that make up specific tissues or organs — can be isolated and deployed to various parts of the body to regenerate and repair diseased or damaged tissue.

There is more good news about adult stem cells besides its ethical supremacy, Prentice said. Unlike embryonic stem cells, adult stem cells are readily available to the majority of patients.

Many types of adult stem cells can be harvested in relatively painless, outpatient procedures. For example, adult stem cells from bone marrow, once accessible only by deep needle extraction, can now be collected in a process akin to giving blood. Another source of stem cells — fat tissue — can be tapped via liposuction.

Also, despite being tagged as “adult,” children can receive the therapy as early as the in-utero stage, and the donors of adult stem cells do not have to be adult at all.

“Babies are born with (adult) stem cells throughout their body,” said Prentice, an adjunct professor of molecular genetics at the Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family at the Catholic University of America. “The umbilical cord that we cut off after the baby is born is rich in what we call adult stem cells.”

Besides requiring the killing of human life, Prentice said, embryonic stem-cell research posed a major threat to women’s health that went largely unpublicized during the height of the push for this technology in the first decade of the 21st century. Women between the ages of 21 and 35 were actively sought and handsomely paid for their eggs to keep pace with the demands of heavily funded research. To harvest a woman’s eggs, the donor is given a regimen of hormones over a period of three to five days, Prentice said. Unforeseen side-effects included ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome, kidney failure and infertility.

“Some women have even died in the process,” Prentice said.

Because of these and other ethical objections, France, Canada, Germany, Norway, Switzerland and about 25 other countries, excluding the United States, have banned human cloning, which uses living embryos for experimental purposes before killing them in the lab.

“We’re actually behind the international curve here in the United States,” Prentice said, noting that the FDA has hit a new low by looking into the possibility of approving the production of three-parent embryos — those involving cellular donations from one father and two mothers.

To offset the bad press — including public repugnance to the idea of “designer babies” — Prentice said private companies seeking funding for embryonic stem cell research have begun to refer to cloning in a less “science fiction” way — as “somatic cell nuclear transfer.”

“It’s kind of science run amok,” Prentice said. “They’re not actually correcting or treating anybody (with embryonic stem cells). They’re talking about new individuals who will be genetically engineered to their specifications.”

Current protections in place include the federal Dickey-Wicker Amendment, which prohibits the use of taxpayer dollars to create or destroy human embryos for experiments; and some states, including Louisiana, have banned research related to human cloning and human-animal hybrids.

As adult stem cell treatments gain credibility in science journals, insurance companies increasingly are covering the procedures, Prentice notes.

Interventions in more experimental phases of study, such as those treating spinal cord injuries, are less likely to be covered by insurance plans, he said.

“The bottom line is the adult stem cells are the ones that work — they’re working now in patients,” Prentice said. “I’m telling you all these (stories of success), but you’re probably not seeing it in the news, right?”

Prentice said the website www.stemcellresearchfacts.org offers statistics and patient testimonials; information on current trials can be found at www.clinicaltrials.gov; and the Lozier Institute’s website is www.lozierinstitute.org.

— By Beth Donze, staff writer at the Clarion Herald, newspaper of the Archdiocese of New Orleans.

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — People make special preparations for welcoming a special guest, and watching what worked and did not work in Ecuador, Bolivia and Paraguay may help people preparing for Pope Francis’ visit to the United States in September.

Some of the plans, however, will require common-sense adjustments, especially because the U.S. Secret Service is likely to frown on certain behavior, like tossing things to the pope — a phenomenon that occurs much more often with Pope Francis than with any previous pope. At the Vatican, the items tend to be soccer jerseys and scarves; in Ecuador, it was flower petals — lots of them.

Watching the pope July 5-12 in South America it is clear:

• Pope Francis loves a crowd. He walks into events with little expression on his face, then lights up when he starts greeting, blessing, kissing and hugging people. Persons with disabilities, the sick and squirming babies come first.

• The pope does not mind being embraced, but he does not like people running at him. As a nun in Our Lady of Peace Cathedral in La Paz rushed toward Pope Francis July 8, the pope backed up and used both hands to gesture her to calm down and step back. In the end, she did get a blessing from him, though.

• In South America, Pope Francis specifically asked that his meetings with the bishops be private, informal conversations — similar to the way he handles the regular “ad limina” visits of bishops to the Vatican to report on the state of their dioceses. For the “ad limina” visits, he hands them the text of a rather general look at their country and Catholic community, then begins a discussion. But when he makes a formal speech to a group of bishops, his words can seem critical. But, in fact, the tone tends to be one of addressing his “fellow bishops” and his words are more of a collective examination of conscience than a scolding.

• 

  A meeting with priests, religious and seminarians is a fixture on papal trips within Italy and abroad; in Cuba and the United States, the meetings with take place during vespers services, Sept. 20 in Havana and Sept. 24 in New York. At vespers, like at Mass, Pope Francis tends to follow his prepared text. However, when the gathering takes place outside the context of formal liturgical prayer, he never follows the prepared text, even if he may hit the main points of the prepared text as he did in Bolivia July 9.

• At Mass, Pope Francis tends to be less animated. His focus and the focus he wants from the congregation is on Jesus present in the Eucharist. At large public Masses on papal trips, he sticks to the text of his prepared homilies, although he may look up and repeat phrases for emphasis.

• Pope Francis has said he needs a 40-minute rest after lunch and his official schedule always includes at least an hour of down time. However, like his “free” afternoons at the Vatican, the pope often fills the breaks with private meetings with friends, acquaintances or Jesuits. In fact, his trips abroad have always included private get-togethers with his Jesuit confreres, although in South America one of the meetings — in Guayaquil, Ecuador — was a luncheon formally included in the itinerary. But he also spent unscheduled time with Jesuits at Quito’s Catholic university the next day. In Paraguay, he made an unscheduled visit to 30 of his confreres in Asuncion and then went next door to their Cristo Rey School to meet with more than 300 students from Jesuit schools.

• Pope Francis’ speeches in general — whether to presidents, civic and business leaders, young people or even, for example, the prisoners in Bolivia — acknowledge what is going well and being done right, then seeks to build on that. It’s a combination of a pat on the back and a nudge forward. While Bolivia’s Palmasola prison is notorious for its difficult conditions and while the pope pleaded for judicial reform in the country, he also told the prisoners: “The way you live together depends to some extent on yourselves. Suffering and deprivation can make us selfish of heart and lead to confrontation.”

• Since the days of the globetrotting St. John Paul II, the nunciature stakeout has been a staple of papal trips. In fact, anywhere a pope sleeps, people will gather — shouting and singing — in the hopes that the pope will make a special appearance. St. John Paul, retired Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Francis have all obliged on occasion. Although in Quito, Ecuador, it seems that Pope Francis was inspired at least partially by the complaints of neighbors about the noise. The three nights Pope Francis stayed there, he came out to say good night. Increasingly his tone was that of a dad who had already told his children five times to go to bed.

— By Cindy Wooden, Catholic News Service.

JERUSALEM (CNS) — UNESCO declared Bethany Beyond the Jordan, on the eastern side of the Jordan River, as a World Heritage site and the location of Jesus’ baptism.

“The decision is logical. The Eastern side is where all the Byzantine antiquities and churches are located,” said Franciscan Father Eugenio Alliata, professor of Christian archaeology at Jerusalem’s Studium Biblicum Franciscanum. He said pilgrimages to the Western side began only about 600 years ago. “But for us it is the Jordan River, the middle, which is the most holy place.”

For years, Israel and Jordan have been at odds as to which side of the Jordan River is the actual site of Jesus’ baptism, as both sides vie for the title to increase tourism. Israel upgraded its shoreline with changing rooms and a wooden deck access to the murky waters.

But three popes have visited Jordan’s eastern shore as a sign of the Catholic Church’s official recognition of the site known as Bethany Beyond the Jordan. The Gospel of John (1:28 and 10:40) records this place as where John the Baptist carried out his baptisms, including that of Jesus.

Pope John Paul II made the first visit to the site on his millennial pilgrimage to the Holy Land in 2000, followed by Pope Benedict XVI in 2009 and Pope Francis last year.

The remains of more than 20 Christian sites over six centuries and dating to Roman and Byzantine periods have been discovered near the site. They include several churches, a prayer hall, baptismal pools and a sophisticated water reticulation system.

At least 12 new churches are under construction in the area, with the Catholic Church expected to become the largest church complex in the Middle East, at nearly 323,000 square feet.

Fr. Alliata said ancient iconography shows Jesus in the middle of the river rather than on any of the two shores, and there are accounts by ancient pilgrims of marble columns in the middle of the river marking the site of Jesus’ baptism.

“History has different ways of being remembered,” he said. “If there was an agreement between Israel and Jordan (on the issue) they could combine the place East and West. Both have importance, the East in ancient times and the West in modern times.”

— By Judith Sudilovsky, Catholic News Service. Contributing to this story was Dale Gavlak in Amman, Jordan.