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Mother Angelica hospitalized
EWTN founder suffers second stroke
Mother Angelica, the founder of the EWTN television network, was hospitalized after suffering a stroke on Christmas Eve.
Mother Angelica was previously hospitalized in September after what her doctors characterized as a mild stroke. A second stroke on Christmas Eve sent her again to the hospital, where doctors operated to relieve a blood clot in her brain.

After nearly two weeks of hospital treatment, doctors treating Mother Angelica upgraded her condition from “Serious” to “Fair.” She remained in intensive care. Sister Mary Catherine, Mother Vicar of Our Lady of the Angels Monastery, said, “Mother’s progress is due totally to the prayers, Rosaries, and Mass intentions offered for her recovery from people around the world.” She added, “Everyone, please continue praying for her.”

The Poor Clare nun founded EWTN twenty years ago, and built the Catholic television network to its present status, reaching 70 million homes. ETWN radio broadcasts are now available all across the world.

Cuts urged in population funding
Programs tied to abortion
Pro-life and pro-family groups have called for US President George W. Bush to cut funding for the UN Population Fund (UNFPA)—funding that Congress placed at his discretion in a new spending bill.

Congress passed the $15.4-billion foreign aid bill, including $34 million for UNFPA—a $3.5-million decline from last year’s authorization. Under current administration policy that money and another $446.5 million earmarked for family-planning programs cannot go to groups that provide or advocate abortions.

The Population Research Institute (PRI) has called on the President to exercise his discretion as to how the money is allocated to particular groups, and defund the UNFPA. “President Bush has been handed the perfect opportunity to oppose forced abortion and forced sterilization in China,” said PRI president Steven W. Mosher. “He should defund the UNFPA because of its support of these and other human rights abuses in China.”

While UNFPA denies that such abuses take place, PRI has presented Congress with videotaped statements from Chinese victims of forced abortion and forced sterilization that were part of a UNFPA program.

The Family Research Council (FRC) has also urged Bush to “zero out” funding to UNFPA. “After eight years of pro-abortion policies under Clinton, President Bush has the opportunity to put a halt to the funding of coercive abortion policies in countries like China,” FRC president Ken Connor said. He continued:

The UNFPA is not being honest about its involvement. There is ample evidence of their cooperation with and approval of China’s one-child policy. Any financial support of this organization is an end-run around the president’s Mexico City Policy and a violation of the spirit of the law.

Stem-cell lab rats show tumors
A dark side of “promising” research
Proponents of the use of embryonic stem cells won a media victory early in January, when scientists announced that the use of stem cells seemed to ease the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease in laboratory rats. The headline stories prompted by that announcement generally overlooked another finding from the same study: several of the rats developed brain tumors.

The study injected embryonic stem cells into the brains of lab rats which had been treated to exhibit symptoms of Parkinson’s disease. In a study appearing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers at Harvard Medical School and McLean Hospital in Massachusetts showed that embryonic stem cells eased the Parkinson’s symptoms.

However, five of the 19 rats used in the experiment developed tumors. And Dr. Arlene Y. Chiu of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke revealed that in most previous studies, even more laboratory animals had developed tumors. That fact, although it was not widely reported, cast a pall over the prospect for the use of embryonic stem cells in the treatment of human subjects.

Back to Catholic World Report February 2002 Table of Contents