"Wake Up and Breathe" Strategy Allows Patients to Come Off Ventilator Sooner

Doctors Fix Spinal Fluid Leak With Glue

China's Southwest Provinces See Thousands Riot Over Forced Abortions

A Move For Birth Certificates for Stillborn Babies

Justice Department Seeks Expansive View of Partial Birth Abortion Ruling

National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy Changes Name, Broadens Focus

A Selfless Pro-Life Choice: Adoption

World Congress of Families Closes After Hearing Strong Pro-Life Speeches

Critical Care Without Consent: Ethicists Disagree on Experimenting During Crises

Pro-Family Candidate Elected President of France

Judge rules in favor of abortion protesters

Global Warming Debunked...        

"WAKE UP AND BREATHE" STRATEGY Allows Patients to Come Off Ventilator Sooner. A new study of intensive care unit patients who are breathing with the help of a mechanical ventilator has found that a two-step sedation and ventilator weaning protocol—called a “wake up and breathe” strategy—helps patients come off the ventilator faster so that they can be discharged from the ICU and hospital more quickly. The study is being presented at the American Thoracic Society 2007 International Conference in San Francisco. 

“On average, patients managed with the intervention spent four more days alive and out of the ICU and out of the hospital than those managed in the control group,” explained senior author Wes Ely, M.D., M.P.H., Professor of Medicine at Vanderbilt University and Associate Director of the Geriatric Research Education and Clinic Center.

In the first step of the protocol, the patient’s sedation is turned off, also known as a “spontaneous awakening trial.” “Almost all patients on a ventilator in the ICU receive sedating medications that keep them comfortable or even comatose,” says the study’s first author, Timothy Girard, M.D., M.S.C.I., also of the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in Nashville. “The spontaneous awakening trial (SAT) allows them to wake up, so we can find out if they are ready to proceed without sedation. If the patient is uncomfortable, we restart sedation, but a lot of patients are comfortable enough to proceed with the next step in the protocol.”

This second step involves allowing the patient to try breathing on their own without substantial help from the ventilator, called a “spontaneous breathing trial.” If the patient shows signs they are unable to breathe on their own, they are immediately placed back on full mechanical ventilation.
The multicenter study included 335 critically ill patients in four hospitals who were receiving mechanical ventilation. Patients managed with the combined “wake up and breathe” protocol (the SAT + SBT group) were compared with patients who were managed with daily spontaneous breathing trials and usual sedation practices (the SBT group). This group did not undergo formal awakening trials; their sedation was managed by their ICU doctors and nurses on a case-by-case basis.

The patients in the SAT+SBT group were able to breathe without the ventilator’s assistance an average of three days more and were discharged from the ICU and hospital an average of four days earlier than the SBT group. During the 28-day study, 47 patients in the SAT+SBT group died compared with 58 in the SBT group.

“Numbers on the monitor in the ICU aren’t very good at predicting if a patient is ready to come off a ventilator,” Dr. Girard says. “In the past, the process of turning sedation drugs off has been done separately from turning off the ventilator. Our study proved our hypothesis that if we connect these two processes, it will safely allow patients to come off the ventilator earlier.” [American Thoracic Society (ATS), 15May2007, http://www.newswise.com/articles/view/529961/?sc=dwhn, Newswise]

DOCTORS FIX SPINAL FLUID LEAK WITH GLUE. U.S. doctors injected a biosynthetic glue to seal off a spinal fluid leak and restore a comatose patient to consciousness.
Lead author Dr. Wouter I. Shievink of Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles said the procedure, described in a recent issue of The Lancet, is the first known report of a situation in which a patient's coma was reversed by the injection of glue.
The patient was suffering from low intracranial pressure caused by a small hole in the dura through which spinal fluid leaked. A team of neurosurgeons and neuroradiologists used CT scan guidance to carefully place a needle and inject a commonly used glue directly to the site of the leak, the hospital said Friday in a release. [26May07, Los Angeles, UPI, http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/Science/2007/05/26/doctors_fix_spinal_fluid_leak_with_glue/7096/] 

CHINA'S SOUTHWEST PROVINCES SEE THOUSANDS RIOT OVER FORCED ABORTIONS. Thousands of Chinese residents have been rioting in southwest China over the last few days as citizens confront local officials over a campaign of forced abortions there. The protests began after family planning authorities began forcibly aborting women for violations of the nation's one-child population policy. As LifeNews.com has previously reported, Chinese family planning officials in Guangxi province forced at least 61 women in April to have abortions as late as seven and nine months into pregnancy. Women said were forced to have abortions because they were unmarried, while other women were married and pregnant with their second child. The abortions have all occurred at the Youjiang District People's Hospital of Baise City, where local officials denied the forced abortions were occurring. Because of the alleged violations of the family planning policy, officials in Guangxi recently increased fines for offenders and began seizing or destroying the property of people who cannot pay the fines. Officials have issued fines from 500 yuan, or about $65, to 70,000 yuan, or about $9,000, on families who violated the policy at any time since 1980. But some of the citizens of the area say the fines were instituted even on people who had already paid them. However, failure to pay the fines is leading officials to destroy homes of those who don't cough up the money. Responding to the government's actions, local people in Guangxi overturned cars and set fire to government buildings and riot police entered at least four towns in the province to suppress the protesters. [23May07, Beijing, China LifeNews.com]

A MOVE FOR BIRTH CERTIFICATES FOR STILLBORN BABIES. Last summer, three weeks before her due date, Sari Edber delivered a stillborn son, Jacob. “He was 5 pounds and 19 inches, absolutely beautiful, with my olive complexion, my husband’s curly hair, long fingers and toes, chubby cheeks and a perfect button nose,” she said.
The sudden shift from what she called “a perfectly wonderful healthy pregnancy” to delivering a dead infant was unfathomably painful, said Ms. Edber, 27, who lives in Los Angeles with her husband, Daniel.
“The experience of giving birth and death at the exact same time is something you don’t understand unless you’ve gone through it,” Ms. Edber said. “The day before I was released from the hospital, the doctor came in with the paperwork for a fetal death certificate, and said, ‘I’m sorry, but this is the only document you’ll receive.’ In my heart, it didn’t make sense. I was in labor. I pushed, I had stitches, my breast milk came in, just like any other mother. And we deserved more than a death certificate.”

So Ms. Edber joined with others who had experienced stillbirth to push California legislators to pass a bill allowing parents to receive a certificate of birth resulting in stillbirth.

In the last six years, 19 states, including New Jersey, have enacted laws allowing parents who have had stillbirths to get such certificates. Similar legislation is under consideration in several more, among them New York. More than 25,000 pregnancies a year end in stillbirth, generally defined as a naturally occurring, unintentional intrauterine death after more than 20 weeks of gestation. A cause for the death is usually not determined.

To thousands of parents who have experienced stillbirth, getting a birth certificate is passionately important, albeit symbolic.

“It’s dignity and validation,” said Joanne Cacciatore, an Arizona woman who started the movement after her daughter, Cheyenne, was stillborn 13 years ago. “It’s the same reason why we want things like marriage licenses and baptismal certificates.”

But politically, the birth-certificate laws, often referred to as “Missing Angels” bills, occupy uncertain territory, skirting the abortion debate while implicitly raising the question of fetal personhood.

Many antiabortion groups say the laws fill a need for parents. But some abortion rights supporters see the push for these laws as a barely disguised political move to undermine abortion rights.

In some states, local chapters of abortion rights groups have opposed the legislation. But at the national level, some abortion rights groups are comfortable with the laws, if they are drafted carefully to cover naturally occurring fetal death and not late-term abortion.

“At a level of great abstraction, there are probably some people who worry that recognizing a nonviable fetus as a person would in some way be a seed that could sprout into a threat to abortion,” said Roger Evans, a lawyer for the Planned Parenthood Federation of America. “But I don’t think we see it that way. We recognize the tragedy and loss of stillbirth, and as long as these laws are medically accurate, and the certificates are optional and commemorative, they’re a way to recognize that loss.”

Last month, Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico vetoed legislation that would have granted stillborn birth certificates. Mr. Richardson, a Democrat who is running for president, did not mention abortion, but said “confusion and potential fraud” could result from creating two documents — the fetal death certificate and the birth certificate resulting in stillbirth — for the same event.

Those who support the stillbirth certificates say fraud would be impossible because the certificates make clear that there is no living child.

Generally, the bills are retroactive, so parents can get a certificate even for long-ago stillbirths. Parents who request certificates must pay a small fee, and can record a name or leave the name line blank.

Some counselors who work with grieving parents say the legislation would be unnecessary if hospitals did more to recognize the loss, through informal “memory certificates.”

“Parents want some kind of certificate, something they can frame that physically acknowledges the birth,” said Perry-Lynn Moffit, a counselor with the Pregnancy Loss Support Program of the National Council of Jewish Women in New York City. “Having to sign a fetal death certificate triggers a lot of feelings. As one dad said to me, that’s only half the story.”

Ms. Moffit said she was troubled by the term “Missing Angels,” with its religious overtones suggesting that stillborn babies become cherubs in heaven.

Prodded by Ms. Cacciatore, Arizona was the first state to provide birth certificates for stillbirth. Ms. Cacciatore also founded the M.I.S.S. Foundation, a nonprofit group that coordinates the campaign for these certificates and also advocates for increased research to help prevent stillbirth and infant death.

“I thought about suicide every day after Cheyenne’s birth,” Ms. Cacciatore said. “I loved this baby; I went through all the physical pain of delivering her. I had her baby book prepared, with the place for her birth certificate.”

When the state office of vital records mailed a death certificate instead, she said, “I literally dropped it.” She added, “When I called and asked for my daughter’s birth certificate, the woman asked how she died, and when I told her, she said I didn’t have a baby, I had a fetus, and I couldn’t get a birth certificate.”

Frustrated, Ms. Cacciatore began a support group for mourning parents. She said she received 250 e-mail messages a day through the group, and her foundation has 27 online support groups with 25,000 members.

Yet, the concept of birth certificates for stillbirth raises complicated questions. In heated Web discussions, some people cite the parents’ deep need for validation while others say birth certificates are legal documents, not memory trinkets or prizes for enduring birthing.

“Any way that acknowledges the child is important,” said Catherine Shandler, of Montclair, N.J., who lost her daughter, Emma, three years ago, two weeks before the due date. Emma remains part of the family, Ms. Shandler said, a presence she will someday discuss with her son, Benjamin, 20 months old, and a daughter, India, born Saturday.

It is often hard to know what to say, she said.
“When you say you had a stillbirth, some people can’t wrap their head around the fact that there was a baby,” said Ms. Shandler, who said she supports abortion rights. When people ask if she has children, she said, sometimes she mentions Emma, and sometimes she does not. But, she added, “I want to acknowledge that Emma existed.”
[22May07, By TAMAR LEWIN http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/22/us/22stillbirth.html?ref=us&pagewanted=print

JUSTICE DEPARTMENT SEEKS EXPANSIVE VIEW OF PARTIAL-BIRTH ABORTION RULING. Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- The Justice Department, in its first formal filing in court interpreting the Supreme Court's April 18 ruling upholding a federal ban on an abortion procedure, told a federal appeals court on Thursday that the ruling sweeps so broadly that challengers should not be allowed to pursue claims that the Supreme Court did not resolve. The government submitted a nine-page supplemental letter brief in National Abortion Federation v. Gonzales to the Second Circuit. In its most significant argument to the Second Circuit Court, the Department suggested that the opponents of the 2003 Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act be barred from bringing any new case contending that the ban violates women's constitutional right to equality. That is an argument that got the implied support of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in her dissent from the April 18 ruling. Her dissent might have led pro-abortion groups to try that theory as an alternative way of contesting the ban now that their facial challenge has failed on a due process complaint. Although the Carhart decision did not address the equal protection argument, the Department contended: "The Supreme Court's decision in Carhart that the Act does not violate the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment does not leave any room for plaintiffs to turn around and argue that the Act violates the equal protection component of the same clause." Moreover, it argued, the Supreme Court has always based the so-called right to abortion on due process, not equal protection, principles. [14May07, LifeNews.com]

NATIONAL CAMPAIGN TO PREVENT TEEN PREGNANCY CHANGES NAME, BROADENS FOCUS. Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- The National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy is changing its name to the National Campaign and will focus on preventing unintended pregnancies in addition to preventing teen pregnancies, the Washington Times reports. The group launched in 1996 and set a goal of helping reduce the U.S. teen pregnancy rate by one-third, according to the Times. The group last year set a new goal of reducing the rate by one-third after seeing a 36% drop in the teen pregnancy rate and a 50% drop in the teen abortion rate since its launch. Former New Jersey Gov. Thomas Kean, a pro-abortion Republican who is the chair of the group, said the organization's new campaign will aim to "bring more intentionality and planning into pregnancy." According to the Times, the campaign plans to work with health officials, researchers, the entertainment industry, faith-based groups, responsible fatherhood groups and pregnancy prevention groups, including those that advocate abstinence. Sarah Brown, CEO of the campaign, said that adoptions should be encouraged but that it is unlikely to be a major part of curbing unintended pregnancy because there were only 14,000 adoptions of U.S. infants in the last year. [14May07, LifeNews.com]

A SELFLESS PRO-LIFE CHOICE: ADOPTION AS AN ABORTION ALTERNATIVE. by Ken Connor In the aftermath of the Supreme Court decision upholding the ban on partial birth abortion, proponents of abortion have reacted as if the sky were falling. Abortion proponents have grimly announced that a "womans right to choose" is in peril. Of course, they speak about the "right to choose" only in the abstract; they are careful not to identify the choice they have in view. The morality of any "choice" under consideration, however, cannot be divorced from the thing that is being chosen. Choices are not mere abstractions. They are concrete, and they have consequences. Let's not kid ourselves about what is at stake in the "choice" debate. When abortion advocates talk about the "right to choose", they are not talking about the right to choose between chocolate and vanilla. They are talking about the right to choose to kill an innocent unborn child. The fact that a mother would contemplate killing her child, and that there are those who zealously advocate such a "choice", is evidence that something has gone very, very wrong in our society. As the Feminists for Life slogan puts it, "women deserve better than abortion." Indeed they do, and so do their children. Adoption is an option that is not discussed nearly enough in the public debate about "choice". Rarely is the case for adoption made with the same vigor as the case for abortion. Part of the zeal for abortion is fueled by money. We should never forget that abortion is a multi-million dollar industry. With that kind of money at stake, it is easy to see why abortion proponents get so pumped up. [14May07, LifeNews.com]

WORLD CONGRESS OF FAMILIES CLOSES AFTER HEARING STRONG PRO-LIFE SPEECHES. Warsaw, Poland (LifeNews.com) -- Among other speakers at its closing session, World Congress of Families IV heard from Cardinal Alfonso López Trujillo, head of the Pontifical Council on the Family, and Margarita Zabala Gomez Del Campo, First Lady of Mexico. The letter from Mexico's First Lady observed, "Today, more than ever before throughout the world there is a need to think of the family, because when you protect the family, you are protecting society and the nation." The 3,300 delegates to the Congress brought together pro-life advocates from across the globe to talk about the latest political and social issues. Andrea Summers, student at Arizona State University, said she appreciated her time there. "When I go back to my campus in the fall, I'll be better prepared to confront abortion advocates," she said. That platform has no legal binding but is designed to give family advocacy groups from around the world the backing of a larger coalition as the groups lobby their local and national lawmakers. Sessions included: "Pro-Family Initiatives;" "Marriage As a Social Good - Why Get Married?", "Bioethics - 21st Century Challenge to Human Dignity," "Beyond The Contraceptive Mentality" and "Legalized Euthanasia or Family Care." As a euthanasia panelist, Fr. Thomas Euteneuer, the president of Human Life International, stated, "When in any society, the natural family is denied its basic rights to care for its members or when it is deprived of its social and legal protections, it very soon becomes victim of the aggressive forces that promote killing on a massive scale and stands before these forces vulnerable to their depredations." Delegates agreed that much needs to be done to counter deleterious trends and make governmental leaders and the general public aware of the indispensability of the gift of human life. [14May07, LifeNews.com]

CRITICAL CARE WITHOUT CONSENT: ETHICISTS DISAGREE ON EXPERIMENTING DURING CRISES. The federal government is undertaking the most ambitious set of studies ever mounted under a controversial arrangement that allows researchers to conduct some kinds of medical experiments without first getting patients' permission.

The $50 million, five-year project, which will involve more than 20,000 patients in 11 sites in the United States and Canada, is designed to improve treatment after car accidents, shootings, cardiac arrest and other emergencies.

The three studies, organizers say, offer an unprecedented opportunity to find better ways to resuscitate people whose hearts suddenly stop, to stabilize patients who go into shock and to minimize damage from head injuries. Because such patients are usually unconscious at a time when every minute counts, it is often impossible to get consent from them or their families, the organizers say.

The project has been endorsed by many trauma experts and some bioethicists. Others question it. The harshest critics say the research violates fundamental ethical principles.

The organizers said the studies are going forward only after an exhaustive scientific and ethical review by the National Institutes of Health, which authorized the funding in 2004, and the Food and Drug Administration, which approved the first phase about a year ago and the second phase six months ago.

The studies are being conducted by the Resuscitation Outcomes Consortium, a network of medical centers that do research in Seattle, Portland, San Diego, Dallas, Birmingham, Pittsburgh, Milwaukee, Toronto and Ottawa, and in Iowa and British Columbia.

The first experiments, involving nearly 6,000 patients, involve patients who are in shock or have suffered head injuries from a car crash, a fall or some other trauma.

About 40,000 such patients show up at hospitals each year, and the standard practice is to give them saline infusions to stabilize their blood pressure. For the study, emergency medical workers are randomly infusing some patients with "hypertonic" solutions containing much higher levels of sodium, with or without a drug called dextran. Animal research and small human studies have indicated that hypertonic solutions could save more lives and minimize brain damage.

The next experiment, which will involve about 15,000 patients, is designed to determine how best to revive patients whose hearts suddenly stop beating. About 180,000 Americans suffer these sudden cardiac arrests each year.

Emergency medical workers often shock these patients immediately to try to get their hearts started again. But some do a few minutes of cardiopulmonary resuscitation first. Researchers want to determine which tactic works better by randomly trying one or the other -- both with and without a special valve attached to devices used to push air into the lungs during CPR. That study is expected to start next month.

"We will never know the best way to treat people unless we do this research. And the only way we can do this research, since the person is unconscious, is without consent," said Myron L. Weisfeldt of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, who is overseeing the project. "Even if there are family members present, they know their loved one is dying. The ambulance is there. The sirens are going off. You can't possibly imagine gaining a meaningful informed consent from someone under those circumstances."

Before starting the research at each site, researchers complete a "community consultation" process. Local organizers try to notify the public about the study and gauge the reaction through public meetings, telephone surveys, Internet postings and advertisements, and through reports in local news media. Anyone who objects can get a special bracelet to alert medical workers that they refuse to participate.

The project proceeds only after also being vetted by a set of local independent reviewers known as an institutional review board. Another group of independent advisers known as a data safety monitoring board will periodically review the study for any signs of problems.

Despite such oversight, some previous similar projects have sparked intense debate. Most recently, a study testing a blood substitute called PolyHeme was criticized for putting patients at risk without consent.

In fact, concerns raised by the PolyHeme study and others prompted the FDA to launch a review of the entire program that permits experiments to be done without consent in emergency situations.

"The ethics and policy concern is how you balance the streamlining of research to get the best information to treat patients against the moral imperative to get consent," said Nancy M.P. King, a bioethicist at Wake Forest University School of Medicine. "The emergency consent exception is supposed to carve out a very narrow window. What's been happening is that narrow window seems to be expanding."

Some bioethicists say the new research is more ethical than some of the earlier studies in several ways, including that patients are not being denied highly effective therapies. Most patients who receive the current treatments do not survive.

"I understand why there might be concerns, but I think ethically this is permissible," said Arthur R. Derse, a bioethicist at the Medical College of Wisconsin, which refused to participate in the PolyHeme study. "The treatments we currently have are unsatisfactory."

But others say that the studies could be done by finding patients or family members who are in a position to provide consent, even though that might make such studies more difficult.

"This just seems like lazy investigators not wanting to try to get informed consent in situations where it is difficult to get it, so they say it is impossible," said George J. Annas, a Boston University bioethicist. "I don't think we should use people like this."

Annas was particularly disturbed that children as young as 15 might be included in the research.

"Suppose a 15-year-old child is in the back of a car that is in a terrible accident," Annas said. "The EMTs arrive and say: 'We are doing an experiment with two techniques. We think they are about equal. Is it okay if we flip a coin to see how we treat your son? Or would you rather we just give him the treatment we think is best?' Unless you think all parents would have the EMTs flip a coin, consent here is necessary."

Others are concerned patients may be getting experimental therapies that could turn out to be inferior to standard treatments. "The most promising experimental medical interventions have often been shown to be less effective than standard treatment," said Kenneth Kipnis, a University of Hawaii bioethicist.

The "community consultation" process has also come under fire.

"Community consultation is intended to be a collaboration with the community of potential subjects, not just letting them know what the plan is," said King, the Wake Forest bioethicist.

But Weisfeldt at Johns Hopkins said the critics would be unhappy under any circumstances.
"Some people object to the whole concept of doing any study whatsoever without permission," Weisfeldt said. "We try to explain all the layers of approval we've gone through and that this is the only way we can do the kind of research that could save many more lives in the future." [27May07, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/26/AR2007052600982_pf.html, by Rob Stein, Washington Post, A01]

PRO-FAMILY CANDIDATE ELECTED PRESIDENT OF FRANCE: "Our model must remain that of a heterosexual family: children need a father and a mother". Nicholas Sarkozy was elected 6May07 to a five-year term as president of France, in a solid win indicating the strength of public support for a decisive change in the leadership policies for the nation. Key among the differences between Sarkozy and his main competitor socialist Ségolène Royal was their opposite opinions on the legalization of homosexual 'marriage' and euthanasia.

The leader of the centre-right Union for a Popular Movement, Sarkozy won the vote with 53.06 percent. Top contender Royal, received 46.94 percent of votes cast. Reports showed a high voter turnout, with 75 percent of registered voters casting their ballots. In total, 85 percent of those registered to vote turned up at the polls. In his victory speech Sarkozy reached out to all citizens of France with a pledge to be the president "for all the French people."

"The French people have spoken and have chosen to make a break with the ideas, the customs and the behaviour of the past. I am thus going to restore the status of work, authority, standards, respect, merit. I am going to give the place of honour back to the nation and national identity. I am going to give back to the French people pride in France," he said. While stating his sincere belief in European construction, Sarkozy said France's European partners must be aware of the voice of those who do not want changes imposed upon them. With the weeks preceding the election filled with stories of the European Parliament condemning Poland for its stand in favour of the traditional family, many are welcoming a comment from Sarkozy's election speech which seems to address the matter. "I entreat our European partners not to remain deaf to the anger of people who perceive the European Union not as a source of protection but as the Trojan horse of all the threats that come with the changes in the world," he said.
Coverage: France: Royal Campaign Demonizes Leading Candidate Sarközy for "Hard Right" Views -- http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2007/may/07050107.html

Major Signs of Religious Revival Seen in France and Quebec
http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2006/may/06052606.html

France's Choice for President: Gay "Marriage" or Re-Marriage Between Church and State
http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2006/jun/06061906.html
[7May07, By Gudrun Schultz and John-Henry Westen, PARIS, France, LifeSiteNews.com]

JUDGE RULES IN FAVOR OF ABORTION PROTESTERS. A federal judge issued a final judgment 8May07 reiterating what the U.S. Supreme Court said more than a year ago -- that federal extortion and
racketeering laws cannot be used against anti-abortion protesters. The judgment from U.S. District Judge David Coar cites the 8-0 decision by the high court in February 2006 that sides with defendants, including Chicago-based anti-abortion leader Joseph Scheidler.
''We were very happy to have it over with,'' Scheidler, national director of the Pro-Life Action League, told The Associated Press. ''It's been 21 years now of being under the gun.''
The legal fight began in 1986, when the National Organization for Women filed a class-action suit challenging tactics used by Scheidler's group to block women from entering abortion clinics.
NOW's strategy was a novel one, relying on civil provisions of the 1970 Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, which was used predominantly in criminal cases against organized crime. After three hearings before the Supreme Court, justices eventually decided 8-0 that RICO cannot be used against abortion clinic protesters. Coar's ruling Tuesday also vacates a 1999 injunction against Scheidler's group and others. Scheidler said Tuesday's ruling gives abortion protesters more freedom by removing the threat of RICO lawsuits. ''It's really about free speech,'' he said. The cases are Scheidler v. NOW, 04-1244, and Operation Rescue v. NOW, 04-1352. [May 8, 2007, Associated Press, K Hawkins, Pro-Life E-News, , http://www.suntimes.com/news/metro/376534,protest050807.article]

GLOBAL WARMING DEBUNKED. Climate change will be considered a joke in five years time, meteorologist Augie Auer told the annual meeting of Mid Canterbury Federated Farmers in Ashburton this week.
Man's contribution to the greenhouse gases was so small we couldn't change the climate if we tried, he maintained.  "We're all going to survive this. It's all going to be a joke in five years," he said.
A combination of misinterpreted and misguided science, media hype, and political spin had created the current hysteria and it was time to put a stop to it. "It is time to attack the myth of global warming," he said. Water vapour was responsible for 95 per cent of the greenhouse effect, an effect which was vital to keep the world warm, he explained.
"If we didn't have the greenhouse effect the planet would be at minus 18 deg C but because we do have the greenhouse effect it is plus 15 deg C, all the time." The other greenhouse gases: carbon dioxide, methane, nitrogen dioxide, and various others including CFCs, contributed only five per cent of the effect, carbon dioxide being by far the greatest contributor at 3.6 per cent.
However, carbon dioxide as a result of man's activities was only 3.2 per cent of that, hence only 0.12 per cent of the greenhouse gases in total. Human-related methane, nitrogen dioxide and CFCs etc made similarly minuscule contributions to the effect: 0.066, 0.047 and 0.046 per cent respectively.
"That ought to be the end of the argument, there and then," he said.
"We couldn't do it (change the climate) even if we wanted to because water vapour dominates."
Yet the Greens continued to use phrases such as "The planet is groaning under the weight of CO2" and Government policies were about to hit industries such as farming, he warned.
"The Greens are really going to go after you because you put out 49 per cent of the countries emissions. Does anybody ask 49 per cent of what? Does anybody know how small that number is? It's become a witch-hunt; a Salem witch-hunt," he said. [LifeSiteNews.com, 22 May 2007; Andrew Swallow, The Timaru Herald, timaruherald.co.nz, http://www.stuff.co.nz/timaruherald/4064691a6571.html, 19 May 2007]
Related: There's at least one CEO left who is not buying global warming hysteria
http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110010098
New findings indicate today's greenhouse gas levels not unusual
http://www.thehilltimes.ca/members/login.php?fail=2&destination=/html/index.php?display=story&full_path=2007/may/14/climatescience/&c=2
Canadian Front Page: ‘Experts Say Many of the Claims in Al Gore’s Film Are Wrong’
http://newsbusters.org/node/12883
College Students Forced to Watch Al Gore’s ‘An Inconvenient Truth’
http://newsbusters.org/node/12859
Leonardo DiCaprio Film Claims Global Warming Could Cause Human Extinction
http://newsbusters.org/node/12878
British Documentary ‘The Great Global Warming Swindle’ to Air on Aussie TV
http://newsbusters.org/node/12925
Is Kyoto architect Maurice Strong in failing health?
http://www.canadafreepress.com/2007/cover051707a.htm
Media Ignore European Energy Politics to Advance Global Warming Alarmism
http://newsbusters.org/node/12873
Another State Climatologist Bashes Al Gore and Global Warming Alarmism
http://newsbusters.org/node/12819