Rebecca Oas, Ph.D.
Rebecca Oas, Ph.D. is a Fellow of HLI America. Read her full bio here.
Thursday, May 17th, 2012
By Rebecca Oas, Ph.D.
(Zenit.org) – In 1960, the combined oral contraceptive pill was first approved for use in the United States. Seven years later, “the Pill” was featured on the cover of Time Magazine, illustrating its enormous societal impact[1]. Roughly two generations later, statistics from the United Nations show that, within more developed nations worldwide, just under 16% of “partnered” women use contraceptive pills, a number which does not include usage among single women[2].
However, even as the popularity of oral contraceptives remains high, the drugs themselves have been evolving in response to further discoveries about the human reproductive system, as well as efforts to reduce the Pill’s negative side effects. As with any major technological or medical development, particularly one embraced very quickly by a large sector of the population, it can take years, and even decades, for the full range of effects to become evident. And as demonstrated by several recent studies, many questions remain unanswered regarding the long-term and environmental effects of the hormones used in oral contraceptives, as well as other medical treatments.
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Tags: cancer, environment, the pill
Posted in Contraception and Sterilization, Feature Post, Rebecca Oas, Ph.D., Truth and Charity Forum | No Comments »
Friday, April 20th, 2012
By Rebecca Oas, Ph.D.
Georgia state Rep. Yasmin Neal recently achieved a measure of notoriety by introducing House Bill 1116, which proposed that men should be prevented from obtaining vasectomies. By her own admission, the bill contains a “hint of sarcasm.” In an interview with NPR host Michel Martin, Neal explained that her aim was to broaden the discussion on abortion restrictions for women by “simply drawing a comparison between one medical procedure versus another — one dealing with men versus one dealing with women.”
This legislative gesture came in response to another recent Georgia bill that would decrease the time window for elective abortions in the state from 26 to 20 weeks.
Neal admits that the comparison between vasectomy and abortion is not a perfect one — as, in her own words, “men can’t reproduce.” Presumably, by “reproduce,” she is referring to the gestation of a child, rather than the acts preceding conception. Nevertheless, the more obvious distinction between abortion and vasectomy is that abortion involves the destruction of an existing unborn person, whereas vasectomy does not. By equating the two, Neal is attempting to draw a moral equivalency between them, for the purpose of saying both should be fully legal.
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Tags: abortion, Georgia, marriage, vasectomies
Posted in Contraception and Sterilization, Feature Post, Marriage, Family & Sexuality, Rebecca Oas, Ph.D., Truth and Charity Forum | No Comments »
Thursday, April 19th, 2012
What They Don’t Know Might Hurt Them
By Rebecca Oas, Ph.D.
(Zenit.org) – In 2010, an article appeared in the UK newspaper The Telegraph reacting to a proposal to cut government funding for a certain beverage in schools. The author made the argument that the drink might be “doing more harm than good” and cited “negative side effects,” while noting that his viewpoint was heard relatively rarely in comparison to the large industry which vigorously promoted its product through advertising and with the support of government subsidies[1]. The substance in question was milk, which would seem on the surface to be more innocuous than those fearsome beverages that have also come under fire for being available in schools in recent years, soft drinks[2].
While the role of government in regulating access to these beverages in schools has varied, a key factor influencing school policies is the input of parents. A 2005 survey found that parents of adolescents had strong opinions regarding nutrition in schools, and encouraged health professionals in school settings to engage with parents in promoting good nutrition within the school environment[3]. While it may not be practical or even possible for a parent to monitor everything a child consumes while at school, this fact reflects only that substances like milk or soft drinks are widely available, and not subject to additional restrictions under the law. Furthermore, parents are not expressly prohibited from knowing their children’s dietary habits by mandate of either the school or the government.
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Tags: contraceptive implants, parental rights
Posted in Contraception and Sterilization, Feature Post, Marriage, Family & Sexuality, Politics and Faith, Rebecca Oas, Ph.D., Truth and Charity Forum | No Comments »
Friday, March 2nd, 2012
What’s to Come of Treating Children as Commodities?
By Rebecca Oas, Ph.D.
(Zenit.org) – In 1934, a French Canadian mother gave birth to five daughters who would become internationally famous as the first recorded set of quintuplets to survive infancy. During their childhood, the Dionne sisters became a popular tourist attraction and went on to appear in several Hollywood movies.
Seventy-five years later, Nadya Suleman, a single mother of six in California, gave birth to octuplets and became infamously known as the “Octomom,” following in vitro fertilization (IVF) conducted by a doctor whose license was subsequently revoked. Throughout human history, multiple births have been regarded with interest, sometimes bordering on morbid fascination as we approach and surpass the known limits of human reproductive capability, now with the assistance of novel scientific interventions.
Part of what makes multiple births interesting is their relative rarity. Within the United States, the rate of multiple births compared to total births remained relatively steady at close to 2% from the early 20thcentury to the early 1980s. However, in January, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a report in which they documented a dramatic increase in twins, triplets, and higher order multiple births in the United States between 1980 and 2009 (1). This reflects an international trend, as studies from other countries such as Canada and Japan reported similar findings (2,3). From a public health standpoint, as multiple births have been associated with a greater risk of prematurity and other resulting complications than single births (4), such a significant increase in twins and other multiples has important implications for health care standards.
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Tags: Donum Vitae, IVF
Posted in Beginning of Life, Bioethics, Feature Post, IVF, Rebecca Oas, Ph.D., Truth and Charity Forum | 1 Comment »
Friday, February 3rd, 2012
What Will Cure Contagious Blindness?
By Rebecca Oas, Ph.D.
(Zenit.org) – On Monday, Jan. 23, about 400,000 people marched in defense of the unborn in the United States capital. Despite the cold January weather and persistent rain, people from all over the country, as well as many international visitors, joined in the annual demonstration marking the anniversary of the Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion in the United States 39 years ago.
Those not purposely following the event, however, could well be forgiven for missing it entirely — in what has become a ritual counterpart to the march itself, the mainstream news media, both local and national, paid little attention.
Coverage of the march in the local newspaper, The Washington Post, has received criticism for its failure to present a complete image of the event. An editorial published in the Post on Friday the 27th criticized the photography in particular, noting that there was not a single wide shot of the march that might have given an indication of its scale, as well as the extent of coverage granted to the comparatively small number of counter-protesters.[1] According to the editorial, the Post does not estimate crowd size at such events, although a report regarding the national Occupy movement’s “Occupy Congress” march on the 17th apparently ignored this policy when it ventured to guess that the event drew 1,000 to 1,500 people — less than a hundred times fewer demonstrators than those estimated to have attended the March for Life.[2] The title of the Post article in Tuesday’s edition referenced “thousands of youths” being in attendance, which, while technically accurate, seems quite myopic for a news agency which claims to strive for unbiased reporting.[3]
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Tags: March for Life, Washington Post
Posted in Feature Post, Politics and Faith, Rebecca Oas, Ph.D., Truth and Charity Forum | No Comments »
Friday, December 9th, 2011
By Rebecca Oas, Ph.D.
(Zenit.org) – According to data from the World Health Organization, cardiovascular disease is the number one killer globally, resulting in an estimated 17.3 million deaths in 2008 alone (1). Such a mind-boggling number may make it difficult to appreciate the fact that each death means the loss of a human person, and a painful vacuum left in the lives of loved ones.
As difficult as this destructive illness may be both on a worldwide and on a personal level, some are beginning to see hope: Because cardiovascular disease accounts for 30% of global deaths, there are worldwide efforts to develop new and better treatments and improve prevention.
As these efforts have exploded over the last decade, stem cell therapy has emerged as perhaps the fastest growing area of interest in biomedical research, and funds from international venture capitalists and other investors have followed quickly behind. Among some of the more fascinating findings are those which demonstrate that some adult stem cells can be coaxed to become a specific cell type, and can then be used to regenerate diseased or injured tissues. Such research has raised hopes that conditions once thought incurable might prove to be treatable after all.
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Tags: adult stem cells, cardiovascular disease, embryonic stem cells, embryos
Posted in Feature Post, Rebecca Oas, Ph.D., Stem Cells, Truth and Charity Forum | 3 Comments »
Friday, November 18th, 2011
By Rebecca Oas, Ph.D.
Since mankind received the command to “be fruitful and multiply,” human fertility has been the subject of much attention, controversy and attempted manipulation. As our understanding of the mechanisms governing fertility has increased, so have efforts to harness the reproductive system and to cause it to conform to the wishes of individuals and societies; efforts which seem to increasingly portray fertility as a disease, and children as a threat to prosperity.
Drugs and devices that offer the promise of preventing, delaying or even ensuring the birth of a child are alluring in a culture which values convenience and material wealth as the greatest goods one might possess. In such a culture, ‘unwanted children’ are seen as burdens to be avoided, and they are routinely and shamefully discarded – both for being merely inconvenient and as byproducts of attempts to use such procedures as in vitro fertilization (IVF) to generate a “wanted” child.
While the use of science to better understand the workings of the human body is certainly a good thing, both for the simple pursuit of knowledge and to produce legitimate medical treatments, its findings often present dilemmas in moral and ethical discussions. Advances in the area of fertility which have the potential to save and preserve human life, or to enable an infertile married couple to become parents, may also be used to destroy fertility, induce abortion or manipulate the reproductive mechanism in ways that devalue parents and children alike.
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Tags: fertility, Nature Medicine, SGK1
Posted in Beginning of Life, Feature Post, IVF, Rebecca Oas, Ph.D., Truth and Charity Forum | 1 Comment »
Monday, November 14th, 2011
By Rebecca Oas, Ph.D.
Many of the arguments surrounding life issues take the form of weighing the value of saving or protecting one life over another. Arguments in favor of legal abortion routinely pit the well-being of the mother against that of the child in her womb, invoking rare complications as a means to justify ending a pregnancy that is merely “inconvenient.”
Similarly, proponents of human embryonic stem cell research argue that the destruction of embryos is ethical due to the potential for medical cures, despite the fact that, to date, no such cures have emerged. Those who would defend human life at all its stages will argue that the pro-life position is not a zero-sum game in which the benefit to one human life must come at the cost of another. But what if a simple, undemanding act of generosity, coupled with openness to life, could provide effective and proven medical treatments to people suffering from serious diseases?
Last week, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the first licensed therapy utilizing umbilical cord blood. This product, called HEMACORD, contains hematopoietic progenitor cells (HPCs), which are a type of stem cell that can give rise to many different blood cell types, including red blood cells and various types of white blood cells that play an essential role in the immune system. HPCs can be obtained from three sources: bone marrow, peripheral blood and umbilical cord blood, and their use in therapy would be directed toward patients suffering from leukemia or other blood disorders. Once a transplant has been performed, the HPCs from the cord blood travel to the bone marrow, where they give rise to the cell types needed to sustain the patient’s hematopoietic system.
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Tags: Blessed John Paul II, Dignitas Personae, Evangelium vitae, FDA, HEMACORD, HPC
Posted in Bioethics, Feature Post, Rebecca Oas, Ph.D., Stem Cells, Truth and Charity Forum | 1 Comment »
