{"id":1092,"date":"2005-10-17T00:18:52","date_gmt":"2005-10-17T00:18:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2005\/10\/vanity-of-vanities.html"},"modified":"2005-10-17T00:18:52","modified_gmt":"2005-10-17T00:18:52","slug":"vanity-of-vanities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/10\/vanity-of-vanities.html","title":{"rendered":"Vanity of Vanities"},"content":{"rendered":"

Not the first time we’ve heard of such a thing. Not the last, I’m sure, either. In twenty years, what will speculative fiction writers have left to write about? It’s the ultimate, death-dealing irony. Read the last line of the passage.<\/p>\n

We don’t want our unborn babies – unless we can use cells from their dead bodies to make us look younger.<\/a><\/p>\n

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Britons desperate to halt the ageing process are being injected with the stem cells of aborted foetuses at a clinic that charges \u00a315,000 for a controversial new cosmetic treatment. Despite warnings from biologists in the UK that the process is unproven and could be harmful, dozens of British women have flown to Barbados in the hope that the injections will make them forever young – and possibly even boost their sex drive. <\/p>\n

The treatment is also available in Ecuador, Russia and Ukraine, where it was developed by scientists to treat Parkinson’s disease and blood disorders. But converts claim that wrinkles can be ironed out and the fresh face of youth restored.<\/p>\n

"It is the most natural form of healing there is," said Barnett Suskind, chief executive of the Institute of Regenerative Medicine (IRM) in Barbados. "You think better, sleep better, look better. Your quality of life improves and your libido certainly improves."<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Not the first time we’ve heard of such a thing. Not the last, I’m sure, either. In twenty years, what will speculative fiction writers have left to write about? It’s the ultimate, death-dealing irony. Read the last line of the passage. We don’t want our unborn babies – unless we can use cells from their…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1092","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nVanity of Vanities - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/10\/vanity-of-vanities.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Vanity of Vanities - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Not the first time we’ve heard of such a thing. Not the last, I’m sure, either. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. 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