Season's greetings

... with this last eNewsletter of 2007. A very Happy and Christ-centred Christmas to you and yours.

Three threats in HFE Bill

The HFE Bill is going through the Lords. A liaison committee meeting on 8 January will decide whether to set up a Lords Select Committee to consider abortion law review, but Report Stage debates with votes are due on 15 and 21 January. The Bill will probably have its Second Reading in the Commons in early February. Three threats:

• To human dignity – proposals to create animal-human hybrids
• To the family – plans to commodify children and create fatherless ones
• To life itself – with the real possibility of even more liberal abortion law

See more details online and do keep an eye on the regularly updated CMF homepage.

CMF will have spokespersons on every platform at a major UK roadshow featuring key parliamentarians – please support your nearest event in prayer and by getting church members and friends along. These threats need priority in prayer, lobbying and campaigning now and into 2008.

Thank you!

Including Gift Aid, the Autumn Appeal yielded a wonderful £215,000. This helped the Executive Committee achieve a balanced budget for 2008, and one happy consequence is that we can now advertise for a...

PA to the General Secretary

We would like to appoint from April a full time PA for Peter Saunders. Do take a look and draw this to the attention of any appropriate person you know.

Pastoral care for juniors and students

Students and juniors are often isolated in unfamiliar hospitals and cities and it can be a huge encouragement to have a local CMF graduate to talk to from time to time. CMF runs a pastoral care scheme to match individual juniors with established local CMF doctors, but we need more pastoral carers. We also want to link CMF students on clinical placement. If interested for a) juniors, b) clinical students on placement, or c) both, please email mark.pickering@cmf.org.uk.

Relief urgently needed in Pakistan

While most of us will enjoy comfort and rest this Christmas, a colourful letter from Pakistan tells another story. See HealthServe for further details.

Interested in short term teaching overseas?

PRIME (Partnerships in International Medical Education) are holding a conference titled The Heart of Medicine in Malaga, Spain, 13-14 March 2008 to help existing and potential PRIME tutors explore bringing back faith, hope and compassion to the heart of healthcare and to share these values with others. Opportunity to develop your teaching skills, using cutting edge learning styles used across different languages and cultures. Details and booking available online.

CMF Publications

You'll soon hear about the new book on Complementary & Alternative Medicine but current titles can be bought at the CMF Bookstore. We cannot ourselves take online payments yet, but you can purchase online through Amazon.

'The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us… full of grace and truth' (John 1: 14)