It is not news that science uses both animal and human tissue in the investigation of a wide variety of life processes. Modern medicine has made leaps and bounds in learning how to treat diseases, mostly as a result of legitimate experiments done by scientists who may or may not be medical doctors.

It is also not news that some scientific experiments use aborted fetuses of all ages.  And it is  not news that in the current "politically correct" way of thinking the only difference between a fetus and a baby is that the baby is a fetus that somebody wanted alive.  Some fetuses scheduled for abortion have proved highly viable!

What is news is that there may be a profit motive behind some of the vehement support for abortion "rights."  Private investigations suggest that there are companies working with abortion clinics to provide anything from specific glands to whole fetuses, in large quantites, and that the process of  functioning as the intermediary between the clinic and the researchers is a profitable process.  According to the private investigations, the intermediary has been able to "donate" money to the clinic to help offset their costs.  Again according to the private investigations, the clinicians performing the abortions inform themselves ahead of time exactly which specimens are currently being requested and alter their protocol to maximize the probability of getting the desired specimens.

If the results of the private investigations are true, there are several undesirable outcomes.  One is that obviously federal law is being violated.  However, much worse is that the focus of the abortion clinic is no longer simply the care of the mother who wants an abortion.  The focus is now  blurred by the doctor who wants to get the best fetal specimens so that the clinic will get the best price.  It is blurred by the clinicians who now have an additional financial reason to persuade the mother to allow the clinic complete authority in the disposition of the baby.

Certainly a doctor who profits from the abortion under these circumstances would have even less motivation to carefully assess the age of the fetus to rule out the abortion of those fetuses who are viable with current technology.

Current federal law prohibits the profiting from the sale of the unborn, no matter what the age. The National Institutes of Health Revitalization Act of 1993 made it a federal felony for any person to knowingly, for ‘valuable consideration’, purchase or sell the organs and bodies of aborted children.  Is the law being violated?

Below is a bit of information on how our federal legislators are responding to this concern.

HOUSE ACTION ON SELLING FETAL BODY PARTS

On 11/9/99, the House, by voice vote, passed a measure urging its members to investigate whether private companies are violating federal law by profiting from the sale of fetal parts from abortions. The resolution passed by voice vote.

SENATE REJECTS FETAL TISSUE REGULATION

On 10/21/99, by a vote of 46 - 51, the Senate rejected an amendment to the partial-birth abortion ban (S 1692) to regulate the use of aborted fetal tissue. Both Senators Moynihan and Schumer voted against the amendment, i.e., they opposed regulation of the use of aborted fetal tissue.

The amendment, sponsored by Sen. Bob Smith (I-N.H.), would have required anyone receiving such fetal tissue to disclose what abortion procedure was used, how old the fetus was, how the tissue would be used, the names of all those involved in the transfer and whether money was exchanged in the transfer. Smith acknowledged the current law but also reported the certainty that fetal body parts are being sold in the US.

Smith also announced his intent to introduce a bill to ban the practice of marketing fetal parts.

BODY PARTS FOR SALE
Mona Charen, November 9, 1999

"Kelly" (a pseudonym) was a medical technician working for a firm that trafficked in baby body parts. This is not a bad joke. Nor is it the hysterical propaganda of an interest group. It was reported in The American Enterprise magazine -- the intelligent, thought-provoking and utterly trustworthy publication of the American Enterprise Institute.

The firm Kelly worked for collected fetuses from clinics that performed late-term abortions. She would dissect the aborted fetuses in order to obtain "high-quality" parts for sale. They were interested in blood, eyes, livers, brains and thymuses, among other things.

"What we did was to have a contract with an abortion clinic that would allow us to go there on certain days. We would get a generated list each day to tell us what tissue researchers, pharmaceutical companies and universities were looking for. Then we would examine the patient charts.

"We only wanted the most perfect specimens." That didn't turn out to be difficult. Of the hundreds of late-term fetuses Kelly saw on a weekly basis, only about 2 percent had abnormalities. About 30 to 40 babies per week were around 30 weeks old -- well past the point of viability.

Is this legal? Federal law makes it illegal to buy and sell human body parts. But there are loopholes in the law. Here's how one body parts company -- Opening Lines Inc. -- disguised the trade in a brochure for abortionists: "Turn your patient's decision into something wonderful."

For its buyers, Opening Lines offers "the highest quality, most affordable, freshest tissue prepared to your specifications and delivered in the quantities you need, when you need it."

Eyes and ears go for $75, and brains for $999. An "intact trunk" fetches $500, a whole liver $150. To evade the law's prohibition, body-parts dealers like Opening Lines offer to lease space in the abortion clinic to "perform the harvesting," as well as to "offset [the] clinic's overhead."

Opening Lines further boasted, "Our daily average case volume exceeds 1500 and we serve clinics across the United States."

Kelly kept at her grisly task until something made her reconsider. One day, "a set of twins at 24 weeks gestation was brought to us in a pan. They were both alive. The doctor came back and said, 'Got you some good specimens -- twins.'

"I looked at him and said: 'There's something wrong here. They are moving. I can't do this. This is not in my contract.' I told him I would not be part of taking their lives. So he took a bottle of sterile water and poured it in the pan until the fluid came up over their mouths and noses, letting them drown. I left the room because I could not watch this."

But she did go back and dissect them later. The twins were only the beginning. "It happened again and again. At 16 weeks, all the way up to sometimes even 30 weeks, we had live births come back to us. Then the doctor would either break the neck or take a pair of tongs and beat the fetus until it was dead."

American Enterprise asked Kelly if abortion procedures were ever altered to provide specific body parts. "Yes. Before the procedures they would want to see the list of what we wanted to procure.

The (abortionist) would get us the most complete, intact specimens that he could. They would be delivered to us completely intact. Sometimes the fetus appeared to be dead, but when we opened up the chest cavity, the heart was still beating."

The magazine pressed Kelly again: Was the type of abortion ever altered to provide an intact specimen, even if it meant producing a live baby? "Yes, that was so we could sell better tissue. At the end of the year, they would give the clinic back more money because we got good specimens."

Some practical souls will probably swallow hard and insist that, well, if these babies are going to be aborted anyway, isn't it better that medical research should benefit?   No. This isn't like voluntary organ donation.

This reduces human beings to the level of commodities. And it creates of doctors who swore an oath never to kill the kind of people who can beat a breathing child to death with tongs.

This article is from the Pro-Life Infonet of 11/13/99. The Pro-Life Infonet is a daily compilation of pro-life news and information. To subscribe, send the message "subscribe" to: infonet-request@prolifeinfo.org. Infonet is sponsored by Women and Children First (http://www.prolifeinfo.org/wcf). For more pro-life info visit http://www.prolifeinfo.org and for questions or additional information email ertelt@prolifeinfo.org

Other Universities Also Use Fetal Tissue From Abortion

Source: Omaha World-Herald, Dec. 14, 1999

Omaha, Nebraska -- The University of Iowa is among the institutions that are carrying out research that uses tissue from elective and spontaneous abortions.

"We are very open about our research," said Dr. David Skorton, vice president for research. "There is no attempt to put anything over on anybody." He said he doesn't know, however, how aware the public is of the research at the University of Iowa.

Two weeks ago, The World-Herald reported that research based on fetal brain cells from elective abortions had been under way at the University of Nebraska Medical Center for six years.

In the wake of strong public reaction, university and Medical Center officials announced that whenever possible fetal cells would be obtained from alternative sources, such as spontaneous abortions like miscarriages and ectopic pregnancies.

They also announced the formation of an outside advisory committee and changes in the review of such research. From now on, reviews will be done by the full institutional review board that looks at research involving humans. The board includes community representatives as well as doctors, faculty members and ethicists.

Three NU Medical Center administrators who make up the executive committee of the review board had done the reviews in the past.

The World-Herald contacted the University of Iowa and six other universities from a list of institutions that the National Institutes of Health said had received federal funds in 1998 or 1999 or both for research involving human fetal cells.

The sampling found a variety of research projects, sources of the cells used in the research and procedures for review.

The National Institutes of Health awarded 288 grants during 1998 and 1999 for research involving human fetal tissue, said Anne Thomas, director of communications for the institutes. Thomas said she did not know the total number of institutions involved. Some received more than one grant.

Dr. Belinda Seto, a deputy director at the National Institutes of Health, said the list was based on a wide variety of research that uses fetal cells from various sources. The sources include umbilical-cord blood, placentas, elective abortions and spontaneous abortions.

The University of Iowa has a few areas of research that involve human fetal tissue from a variety of sources, including spontaneous and elective abortions, Skorton said.

Researchers are required to obtain approval through federal and local review procedures, he said. Some studies involving human fetal tissues go before the university's full institutional review board and some are handled as "expedited reviews," Skorton said.

Under the latter procedure, a project is reviewed by the staff and the chairman of the university's institutional review board. These reviews are done in accordance with federal regulations, Skorton said.

At the University of Minnesota, there have been a "very few" studies in the past 12 years that have involved human fetal tissue, said Teri Charest, a university spokeswoman. Some of the tissue comes from elective abortions, she said.

Research involving human fetal cells goes before the full institutional review board, Charest said. The studies are "primarily oncology-related research," she said. "They are trying to get the bad cells to act like good cells." The university also has 11 projects using umbilical cord blood, she said.

Charest said that she is not aware of any public reaction to the human fetal cell research but that she does not know how much awareness there is of it.

At Yale University, studies involving human fetal tissue "get more than a full review," said Dr. Robert Levine, a professor of medicine and editor of the institutional review board journal.

"We usually table a discussion, have a subcommittee study the proposed research and report back," he said. "We are reluctant to go too fast and overlook anything."

The most interesting fetal tissue research at Yale involves transplanting fetal brain tissue into patients with Parkinson's disease, Levine said. The research, involving tissue that comes from aborted fetuses, was started several years ago and is supported by private funding.

"There was controversy within the university as to whether we should being do this," he said. "But there was very little controversy outside the university."

Before starting the research, Yale brought a panel of experts to campus to discuss the issues, he said. "We invited quite number of people with diverse opinions."

The other universities contacted:

Loyola University, Chicago - Researchers have been able to "grow" blood cells from umbilical cords in the laboratory. They were used for bone-marrow transplants in adults at high risk from leukemia and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma for whom no suitable marrow donor could be found. The university has put out press releases about the work, which has gone through federal and institutional reviews.

The University of Colorado Health Sciences Center - In 1988, university researchers did what was believed to be the nation's first fetal cell implant on a Parkinson's patient. That work continues. Elective abortions provide the embryonic cells, said Sarah Ellis, a university spokeswoman. "It has not particularly been a controversial sort of research," she said.

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill - The possibility of controversy limited the information available on research into an artificial liver that could become a stop-gap measure for people awaiting liver transplants. Dr. Robert Lowman, associate vice provost for research, said the researcher declined to be interviewed because he is concerned about possible controversy. Lowman said liver cells from spontaneous abortions were used at first in developing an artificial liver, but now the work is moving toward using adult liver cells.

Northwestern University - Although Northwestern was on the National Institutes of Health grant list, spokeswoman Elizabeth Crown said, "To the best of our knowledge, there is no human fetal tissue research going on at Northwestern."

This article is from the Pro-Life Infonet of 11/13/99, Source: Omaha World-Herald, Dec. 14, 1999. The Pro-Life Infonet is a daily compilation of pro-life news and information. To subscribe, send the message "subscribe" to: infonet-request@prolifeinfo.org. Infonet is sponsored by Women and Children First (http://www.prolifeinfo.org/wcf). For more pro-life info visit http://www.prolifeinfo.org and for questions or additional information email ertelt@prolifeinfo.org