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Dead Baby Parts Business Booming
By PAUL LIKOUDIS
Here is a sign of the times of American life in the Clinton regime:
"Human embryonic and fetal tissues are available from the Central Laboratory for
Human Embryology at the University of Washington. The laboratory, which is supported by
the National Institutes of Health, can supply tissue from normal or abnormal embryos and
fetuses of desired gestational ages between 40 days and term. Specimens are obtained
within minutes of passage and tissues are aseptically identified, staged,
and immediately processed according to the requirements of individual investigators.
Presently, processing methods include immediate fixation, snap fixation, snap freezing in
liquid nitrogen and placement in balanced salt solutions or media designated and/or
supplied by investigators. Specimens are shipped by overnight express, arriving the day
following procurement. . . .
"Inquiries:
"Alan G. Fantel, Ph.D.
"Department of Pediatrics, RD-20
"Seattle, WA 98195."
In cold, clinical research terms, here is the end product of the "fetal tissue
issue" - an economically important byproduct of the sexual revolution.
(For those who want to see the document themselves, it's only a click away on the
Internet. Just call up the ask.com search engine, type in "Where can I purchase fetal
tissue?," and within seconds, "NIH Guide" will appear as one of the
answers.)
Here, courtesy of the National Institutes of Health, in taxpayer-funded black and white,
is the reality of America's culture of death: commercial cannibalism of the young of the
human species, a business about to break into the mainstream as a coalition of major
medical and health organizations, businesses, and associations press for federal funding
of lethal embryo research.
Since the widespread legalization of abortion, abortionists, protected and promoted by
media publicists, have dramatized the plight of the poor pregnant girl whose life can only
be set right by free and easy access to tax-funded abortions.
The abortion industry, however, has always been about money, and now Houston-based Life
Dynamics has shown it's a double-profiteering, body-snatching supplier for the rapidly
growing biologics and pharmacological industries which require a continuing supply of
fresh human bodies, brains, organs, flesh and bones for research, product manufacturing,
treatments, and therapies.
Following the release, last May, of a powerful LifeTalk video featuring "Kelly,"
a fetal tissue procurer for the Maryland-based Anatomic Gifts Foundation, Life Dynamics
has released documentation obtained from fetal tissue wholesalers, that is, companies
which place their employees in abortion facilities to harvest tissue, limbs, organs, etc.
The tissue is then shipped to universities, pharmaceutical and biologics firms, and
government research centers.
Just Business
Included in the documents are price lists and shipping and procurement
instructions.
Opening Lines, a division of Consultative and Diagnostic Pathology, Inc., of
West Frankfurt, Ill., will pay $999 for brains eight weeks old or less ("30% discount
if significantly fragmented"), $400 for an intact embryonic cadaver eight weeks old
or less; $600 for an intact embryonic cadaver above eight weeks; $550 for gonads; $350 for
bone marrow, and various prices for everything but the scream: livers, spleens, pancreas,
thymus, mesentery, kidney, pituitary gland, ears, eyes, skin, lung and heart block, spinal
column, spinal cord, cord blood, limbs.
Anatomic Gift Foundation will pay $220 for a first-trimester aspiration abortion
("fresh") and $260 if it is "frozen."
Opening Lines provides two kinds of promotional literature, brochures for abortion clinics
and brochures for researchers and industry, which Life Dynamics includes in its booklet of
documentation.
The front page of the brochure for abortion facilities proclaims: "Find out how you
can turn your patients' decision into something wonderful." Inside is this text:
"We know your patient's decision to have an abortion was carefully considered and we
also know it was a very difficult one to make.
"Now that the choice has been made, we ask that you propose to your patient a simple
program that could help thousands of people. . . .
"Consultative and Diagnostic Pathology, Inc., will be asking to obtain tissue
specimens from your patient's medical procedure. . . .
"This is an opportunity to make a difference . . . and it can be beneficial to your
clinic. . . .
"1) Consultative and Diagnostic Pathology will lease space from your facility to
perform the harvesting and distribution of tissue. The revenue generated from the lease
can be used to offset your clinic's overhead.
"2) Consultative and Diagnostic Pathology can train your staff to harvest and process
fetal tissue. Based on your volume we will reimburse part or all of your employee's
salary, thereby reducing your overhead."
The brochure for industry declares: "Fresh Fetal Tissue harvested and shipped to your
specifications . . . where and when you need it."
The company boasts its tissue "is the highest quality, most affordable, and freshest
tissue prepared to your specifications and delivered in the quantities you need when you
need it."
A Ghoulish Request
Also included in the Life Dynamics booklet are dozens of copies of completed "tissue
requested" documents, along with protocols for harvesting, preserving, and shipping.
One such document is a request for "Limbs, Liver, Thymus."
"Preservation: Fresh shipped on wet ice. IMDM/10%, lx l-Glutamine, Pen/Strep. Will
supply if necessary. Limbs intact. To be removed under sterile conditions. . . .
"Shipping: Fresh, wet ice. Priority overnight or same day.
"Tissue Use/Significance: Human fetal tissue will be used for the generation of
SCID-humice. Briefly, a SCID mouse is engrafted with either a human bone marrow fragment,
thymus/liver graft, or a lymph node. These mice will then be used to study
hemoglobinopatheis in vivo. . . . Approval for the production of SCID humice and
transplantation of cells into them has already been obtained from the IUCUC of Genetech,
Inc. (Study #97-
156)."
Other documents stipulate that organs must be retrieved within ten minutes, indicating
that the organ must be procured from a living, aborted baby.
Other documents stipulate "no dig," which instructs the abortionist that no
digoxin (a feticidal chemical) can be used, for it would harm the desired organs.
Other norms stipulate "no anomalies" or "no congenital abnormalities"
- evidence perfectly healthy babies are being aborted for organ harvesting.
Life Dynamics also discloses that these fetal organ harvesting businesses set up
promotional booths at conferences held by the National Abortion Federation.
Much of the fetal tissue is used for HIV/AIDS research.
Technically, this gruesome business is illegal. It is against federal law to sell human
tissue or body parts, but as Life Dynamics points out: "The fetal material [the
companies] harvest is `donated' to them by the clinics. However, they do pay a `site fee'
to the clinics for the right to access the tissue.
"The tissue is then `donated' to the researchers who in turn pay the wholesalers for
the cost of retrieval. Profit is realized by the wholesalers' ability to set their own
retrieval fees."
Something Old,
Something New
Fetal tissue research, harvesting organs from living, aborted babies, building
"humice" for research and the rest of the brave new world of biomedical research
is not new; the work goes back to the 1920s, according to the American Life League's Judie
Brown in "Recycling Babies: The Practice of Fetal Tissue Research" (1996).
In the American Life League's Pro-Life Activist's Encyclopedia entry on "Fetal
Experimentation: Frankenstein Revisited," author Brian Clowes traces the gruesome
history of fetal experimentation and organ harvesting - the "road to Auschwitz"
- back to European and U.S. universities in the 1960s. The practice rapidly accelerated
with the legalization of abortion.
On May 20th, a coalition called Patients' CURe (Coalition for Urgent Research) started
lobbying in Washington, D.C., for federal taxpayer funding of stem cell research that
requires the killing of human embryos, accompanied by an enormous media blitz ballyhooing
the alleged benefits of fetal tissue research for a host of medical problems.
Members of the coalition include the Alliance for Aging Research, the American Cancer
Society, the Glaucoma Research Council, Juvenile Diabetes Foundation International,
Parkinson's Action Network, Resolve: The National Infertility Association, and the Spina
Bifida Association, Inc.
As Richard Doerflinger of the U.S. Bishops' Pro-Life Activities office observed, the
demand for federal funding for destructive embryo research - currently against the law -
represents a dramatic turn in the American abortion culture: Government now can only fund
those abortions which "save the life of the mother," but under proposed
legislation, will fund abortions that "produce lifesaving benefits for others."
Clowes estimates that, with the aging of America and the growing callousness of
baby-boomers, there will be an increased demand for medical treatments using organs and
tissue harvested from aborted babies.
"It may be expected," he wrote in ALL's Encyclopedia, "that as many as five
million people will make use of fetal tissue on a regular basis. This means that the total
amount of fetal tissue required to satisfy the demands of these 'neo-vampires' will be
measured in the tons every year.
"Since there are only about 120,000 second and third trimester abortions in the
United States, this means that demand for fetal tissue will crushingly and inevitably
overwhelm the available supply."
Clowes predicted "inflated prices . . ., a thriving black market; the growing and
selling of preborn babies for sale; the import of fetal tissue from poor and developing
countries; and entrepreneurs encouraging women to abort as late as possible for a monetary
reward."
Clowes wrote the above in 1995.
In 1999, Kelly, the pseudonymous organ harvester who unloaded her documents at Life
Dynamics, confirmed that women are "coerced" into having abortions. Women, she
says, would change their minds after entering the abortion mills, but they were sedated by
staff into a "Nyquil nap."
Kelly also testified on the Life Dynamics video that women are encouraged to have
late-term abortions to meet the demands of an industry that requires intact specimens and
tissues.
Mark Crutcher, president of Life Dynamics, says he's convinced that the reason the
abortion industry fights so hard to keep "partial-birth abortion" legal is that
it wants to sell the fetal tissue.
"Why do pro-aborts fight so hard to keep it?," he asks in an interview published
last month in The Alberta Report. "All it says is you can't kill them by this method.
. . .
"This is about maximizing profits. First, you sell the woman an abortion. Then you
turn around and sell the dead baby you take out of her. But you have to take it out whole
or you don't have anything to sell."
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The harvest of abortion
Fetal-tissue research: Making the best of a bad situation, or sliding further
down the slippery slope? Congress and the Clinton administration's lifting
of the fetal-tissue research ban has turned human-remains trafficking into
big business
By Lynn Vincent
Warning: This story contains some graphic detail.
As Monday morning sunshine spills across the high plains of Aurora,
Colo., and a new work week begins, fresh career challenges await Ms.
Ying Bei Wang. On Monday, for example, she might scalpel her way
through the brain stem of an aborted 24-week pre-born child, pluck the
brain from the baby's peach-sized head with forceps, and plop it into wet
ice for later shipment. On Tuesday, she might carefully slice away the
delicate tissue that secures a dead child's eyes in its skull, and extract
them whole. Ms. Ying knows her employer's clients prefer the eyes of dead
babies to be whole. One once requested to receive 4 to 10 per day.
Although she works in Aurora at an abortion clinic called the Mayfair
Women's Center, Ms. Ying is employed by the Anatomic Gift Foundation
(AGF), a Maryland-based nonprofit. AGF is one of at least five U.S.
organizations that collect, prepare, and distribute to medical researchers
fetal tissue, organs, and body parts that are the products of voluntary
abortions.
When "Kelly," a woman who claimed to have been an AGF "technician"
like Ms. Ying, approached Life Dynamics in 1997, the pro-life group
launched an undercover investigation. The probe unearthed grim, hard-copy
evidence of the cross-country flow of baby body parts, including detailed
dissection orders, a brochure touting "the freshest tissue available," and
price lists for whole babies and parts. One 1999 price list from a company
called Opening Lines reads like a cannibal's wish list: Skin $100. Limbs (at
least 2) $150. Spinal cord $325. Brain $999 (30% discount if significantly
fragmented).
The evidence confirmed what pro-life bioethicists have long predicted: the
nadir-bound plummet of respect for human life-and the ascendancy of
death for profit.
"It's the inevitable logical progression of a society that, like Darwin,
believes we came from nothing," notes Gene Rudd, an obstetrician and
member of the Christian Medical and Dental Society's Bioethics
Commission. "When we fail to see life as sacred and ordained by God as
unique, this is the reasonable conclusion ... taking whatever's available to
gratify our own self-interests and taking the weakest of the species first ...
like jackals. This is the inevitable slide down the slippery slope."
In 1993, President Clinton freshly greased that slope. Following vigorous
lobbying by patient advocacy groups, Mr. Clinton signed the National
Institutes of Health (NIH) Revitalization Act, effectively lifting the ban on
federally funded research involving the transplantation of fetal tissue. For
medical and biotech investigators, it was as though the high government
gate barring them from Research Shangri-La had finally been thrown open.
Potential cures for Parkinson's, AIDS, and cancer suddenly shimmered in
the middle distance. The University of Washington in Seattle opened an
NIH-funded embryology laboratory that runs a round-the-clock collection
service at abortion clinics. NIH itself advertised (and still advertises) its
ability to "supply tissue from normal or abnormal embryos and fetuses of
desired gestational ages between 40 days and term."
But, this being the land of opportunity, fetal-tissue entrepreneurs soon
emerged to nip at NIH's well-funded heels. Anatomic Gift Foundation,
Opening Lines, and at least two other companies-competition AGF
representatives say they know of, but decline to name-joined the pack.
Each firm formed relationships with abortion clinics. Each also furnished
abortionists with literature and consent forms for use by clinic counselors
in making women aware of the option to donate their babies' bodies to
medical science. According to AGF executive director Brent Bardsley,
aborting mothers are not approached about tissue donation until after
they've signed a consent to abort.
Ironically, it is the babies themselves that are referred to as "donors," as
though they had some say in the matter. Such semantic red flags-and a
phalanx of others-have bioethicists hotly debating the issue of fetal-tissue
research: Does the use of the bodies of aborted children for medical
research amount to further exploitation of those who are already victims?
Will the existence of fetal-tissue donation programs persuade more
mothers that abortion is an acceptable, even altruistic, option? Since
abortion is legal and the human bodies are destined to be discarded
anyway, does it all shake out as a kind of ethical offset, mitigating the
abortion holocaust with potential good?
While the ethical debate rages in air-conditioned conference rooms,
material obtained by Life Dynamics points up what goes on in abortion
clinic labs: the cutting up and parting out of dead children. The fate of
these smallest victims is chronicled in more than 50 actual dissection
orders or "protocols" obtained by the activist group. The protocols detail
how requesting researchers want baby parts cut and shipped: "Dissect
fetal liver and thymus and occasional lymph node from fetal cadaver within
10 (minutes of death)." "Arms and legs need not be intact." "Intact
brains
preferred, but large pieces of brain may be usable."
Most researchers want parts harvested from fetuses 18 to 24 weeks in
utero, which means the largest babies lying in lab pans awaiting a blade
would stretch 10 to 12 inches-from your wrist to your elbow. Some
researchers append a subtle "plus" sign to the "24," indicating that
parts
from late-term babies would be acceptable. Many stipulate "no
abnormalities," meaning the baby in question should have been healthy
prior to having her life cut short by "intrauterine cranial compression"
(crushing of the skull).
On one protocol dated 1991, August J. Sick of San Diego-based Invitrogen
Corporation requested kidneys, hearts, lungs, livers, spleens, pancreases,
skin, smooth muscle, skeletal muscle and brains from unborn babies of 15-
22 weeks gestational age. Mr. Sick wanted "5-10 samples of each per
month." WORLD called Mr. Sick to verify that he had indeed ordered the
parts. (He had.) When WORLD pointed out that Invitrogen's request of up
to 100 samples per month would mean a lot of dead babies, Mr. Sick-
sounding quite shaken-quickly aborted the interview.
Many of the dissection orders provide details of research projects in which
the fetal tissue will be used. Most, in the abstract, are medically noble,
with goals like conquering AIDS or creating "surfactants," substances that
would enable premature babies to breathe independently.
Other research applications are chilling. For example, R. Paul Johnson
from Massachusetts' New England Regional Primate Research Center
requested second-trimester fetal livers. His 1995 protocol notes that the
livers will be used ultimately for "primate implantation," including the
"creation of human-monkey chimeras." In biology, a chimera is an
organism created by the grafting or mutation of two genetically different cell
types.
Another protocol is up-front about the researchers' profit motive. Systemix,
a California-based firm, wanted aborting mothers to know that any fetal
tissue donated "is for research purposes which may lead to commercial
applications."
That leads to the money trail.
Life Dynamics' investigation uncovered the financial arrangement between
abortionists and fetal-parts providers. The Uniform Anatomic Gift Act
makes it a federal crime to buy or sell fetal tissue. So entities involved in
the collection and transfer of fetal parts operate under a documentary rubric
that, while technically lawful, looks distinctly like a legal end-around: AGF,
for example, pays the Mayfair Women's Center for the privilege of obtaining
fetal tissue. Researchers pay AGF for the privilege of receiving fetal tissue.
But all parties claim there is no buying or selling of fetal tissue going on.
Instead, AGF representatives maintain that Mayfair "donates" dead babies
to AGF. Researchers then compensate AGF for the cost of tissue
recovery. It's a service fee, explains AGF executive director Brent
Bardsley: compensation for services like dissection, blood tests,
preservation, and shipping.
Money paid by fetal-tissue providers to abortion clinics is termed a "site
fee," and does not, Mr. Bardsley maintains, pay for baby parts harvested.
Instead the fee compensates clinics for allowing technicians like Ms. Ying
to work on-site retrieving and dissecting dead babies-sort of a
Frankensteinian sublet.
"It's clearly a fee-for-space arrangement," says Mr. Bardsley. "We occupy
a portion of their laboratory, use their clinic supplies, have a phone line
installed. The site fee offsets the use of clinic supplies that we use in
tissue procurement."
According to Mr. Bardsley, fetal-tissue recovery accounts for only about 10
percent of AGF's business. The rest involves the recovery and transfer to
researchers of non-transplantable organs and tissue from adult donors.
But, in spite of the fact that AGF recovers tissue from all 50 states, Mr.
Bardsley could not cite for WORLD an instance in which AGF pays a "site
fee" to hospital morgues or funeral homes for the privilege of camping on-
site to retrieve adult tissue.
Mr. Bardsley, a trained surgical technician, seems like a friendly guy. On
the phone he sounds reasonable, intelligent, and sincere about his
contention that AGF isn't involved in the fetal-tissue business for the
money.
"We have a lot of pride in what we do," he says. "We think we make a
difference with research and researchers' accessibility to human tissue.
Every time you go to a drug store, the drugs on the shelf are there as a
result of human tissue donation. You can't perfect drugs to be used in
human beings using animal models."
AGF operates as a nonprofit and employs fewer than 15 people. Mr.
Bardsley's brother Jim and Jim's wife Brenda founded the organization in
1994. The couple had previously owned a tissue-recovery organization
called the International Institute for the Advancement of Medicine (IIAM),
which had also specialized in fetal-tissue redistribution, counting, for
example, Mr. Sick among its clients. But when IIAM's board of directors
decided to withdraw from involvement with fetal tissue, the Bardsleys spun
off AGF-specifically to continue providing fetal tissue to researchers.
Significantly, AGF opened in 1994, the year after President Clinton
shattered the fetal-tissue research ban. Since then, the company's
revenues have rocketed from $180,000 to $2 million in 1998. Did the
Bardsleys see a market niche that was too good to pass up? Brenda
Bardsley, who is now AGF president, says no. AGF's economic windfall,
she says, is related to the company's expansion into adult donations, not
the transfer of fetal tissue. She says she and her husband felt compelled to
continue providing the medical community with a source of fetal tissue
"because of the research that was going on."
"Abortion is legal, but tragic. We see what we're doing as trying to make
the best of a bad situation," Mrs. Bardsley told WORLD. "We don't
encourage abortion, but we see that good can come from fetal-tissue
research. There is so much wonderful research going on-research that can
help save the lives of wanted children."
Mrs. Bardsley says she teaches her own children that abortion is wrong. A
Deep South transplant with a brisk, East coast accent, Mrs. Bardsley and
her family attend a Southern Baptist church near their home on the Satilla
River in White Oak, Ga. Mrs. Bardsley homeschools her three children
using, she says, a Christian curriculum: "I've been painted as this monster,
but here I am trying to give my kids a Christian education," she says,
referring to other media coverage of AGF's fetal-parts enterprise.
Mrs. Bardsley says she's prayed over whether her business is acceptable
in God's sight, and has "gotten the feeling" that it is. She also, she says,
reads the Bible "all the time." And though she can't cite a chapter and
verse that says it's OK to cut and ferry baby parts, she points out that God
commands us to love one another. For Mrs. Bardsley, aiding medical
research by supplying fetal parts qualifies.
If they were in it for the money rather than for the good of mankind, says
Mrs. Bardsley, AGF could charge much higher prices for fetal tissue than it
does, because research demand is so high.
The issue of demand is one of several points on which the testimonies of
Mrs. Bardsley and her brother-in-law Brent don't jibe. He says demand for
fetal tissue "isn't all that high." She says demand for fetal tissue is "so
high, we could never meet it." He says "only a small percentage" of
aborting moms consent to donate their babies' bodies. She says 75
percent of them consent. He says AGF charges only for whole bodies, and
doesn't see how the body-parts company Opening Lines could justify
charging by the body part. She says AGF charges for individual organs and
tissue based on the company's recovery costs.
Founded by pathologist Miles Jones, Opening Lines was, until recently,
based in West Frankfort, Ill. According to its brochure, Opening Lines'
parent company, Consultative and Diagnostic Pathology, Inc., processes
an average of 1,500 fetal-tissue cases per day. While AGF requires that
researchers submit proof that the International Research Board (IRB), a
research oversight commission, approves their work, Opening Lines does
not burden its customers with such technicalities. In fact, says the
Opening Lines brochure, researchers need not tell the company why they
need baby parts at all-simply state their wishes and let Opening Lines
provide "the freshest tissue prepared to your specifications and delivered in
the quantities you need it."
Opening Lines' brochure cloaks the profit motive in a veil of altruism. The
cover tells abortionists that since fetal-tissue donation benefits medical
science, "You can turn your patient's decision into something wonderful."
But in case philanthropy isn't a sufficient motivator, Dr. Jones also makes
his program financially appealing to abortionists. Like AGF, he offers to
lease space from clinics so his staff can dissect children's bodies on-site,
but also goes a step further: He offers to train abortion clinic staff to harvest
tissue themselves. He even sweetens the deal for abortionists with a
financial incentive: "Based on your volume, we will reimburse part or all of
your employee's salary, thereby reducing your overhead." Again the
money trail: more dead babies harvested, less overhead. Less overhead,
more profit.
But Dr. Jones' own profits may be taking a beating at present. When Life
Dynamics released the results of its investigation to West Frankfort's
newspaper The Daily American, managing editor Shannon Woodworth ran
a front-page story under a 100-point headline: "Pro-Lifers: Baby body parts
sold out of West Frankfort." The little town of 9,000 was scandalized. City
officials threatened legal action against Dr. Jones and his chief of staff
Gayla Rose, a lab technician and longtime West Frankfort resident. The
story splashed down in local TV news coverage, and Illinois right-to-life
activists vowed to picket Opening Lines. Within a week, Gayla Rose had
shut down the company's West St. Louis Street location, disconnected the
phone, and disappeared.
Area reporters now believe Dr. Jones may be operating somewhere in
Missouri. WORLD attempted to track him down, but without success.
The demands of researchers for fetal tissue will continue to drive suppliers
to supply it. And all parties will continue to wrap their grim enterprise in the
guise of the greater good. But some bioethicists believe that even the
greater good has a spending cap.
Christopher Hook, a fellow with the Center for Bioethics and Human Dignity
in Bannockburn, Ill., calls the exploitation of pre-born children "too high a
price regardless of the supposed benefit. We can never feel comfortable
with identifying a group of our brothers and sisters who can be exploited for
the good of the whole," Dr. Hook says. "Once we have crossed that line,
we have betrayed our covenant with one another as a society, and certainly
the covenant of medicine."
***************************************************
The material contained in this file is made
available courtesy contributors and editors of
Pro-Life E-News. |
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