Stop the World, I Want to Get Off Here

There have been a number of exposés recently on the subject of baby body part trafficking, each more horrific than the next. (For a good introduction to the subject, check out http://mc.net/dougp/stopftr.html).

As a diabetic, I feel closer to the topic than many-I’ve read that sufferers of diabetes may benefit tremendously from “stem cell research” (another name for fetal tissue research, or FTR). I’ve read that FTR may help someone discover ways to put the degenerative effects of this disease into remission-perhaps FTR will one day lead to a cure for diabetes, who knows? Yet, to me, it doesn’t matter what the supposed benefits are-if babies have to die just to make me a little more confortable or allow me to live a little bit longer, forget it. I’ve suffered tremendously from diabetes (well, to be honest, from my lack of self-control in my diet). Yet no amount of suffering-and this includes every major trauma I’ve been through in the 14 years since I discovered I was a diabetic, including the loss of my left foot, my right toe, and the incipient loss of my vision-could justify the use of a single cell of an aborted child’s body. Forget arcane moral arguments-you don’t need to be a theologian or philosophy major to know in your heart that dissecting children is wrong.

Just ask “Kelly”, the anonymous technician who still works for a leader in the baby body parts industry, the Anatomical Gift Foundation (AGF). The things she saw during her employment turned her stomach and literally drove her to work undercover for a prolife organization. "What we did,” she told Life Dynamics, “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…” And what were these companies looking for, you ask?-dead babies. Or to be more precise, body parts from dead babies. AGF collected these parts and charged their customers hefty “fees” for this “service”.

But according to federal law, selling fetal tissue outright is illegal. So how do wholesalers such as AGF get away with it? They use loopholes in the law, of course. National Institutes of Health Guidelines (see http://ppse.org/nih, the section entitled “Derivation and Utilization of Human Pluripotent Stem Cells from Fetal Tissue” for detail) state that, to continue receiving federal funds, these organizations are only allowed to charge “...a payment that does not exceed the reasonable costs associated with the transportation, processing, preservation, quality control and storage of the stem cells....” Yet, Life Dynamics, through an extensive 2 year exposé on this issue, has revealed that fetal tissue research is a booming, highly profitable industry.

At the present, demand far outstrips supply. Researchers are clamoring for more “raw material” for their macabre experiments. With possible billions in revenue at stake and with plenty of “raw material” available (an estimated 1.5 million abortions per year), it was only a matter of time before someone figured out that “reasonable costs” was a relative term. They figured (correctly, it seems) that no one was going to quibble about a few dollars, especially in light of the explicit support President Clinton and his gang of pro-abort thugs in the White House has given anything related to abortion during his presidency (let’s not forget that it was Clinton who abrogated the congressional ban on fetal tissue research his second day in office).

Reading about FTR is depressing, I know-how does one put this insanity into some kind of perspective? Abortion is bad enough in and of itself, but if we as a “civilized” society can allow this new obscenity-the sale of fetal tissue for medical research or any other purpose-then stop the world, I want to get off right here.