Overview. We are just beginning to perceive the colossal scope of the fetal tissue industry and its related businesses in Eastern Europe. What drives the machinery is a huge and increasing demand for fetal stem cells and organs. Dr. Bernard Nathanson estimates that tons of fetal organs and stem cells will be required annually as the basic material that fuels this gigantic conspiracy against life.[11]
The vast amount of money involved in such transactions is staggering. The international pharmaceutical corporations, laboratories, and all of the fake "rejuvenation" clinics demand a reliable and constant supply of human embryonic and fetal tissue. This fact alone ensures that unethical and inhumane practices will continue, regardless of what legal restrictions are put in place.
The organs from a single disease-free late-term aborted baby in Ukraine can fetch about $17,000.[2] Given the fact that all women are advised to abort, and the 1.2 million annual abortions in Ukraine, we find that the fetal and embryonic stem cell and organ trade in this one country is worth multiple hundreds of millions -- perhaps even billions -- of dollars annually, even if only a small percentage of aborted babies are used for research and harvesting. This money goes a long, long way in a nation where the average yearly salary of a highly-trained doctor is only about $2,500. This unending river of cash can be used to bribe police, health officials and politicians.
It can also be used to silence the opposition, as we have already seen.
Fetal tissue and stem cells are processed and consumed for three primary purposes: Research, therapy and the cosmetic and beauty trade, as described in the following paragraphs.
Quackery Without Limits. One of the largest consumers of fetal and embryonic tissue and stem cells is the worldwide network of "clinics" claiming to cure everything from dry skin to AIDS with unproven and untested therapies.
Whenever massive amounts of money can be made in a very short period of time with all the risk being borne by gullible patients, both blatant quackery and illegal activity flourish.
There are currently more than fifty clinics that specialize in the alleged therapy of various diseases using fetal materials scattered throughout Eastern Europe and Latin America. They share several common features which should serve as warning to the desperate and the medically naive;
In this "therapy," unqualified doctors practice untested treatments under unregulated conditions on uninformed patients, a perfect atmosphere for ruthless exploitation. In fact, the only requirement that is strictly observed by these `clinics' is the pre-operative palpitation of the prospective client's wallet. If it is thick enough, then they are qualified for treatment.
Space does not permit a full description of all of these clinics, but a few typical examples should suffice. The reader will notice that there are many intimate connections between the scientists and doctors who run these various institutions.
After it was kicked out of the United States, Biomark set up a Swiss bank account and began operations in London, contracting with Mexican doctors to do fetal stem-cell injections.[16]
However, The ALS Therapy Development Foundation investigated EmCell, which refused to answer any of its questions. EmCell fails to follow up on its patients to check on their welfare or ascertain whether or not its "therapies" have had any effect. Therefore, EmCell has no basis at all for its spectacular claims of success. The ALS Foundation also found that EmCell scientists do not appear to understand even the most basic principles of stem-cell physiology or their modes of action. Neither Smikodub nor Karpenko have published any reports about their patients in any peer-reviewed medical journals. Interestingly, unlike Western patient consent forms that are pages long for even the simplest surgical procedure, EmCell's is only one sentence long.[17]
There are literally dozens of other "institutes" offering miracle cures from the injection of fetal or embryonic stem cells and the transplantation of fetal tissue. These include;
Stephen Barrett is a retired psychiatrist who operates the QuackWatch.org Web site, which prominently features the Institute for Reproductive Medicine and other fetal stem-cell injection clinics. He says of miracle stem-cell cures that "It's a general characteristic that quackery stands in the shadow of science."[17]
Quackery indeed. Leading scientists and experts have stressed repeatedly that embryonic and fetal stem cells are not suitable for use in mature tissues. Dr. James Sherley, a Professor of Biological Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, says that "Embryonic stem cells cannot be used directly [because] they form tumors when transplanted into mature tissues. ... The most profound drawback, which has not been adequately disclosed, is that [embryonic cells] cannot be used directly to treat mature tissues and organs."[18]
The poor Ukrainians are jaded to tales of biological horrors, corruption and lawbreaking on a massive scale. But, as one reporter poignantly lamented, "They used to say we were selling Ukraine. Now we are selling Ukrainians; moreover, in parts."[19]
Fetal Attraction. A second extremely lucrative market for fetal and embryonic tissue is the beauty and cosmetic trade. For years, a handful of researchers alleged that preborn children were being used in various cosmetics and beauty treatments, but only over the past three years has substantial proof been forthcoming.
Once again, Ukraine figures prominently in the fetus trade. Middlemen purchase aborted preborn babies in bulk and have them cryogenically frozen. Then beauty clinics buy them, advertising "youth injections" which, they promise, rejuvenate skin and "take ten years off your face."[19]
Kiev-based investigator Sergei Shorobogatko said that abortion clinics in the poorest parts of Donetsk and Kharkov illegally sell fetuses which are untested for viruses. Although such activities are unlawful, there are more than fifty beauty parlors that use fetal injections in the Moscow area alone. One of these is the Cellulite Clinic, where rich Russian and Western women go to have fetal injections that supposedly eliminate cellulite from their buttocks, thighs and arms.[20] The costs of these treatments range from $200 to $20,000.
One of the biggest consumers of Ukrainian fetal organs and stem cells is the Institute for Regenerative Medicine in Barbados, which purchase the material after it has been screened by the Institute for Problems in Cryobiology and Cryomedicine of Ukraine. Rich English and American women find their way to this remote complex in the Barbados highlands (at their own expense, of course) to be injected with fetal stem cells at $US 25,000 per session.
Barnett Suskind, the CEO of the IRM, says that "It's the most natural form of healing there is. You think better, sleep better, look better. Your quality of life improves and your libido certainly improves."
One 57-year-old British woman gushed,
My skin looked a bit tired. I felt I needed a shot in the arm. There was nothing wrong with me. I just needed a feel-good thing. A lot of people say my skin is better. I do feel ten years younger. My skin looked a bit tired. I was booked into a very comfortable hotel room, lay down on the bed and had a saline drip inserted into my veins. Then a large syringe full of [fetal] stem cells was attached to a needle and it was slowly put into the arm. When it was over I sat in a hotel room, read my book and had a cup of tea. Then I had a bath, got dressed and went for dinner. The whole thing only took an hour-and-a-half. I did not feel ill -- I just sat there chatting as it happened. I felt better the next morning, I felt perky ...[21]
Almost all of the women who pay $25,000 for embryonic fetal tissue injections at the IRM are from North America or England. Many of these women could not care less that their "treatments" are derived from aborted preborn babies.[22] All that really matters to them is that they can go home and show off their supposedly youthful look to their equally well-heeled friends.
But it is not only women who are rich, vain and careless. Current Ukrainian President Victor Yuschenko supports the lucrative fetal organ trade, and there is credible evidence that he had not been poisoned with dioxin by a political opponent as he had claimed, but was in fact the victim of a botched facial fetal stem cell injection regimen carried out in Austria.[23]
As previously described, evil is impossible to contain once it is released. For some people, there is only one rule: Do it if it is profitable, if you can find enough helpless victims, and if you can get away with it. One all limitations and ethics have been cast aside, literally anything goes -- and has, indeed, already gone ...
She found that a stranger had taken Svetlana Puzikova's baby just after it was born and disappeared. The hospital informed her that her baby had died, and that it had been buried as biowaste.
Olena Stulnev gave birth at full term, and the same stranger took her baby. The hospital then told her that she had given birth to a nonviable fetus at 27 weeks. When she and her husband Dimitry demanded an explanation, they were threatened with death.
In fact, the same stranger had been present during all of the births and had stolen between two hundred and three hundred newborn babies for purposes unknown -- and all hospital personnel denied ever having seen her!
These stories are typical of many heard by various investigators. When Tatyana Zakharova of the National Ukrainian Federation of Multiple-child Families (NUFMF) and others demanded an inquest, the babies were exhumed from their graves. Their arms and legs had been severed, their chest cavities were empty, and their brains were missing. As Zakharova said, "They were like gutted rabbits." The only possible motivation for stealing and dismembering newborn babies could be to ransack them for their brains, organs and bone marrow.[5,24]
The bio-conspiracy retaliated against Tatyana, as it has against so many others. In October 2005, her 20-year-old son was kidnapped and she has not heard from him since. She is certain that he has been murdered as punishment for her activities.[25]
So what do we call it when people deliberately try to have a handicapped baby? "Inverse" eugenics?
There is a growing trend where parents use preimplantation genetic diagnosis, or PGD, to ensure that their children share their handicaps, usually deafness or dwarfism. Three percent of 190 American PGD clinics have purposely acted "to select an embryo for the presence of a disability." The most famous case so far is that of lesbians Candace A. McCullough and Sharon M. Duchesneau, who used PGD to have a child born deaf like them, in order to share their "deaf culture."[29]
The magnitude of such selfishness is staggering, because it amounts to the deliberate crippling of children who will have to deal with their disabilities for the rest of their lives. Kids have a tough enough time making it in the world -- why consciously saddle them with even more troubles? The answer is, of course, that people who choose to have children are thinking in exactly the same manner as the people who choose to kill their children by abortion. They treat other human beings as objects to be eliminated or modified to suit their own lifestyles and preferences.
However, it is anything but safe, easy and painless. The young women's ovaries are hyperstimulated to produce dozens of eggs at a time, which are then harvested. This procedure is forced on the women repeatedly, and they are never told that they can opt out. They are also prohibited from seeking independent medical or legal advice. Hearings found that some of these women were so ruthlessly harvested that their personalities were destroyed and they became paralyzed.[10]
Large-scale biological research requires hundreds of thousands of embryos. Researchers can't use frozen embryos from failed fertility treatments -- they need fresh embryos and mature eggs from healthy women. Cloners in particular need mature human eggs every time they experiment. If human cloning ever became popular (say, to grow tissue-matched organs for wealthy but ill individuals, as some science-fiction movies have already suggested), they would require tens of millions of mature human eggs.
The moral difficulty, of course, is this: Whenever money is paid for body tissue or organs, exploitation inevitably happens. When poor people see the offers of "easy money," they always respond -- and usually deeply regret their decisions.
Of course, we have not yet hit the bottom of the "slippery slope" -- have we?
Reformed abortionist Bernard Nathanson asks a rhetorical (at least for now) question regarding aborted preborn babies;
Why not utilize this unimaginably rich source of protein and other nutrients to feed the homeless, to export to the third world (whence most of it came) to feed the suffering victims of famine -- certainly this would not be cannibalism, since abortion rights proponents insist that the fetus is not a person or a living human being?[11]
Why not, indeed?
After reading this article, can anyone give us one good reason why all of this "aborted material" should not be made into soup and stew?
Ask Zhu Yu.[30]
1, 2,