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Citizen Magazine
March, 2000
Unholy Harvest
By Celeste McGovern
Elizabeth Elizabeth Woldemussie didn't want to discuss the gory details of
her job. As a senior scientist with Allergan, Inc., a giant
"technology-driven
specialty health care company," she wouldn't even say what she does.
For
good reason.
Woldemussie's name appears at the top of an order form requesting
"fetal
eyes" from an abortion clinic. The "protocol," from a
middleman firm that
goes between clinics and researchers, specifically asks for "whole
eyes -
sterile," to be taken from aborted fetuses aged 20 to 24 weeks. The
extractor is instructed to take the eyes from a "normal donor"
and note age,
sex and race.
"Ship on wet ice immediately by same day courier," it directs.
"To be
received by the researcher within 6 hours." The form provides both
day and
nighttime telephone numbers and informs that Woldemussie "will accept
weekend deliveries."
Reached at her office in Irvine, Calif., Woldemussie confirmed that she
was
working with human fetal tissue a while ago, but I'm not anymore."
Asked
where she got the tissue, she said, "I can't talk to the media. The
company
does not allow me to."
Will anyone at the company talk about this? "No, I don't think
so." Did she
ever order whole, sterile eyes? Dial tone. The order form with
Woldemussie's name on it is one of about 50 forms obtained by Life
Dynamics, Inc., a Denton, Texas-based pro-life group known for its
renegade tactics and for recruiting "spies" in the abortion
industry.
Life Dynamics was approached about two years ago by an abortion-clinic
insider who uses the pseudonym "Kelly." In a videotaped
interview with Life
Dynamics taped last spring, Kelly appeared as a woman, with her back to
the camera, wearing a wig, her voice electronically altered because, she
said, she feared for her life.
Kelly is in fact a man who worked at the time for a Maryland-based private
firm called the Anatomic Gift Foundation (AGF). His job was to procure
fetal
tissue for research. When babies started arriving alive for dissection, he
went to Life Dynamics.
Kelly quit his job last spring after he provided Life Dynamics with more
than
50 fetal-tissue order forms from researchers throughout North America,
plus
commercial price lists for babies and baby parts from two private
companies
that act as brokers between abortion clinics and researchers. Life
Dynamics also taped interviews with Brenda Bardsley, AGF co-founder and
president, as well as chief competitor Miles Jones, president and founder
of
Opening Lines.
Taken together, the evidence offers a glimpse into a world of vast,
crassly
competitive commerce in human tissue. It links abortion, especially late-
term partial-birth abortion, to the booming industry in biotechnology and
pharmaceuticals. The traffic in aborted babies flows worldwide into
respected, even tax-funded, laboratories, including Canadian ones.
The research itself is usually for laudable goals, such as making vaccines
or curing diseases such as Parkinson's, but it raises a myriad of ethical
questions: Are some human beings killed to benefit others? Are women
being exploited to support tissue collection? Who is profiting from the
trade? And what are its social implications?
How Can it be Legal?
In both Canada and the United States, it is illegal to buy or sell any
human
tissue, including fetal tissue. But fetal-tissue brokers, the middlemen
between abortion clinics and researchers, have schemes to circumvent the
law (if they don't break it outright), and they know how to deceive
couriers
so that a package of dead babies ships more easily than a carton of
cigarettes.
"How do I put this?" explained Bardsley to Life Dynamics
president Mark
Crutcher, who was pretending to be a buyer. "You don't buy the
tissue. I
mean, yeah, it's the way it works out, but what you're really buying is
the
service of us getting it to you the way you want it."
A glossy, color brochure from Opening Lines explains how abortionists can
"turn your patient'sdecision into something wonderful" and
offset overhead.
The broker leases space from a clinic for harvesting tissue on site or
trains
clinic staff to harvest.
Miles Jones is especially eager to attract "fresh fetal tissue"
consumers.
His fees are "very attractive and lower than the industry
average." An intact
trunk (with/without limbs) costs $500, for example, $50 for eyes, and $999
for an eight- week brain. In a taped interview with Crutcher, Jones said
he
was actively pursuing fetal tissue sources in Canada where "I know
where
to get the bigger ones."
Bardsley said years of experience have taught her how to avoid "freak[ing]
out" couriers; package labels are deceptively
vague-"biomedical" rather than
"fetal liver," for example. She's also advised abortion-clinic
staff to take
packages of baby parts home for pickup so as not to alarm couriers.
On the Record
The Life Dynamics exposé has already moved the U.S. House of
Representatives to approve a "Sense of Congress Resolution"
(H.R. 350)
calling for "hearings concerning private companies that are involved
in the
trafficking of baby body parts." The House Commerce Committee is
expected to begin hearings early this spring.
"In Canada, politicians have ignored the issue."
In Canada, politicians have preferred to ignore the issue. And champions
of
abortion-on-demand, like Joyce Arthur of the BC Coalition for Choice, have
dismissed the material as unreliable because of Life Dynamic's reputation
among pro-choicers and because the story was broken last August by the
conservative magazine Alberta Report.
Investigation of the material provided by Life Dynamics confirmed the
group's claims, however. Researchers named on nearly a dozen of the
confidential forms confirmed that they ordered fetal tissue. Several, like
Woldemussie, hung up or refused to explain their work, but a few spoke
candidly.
One order form carries the name of a Canadian doctor, along with a request
for an Internation Fedex shipment of "16- to 24- week lungs (trachea
not
required)" to study "molecular mechanisms of fluid reabsorption
in human
fetal lung." "Significance: Respiratory Distress Syndrome . . .
a major
cause of death in premature infants." The memo adds: "Bill our
account."
Contacted last August at his office, this doctor confirmed that he was
doing
research on immature lungs two years earlier, with a Medical Research
Council Grant. But he added, "I don't do that anymore. Asked if he
used
human tissue, he replied, "Yeah," then changed his mind.
"Well, we were
doing genetics mainly . . . Where are you getting your information? We
were using cell lines." Asked if he had ever ordered fetal lungs from
the
U.S., he said, "I have to go," and hung up abruptly.
Medical Research Council grants to research with human fetal tissue
account for several millions of tax dollars, according to the 1993 report
of
the Royal Commission on New Reproductive Technologies." Another
Canadian doctor reportedly has used fetal tissue in his lab where it is
transplanted into the brain's of Parkinson's patients. He allegedly
received a
$90,042 grant from the Medical Research Council for 1999-2000.
The report also notes that the largest traffickers in human tissue are
pharmaceutical and biotechnology firms who use it primarily for vaccine
manufacture, virus studies, and drug testing. The human polio virus was
developed by Philadelphia's Wistar Institute in the 1950s using aborted
fetal
tissue, and the vaccine is still grown on cells from an aborted baby. One
of
the more current order forms provided by Life Dynamics is from the Wistar
Institute. Two are from SmithKline Beecham, a major vaccine manufacturer.
Another protocol came from Dr. John F. Krowka, immunologist at the
California Department of Health Services in Berkeley. He had ordered
livers,
thymus and/or skin of 18- to 24-week-old fetuses.
"I've been working with fetal tissue in the context of HIV since
1990," he
said. Krowka explained that fetal liver and thymus are surgically
implanted
under the kidneys of "severe combined immuno-deficient mice"
where the
tissue grows into a human thymus that can be studied.
Fetuses of 18-24 weeks are used, he said, because "that provides the
largest amount of tissue. We use the oldest possible tissue. By law we
can't get anything greater than 24 weeks." Regarding the ethics of
using
aborted babies, Krowka said, "Naturally, we're concerned about the
sensitive nature of the issue. We have great respect that this is human
tissue. We get them through a broker so we don't influence the [woman's
abortion] decision."
Gruesome Work
The order forms themselves suggest procurement horrors. Two from
researcher Rosario Hernandez, now working in St. Louis, request
"whole
eyes" from fetuses nine to 24 weeks old. One specifies
"Brain-dead, non-
cadaver." George Dodge, a scientist at Thomas Jefferson University,
requested a shipment of four to six "intact leg[s]," including
"entire hipjoint"
from 22- to 24-week-old fetuses, "to be removed from fetal cadaver
within 10
minutes."
Kelly's testimony provides the gruesome details of daily work for AGF:
"We would get a generated list each day to tell us what tissue
researchers,
pharmaceuticals and universities were looking for. Then we would go and
look at the particular patient charts-we had to screen out anyone who had
STDs [sexually transmitted diseases] or fetal anomalies. These had to be
the most perfect specimens we could give these researchers for the best
value that we could sell for."
On another occasion, a doctor presented Kelly with perfectly formed 24-
week-old twins, moving and gasping for air in a steel pan. When Kelly
objected, he said, he watched the doctor fill the pan with water until it
ran
over the babies' mouths and noses.
"That's when I decided it was wrong," he said.
24-Hour Service
For 35 years Alan Fantel has operated the National Institute for Health's
Laboratory for Embryology at the University of Washington at Seattle. The
lab offers a 24-hour collection service at abortion clinics and hospitals
throughout the country. Fantel wouldn't say how many "specimens"
his lab
picks up in a week, but he acknowledged that it has provided fetal remains
to "thousands" of researchers over the years, including
"many" Canadians.
"Certainly the demand for [fetal tissue] has grown," he said.
"My suspicion
is there's probably a lot more on the private side."
Kelly's allegations that babies are vivisected to provide research
material are
"absolutely false," Fantel said. "It just doesn't happen.
You won't find
anyone wanting tissue that late."
When read an order form requesting intact organs from late fetuses, Fantel
responded: "Oh, yeah. There are certainly people who want later
specimens. If the specimens came here, I'd have no problems providing
it."
Did he ever provide late-term fetuses to researchers? "Never,"
he said. "Our
specimens are very tiny. They're in 100,000 pieces by the time I get
them."
What about his 1994 advertisement that still appears on the Internet
offering
tissue "between 40 days and term?"
"That was probably a mistake. We just don't see late tissue
anymore."
Doctors use potassium chloride injections to ensure babies are not born
alive these days, he suggested.
Did the lab ever get late specimens?
"Thirty years ago there were a lot of hysterotomies [mini C-section
abortions] and a lot of intact fetuses [were] delivered. Frankly, I'm not
even
sure if we provided them. We can't work with viable fetuses. That's the
nature of the law."
Thirty years in the business have given Fantel plenty of time to meditate
on
his line of work.
"To me, there is no moral issue here," he said. "My father
died of
Alzheimer's and a close personal friend died of breast cancer at the age
of
32. If it's a choice between seeing this tissue literally go down the
drain and
using it, there's no question in my mind that it would be absolutely
criminal,
sinful, to throw it out."
Not everyone in the fetal-tissue research community shares Fantel's zeal.
Geneticist and pediatrician Stephen Bamforth runs a fetal-tissue bank
at.the
University of Alberta in Edmonton. Bamforth and his colleagues must pick
through the remains of 10- to 12-week-old fetuses for their hearts and
eyes,
from which they carefully isolate genetic material and transport it to
researchers at other universities.
"The humanity is always before us," confessed Bamforth. "If
society said
this research is not acceptable, of course, we would immediately desist.
It's
not something that I do happily."
Harvesting Those Fetal Body Parts
By Kelly Patricia O'Meara
The distribution of fetal body parts to scientists is a million-dollar industry.
Researchers claim it's a necessary evil, but others fear that it may
encourage some grim abuses.
Scientists depend on human body parts for research they believe may
yield breakthroughs in a number of diseases, such as Parkinson's and
Alzheimer's, that affect millions of people. But the public largely is unaware
of the way the laundry list of body parts for scientific research is filled.
Those who oppose using human flesh for research wonder if knowing the
gruesome details would make a difference to those who support the
practice.
. . . . Actual requests for body parts such as a "whole intact leg, including
the entire hip joint," come with special instructions that the body be
dissected by "cutting through symphysis pubis (pubic bone) and include
whole illium." Additionally, a request may specify the speed at which the
dissection must occur -- in this instance, that the researcher would like the
body part "to be removed from the cadaver within 10 minutes." Finally, the
scientists specify whether "abnormalities" are permitted and under what
conditions a body part will be shipped (such as in wet or dry ice) and by
what mode of transportation (usually one of the well-known overnight-
delivery services).
. . . . Of more than 50 such requests, or "protocols," submitted by
scientists and reviewed for this article, none involved a deceased person
more than 24 weeks old -- three weeks older than a fetus who could survive
outside the womb. The "whole intact leg" protocol described previously was
requested by a scientist who needed four to six "specimens (leg and hip
joints) per shipment" from aborted fetuses 22 to 24 weeks old. Because
the request called for the dissection to occur within 10 minutes of death, it
is not difficult to imagine the required precision and speed of the dissection
procedure occurring in a side room of an abortion clinic.
. . . . The men and women who perform these tasks are called
"technicians" and are employed by companies that retrieve body parts,
also known as "harvesters," such as the Anatomic Gift Foundation of
Laurel, Md., and Opening Lines, headquartered in West Frankfort, Ill.
These companies act as middlemen of sorts between the abortion clinic
and the scientist.
. . . . Because the sale of human tissue or body parts is prohibited by
federal law, the traffickers have worked out an arrangement to expedite the
process from which they all benefit and still remain within current
interpretations of the law. For instance, the harvesters receive the fetal
material as a "donation" from the abortion clinic. In return, the clinic is paid
a "site fee" for rental of lab space where technicians, employed by the
harvesters, perform as many dissections as necessary to fill researcher
manifests. The harvesters then "donate" the body parts to the researchers
and, rather than pay the harvesters for the actual body parts, "donate" the
cost of the retrieval (a service) via a formal price list.
. . . . The fiction is that under this mutually acceptable agreement, no laws
are broken: No body parts from aborted fetuses are sold. In nearly all
cases, the entire fetus is not needed. Rather, the fetus is dissected and
the parts shipped to either the private corporation, university or government
agency where the research is being conducted. Any remaining skin,
tissue, bones or organs are ground up in the sink disposal or incinerated. .
. . . Brenda Bardsley, vice president of the Anatomic Gift Foundation, or
AGF, tells Insight, "It's sad, but maybe it makes it [abortion] easier for us
knowing that something good will come out of it." She adds, "We're doing
our best in an unpleasant situation." Bardsley says the AGF's fetal-tissue
retrieval accounts for "less than 10 percent of the companies' business"
and there are strict rules controlling when and under what conditions a
technician may perform the procedures. "The decision to go ahead with the
abortion," says Bardsley, "must be made before the woman is approached
about donation, and we don't get access to the cadaver until the physician
has firmly established death." Nearly 75 percent of the women who choose
abortion agree to donate the fetal tissue, she says.
. . . . As part of AGF's services, it also runs serology (blood tests) on
women who have elected to have an abortion and requires that the medical
director of the clinic advise such women if they are shown by the tests to
have other medical conditions such as AIDS, hepatitis B or C or syphilis. .
. . . Along with its fetal-tissue harvesting, AGF also handles adult tissue.
According to Bardsley, this is their main business, and they handle "only
about five to 10 fetal-tissue procedures a week from two different clinics.
AGF charges a flat fee of as much as $280 per specimen or individual body
part. According to tax records provided to Insight by Bardsley, AGF's gross
income has increased from a little more than $180,000 in 1994 to $2
million in 1998.
. . . . While AGF charges for "services" per specimen, competitor Opening
Lines, a company that handles only fetal tissue, was unavailable for
comment. According to a fee schedule provided to the pro-life organization
Life Dynamics Inc., of Denton, Texas, Opening Lines does not confuse its
customers by using the word "specimen" but openly lists charges by the
body part. For instance, it may charge as little as $150 for the retrieval of a
liver or $500 for a trunk (with or without limbs); a spinal cord goes for $325.
. . . . The sale of "services" in the acquisition of body parts exploded after
President Clinton signed the National Institutes of Health Revitalization Act
of 1993, effectively lifting the moratorium on federally funded research
involving transplantation of fetal tissue from spontaneous or induced
abortions. The taxpayer-funded legislation specifically allows for "research
on the transplantation of human fetal tissue for therapeutic purposes."
Since then, a rare breed of entrepreneurs have battled for a foothold in the
newly created market of organ harvesting.
. . . . Company pamphlets and paraphernalia from Opening Lines, for
example, boast that it is their "goal to offer you and your staff the highest
quality, most affordable and freshest tissue prepared to your specifications
and delivered in the quantities you need when you need it." Their
advertisements add such sales puffery as: "Our specimens vary widely in
range including but not limited to those listed below: liver, spleen,
pancreas, intestines, kidney, brain, lungs and heart block, spinal column
and many more with appropriate discounts that apply if specimen is
significantly fragmented." A veritable smorgasbord of human body parts is
on the menu, and the researcher need only order what he or she wants.
. . . . How profitable is all of this? The consulting firm of Frost and Sullivan
recently reported that "the worldwide market for cell lines and tissue
cultures brought in nearly $428 million in corporate revenues in 1996. It
further predicts that between now and 2003, the market will grow at an
average annual rate of 13.5 percent and, by 2002, will be worth nearly $1
billion." That does not include profits from patents and products that come
from tissue research. The National Institutes of Health provides nearly $19
million in grants and awards for fetal-tissue research, an amount that many
in the scientific community consider budget dust compared with the $15.6
billion total 1999 appropriations. Of the $19 million, $2 million goes directly
to research that is connected with fetal-tissue transplantation.
. . . . Many pro-life advocates object to the use of taxpayer funds for fetal-
tissue research. For instance, they say that scientists might become
dependent on such tissue simply because of the availability of it.
Furthermore, they say, because women who have made a decision to
undergo an abortion now may donate their fetus for research, the social,
ethical and moral stigma attached to the act is reduced because the
patients believe they ultimately are doing something good.
. . . . Supply and demand are factors. Robert Orr, a physician and director
of clinical ethics at Loma Linda Medical Center in Loma Linda, Calif., says
he understands the use of spontaneously aborted fetuses for research
purposes, but "policymakers and researchers are looking at aborted
fetuses because there is such a large supply. The basic problem is that
we're at the cutting edge of research. We have something that looks good
on paper -- something that may be very important to humanity. Before we
go any further and rush into something, we need to step back and take a
second look."
. . . . Orr notes the problem of intention. "If a woman thinks that something
good is coming out of the abortion, it makes it easier for her to make the
decision. It's theoretically impossible to separate the moral issue from the
scientific issue."
. . . . Similar sentiments are voiced by Rep. Henry Hyde, an Illinois
Republican who is a staunch pro-life advocate. Hyde tells Insight: "I deplore
any medical procedure that treats human beings as chattel, as a subject fit
for harvesting. The humanity of every fetus should be respected and treated
with dignity and not like a laboratory animal." The fact remains, though,
that it's legal, and 1.5 million abortions are performed every year in the
United States. It's legal, and tens of thousands of body parts from aborted
babies are used in scientific research. It's true, too, that our laws provide
no human-being status to an unborn baby. But despite this, unborn babies
are considered human for the purpose of scientific experimentation."
. . . . Suzanne Rini, author of Beyond Abortion, says this is an issue "that
never ceases to shock me. Fetal-tissue harvesting is a very lucrative
industry, and just a small percentage of research could yield huge profits.
Billions are involved in fetal-tissue research and harvesting, and the federal
government participates in it in a big way. But it's also very shielded, and
one has to try to understand the everydayness of it -- the foundational step
in the process of abortion and fetal harvesting."
. . . . What are the ethics of this? Rini laughs dryly. "If they're doing it,
there is no ethics." . . . .
***************************************************
The material contained in this file is made
available courtesy contributors and editors of
Pro-Life E-News. |
October 7, 1999
Toronto Sun
Baby bits on the block
By MICHAEL COREN Sun Media
Oh, brave new world, what wonders you contain. The Web site for the
United States government's National Institutes of Health includes a notice
offering aborted baby parts for research purposes. The ad, worth quoting at
some length, states the following. "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." The notice, dated 1994 but
advertising an ongoing, non-profit service, is chilling in the inhuman way it
speaks of human life. "Normal" embryos mean unborn children that are
perfect, "abnormal" means babies with disabilities. When the ad refers to
"term" it presumably signifies unborn children that could survive outside the
womb, possibly as late as nine months gestation. But business being what
it is, even the large babes are guaranteed to arrive far quicker than the
mail. The laboratory will also provide only what is needed for any purchaser
and will kindly cut up and dissect as required. One aborted child can
provide a leg here, an arm there, a brain somewhere else, an internal organ
in yet another location. Goodness me, this is a capitalist dream! Very little
overhead and a product that's increasingly available. Grotesque as all this
sounds, it's not entirely new. A company in Illinois offers $999 for brains
eight weeks old or less, $400 for an intact embryo eight weeks or less,
$600 for an unborn child more than eight weeks old and $550 for gonads.
All prices, of course, in U.S. currency. The outfit publishes a brochure for
abortuaries in which it states now "you can turn your patient's decision into
something wonderful." The document goes on to say, "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 ... we 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." Or to put it
another way, there's a lot of money to be made here. Hey, nothing new.
Many doctors have become wealthy through their work in the abortion
industry. Although it is technically illegal to sell body parts in the United
States, those involved get around the law by "donating" organs and then
receiving what is known as a site fee. So abortion is, as we have long
known, a big business, yet we are still thought foolish enough to believe it
is all about choice. Desperate women who go to abortuaries are told this
might not be the right thing and they should consider all the possibilities.
Sure, and I've got a full head of hair. One of the most poignant, and
sickening, ironies of all this is that much of the macabre body crop is used
for research into HIV/AIDS. While everything human must be done to find a
cure for this plague, it's hard to deny that the majority of sufferers in North
America contracted the disease through perverse sex. However, 95% of
the world's AIDS population is in the developing world and lacks even basic
health care. Nobody cared very much about these men and women before
AIDS was brought to North America and, frankly, nobody cares very much
now. They're poor and they're black and don't know Elizabeth Taylor or
Barbra Streisand. If experimentation must take place it should take place
on animals. But I forgot. That would mean hurting little kittens and puppies
and it just wouldn't be right. After all, we're human beings and cruelty is
unacceptable.
Michael Coren is a Toronto-based writer and broadcaster Letters to the
editor should be sent to editor@sunpub.com.
***************************************************
The material contained in this file is made
available courtesy contributors and editors of
Pro-Life E-News.
Copying of this material is free for non-commercial
educational and research use. Unless explicitly stated,
copyright of this material is owned by the author
and/or sponsoring organization, and/or newswire services. |
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