Wednesday, December 13, 2006

Harvesting Babies for Stem Cells?

From LifeSite News:
Ukraine has long heralded itself as a leader in modern science’s embryonic stem cell quest. BBC News reports that video footage they obtained suggests that the Ukraine is no longer meeting the demand with just embryonic stem cells but is now also killing newborn babies to harvest cells from their more developed bodies.

The Institute for Problems of Cryobiology and Cryomedicine in Kharkov, Ukraine was founded in 1972 as a research facility in the little known field of stem-cell therapy. Techniques for freezing biological samples and cells were developed and publicized from this Institute. In the early 1990’s, researchers from Kharkov Institute, established EmCell, a stem-cell treatment center in the nation’s capital, Kiev, claiming to offer respite from numerous diseases and conditions.

Especially since the founding of EmCell, the Ukraine has been a leader in offering stem-cell therapy and supplying stem-cells to nations across the world.

Mothers who gave birth at certain Ukranian hospitals admitted that they delivered a live baby which was immediately whisked away by hospital staff. When asked about the babies, hospital staff would not answer and the hospitals in question have denied the allegations.

In 2003, a campaign to expose the barbaric practice was successful in forcing the hospital to exhume 30 bodies of dead babies. Footage from the ensuing autopsies was released to the BBC and the Council of Europe.

The BBC report tells of dismembered bodies and mature newborn bodies stripped of organs. Upon seeing the videos of the autopsies on the dead babies, a British forensic pathologist expressed concern that the tiny bodies had been dismembered. Such dismemberment is not a normal post-mortem practice and would suggest there was harvesting of stem cells from internal material such as bone marrow.

As reported previously by LifeSiteNews, Ukranian women have been paid USD$180 per fetus that can be used for harvesting stem-cells for, among other things, beauty treatments in Russia. Because mature fetuses are more ‘useful’, these women are convinced by their doctors that there is medical reason to wait until after 12 weeks gestation to have an abortion.


In some ways, this story has the earmarks of a wacko conspiracy theory – babies being whisked away from mothers, never to be seen again. On the other hand, the reason wacko conspiracy theories are so popular is that sometimes people really do conspire to do really bad things. Besides, the established reality is bad enough, with women essentially being paid to act as baby farms for stem cells. One has to wonder whether the Moslems are right and we really do need to be destroyed. Der Fuhrer would be proud.