Eastern Europe's Biological Chamber of Horrors Brian Clowes, Ph.D., Human Life International
This is the first of a series of four articles that center on the Ukrainian stem-cell scandal and its associated atrocities. The Irresistible Nature of Evil Unleashed. Don't be scared. We don't have to grow a whole new you. ... an embryo cloned from one of your cells would need just six or seven weeks to grow many of the tissues you need. We already condone harvesting of cells from cloned human embryos for the first two weeks. Why stop there? ... If all you want is tissue, who cares? You can tell yourself what we already tell ourselves about unwanted in vitro embryos: They're doomed anyway. Patients' lives are at stake. We can't let personal morality get in the way of science. We can't wait. -- Slate magazine science reporter William Saletan.[1] For decades, pro-life philosophers have been warning the world about the so-called moral "slippery slope." The concept is simple and has been proven countless times by history and human nature: Once you have accepted a little bit of a particular evil, it is impossible to resist condoning more and more of it. The first step is always the hardest, but once you have taken that first step, once you have become comfortable with a small dose of evil, once you have cracked that fatal door open just a tiny little bit, the question inevitably arises: "Why not just take one more step?" Of course, after you have taken dozens of steps, there is really not much motivation to hold back -- nor is there any logical or rational argument for doing so. The leaders of all of the many anti-life movements -- pro-abortion, `gay rights,' euthanasia, population control, pornography, pedophilia and all the rest -- ridicule the "slippery slope" theory while simultaneously taking full advantage of it. All of the anti-life movements ultimately demand complete and total acceptance of their beliefs without limitation or exception and, if necessary, they insist that such endorsement be enforced by the coercive power of the State. However, the leaders of these movements also know that they cannot achieve their objectives all at once. Therefore, they advance through a strategy of slow and steady incrementalism, because the only practical way for a social movement to enact its goals is not in one huge leap, but in small and non-threatening stages. In every case, we begin with requests that always seem reasonable and sensible;
Humanity does not seem capable of learning the harsh lesson that evil will not allow itself to be contained. Once people accept its smallest manifestation, it spreads irresistibly, unstoppably, sidestepping with contemptuous ease all of the legal and moral barriers that men attempt to place in its way. Once released, containing evil is as difficult as pouring a gallon of filthy, black motor oil into a crystal-clear forest pond and then attempting to confine its spread with one's bare hands. We become accustomed to each new horror, perhaps as a defense mechanism. After all, if we think about such evils too much, our outlook on life would be permanently darkened. As we did during the Holocaust, we just pretend that certain evils do not exist. And so, the inhumanity marches on. Thirty-five years ago, leading ethicists suggested that defective newborn children should be killed by the State over their parent's objections, "for the good of society." Hardly anyone noticed or cared when this program was actually put into practice in many of America's hospitals. Thirty years ago, immediately following the Roe v. Wade decision, the Chicago Sun-Times ran a series of articles entitled "The Abortion Profiteers," which exposed the corruption-riddled abortion industry in the Chicago area which had killed dozens of women and botched hundreds of abortions. Most of the abortion mills featured in the series are still operating. Twenty years ago, pro-lifers exposed the forced-abortion program in the People's Republic of China. After an initial period of outrage by a handful of people, the controversy soon sank into oblivion. Fifteen years ago, pro-lifers uncovered the partial-birth abortion atrocity. There was widespread anger -- for just a little while. But now the vast majority of people just shrug their shoulders while a fruitless battle continues year after year in the court system, out of sight of everyone but the attorneys, abortionists, and a few of the more committed pro-life groups. This is the way every personal and societal addiction begins -- with just one dirty movie, with just one joint, with just one bottle of whiskey, with just one murder. So it comes as a shock -- but really not as much of a surprise -- that Eastern Europe has become a virtual cornucopia of biological horrors that prey, as always, on the weak and defenseless. The Beginning: Two Heroes. Abominations are always exposed to the world by men and women who possess two essential qualities: A functioning conscience and unflinching courage. Two such people are Vadym Lazaryev and Vladymyr Ischenko, two Ukrainian medical doctors, who pierced the heavy shroud of secrecy around the ghastly activities in Eastern Europe for the first time in the mid-1990s. While practicing at the Donetsk Provincial Anti-Inflammatory Center, Dr. Lazaryev became aware of practices he believed to be both illegal and unethical. He wondered why doctors told almost all pregnant women in Ukraine that there is a very high probability that their preborn children have serious birth defects. His own wife Elena was advised to have an abortion on the grounds that her preborn son would have severe birth defects -- which, of course, he did not.[2,3] His own mother had thirteen pregnancies, eleven of which ended in abortion between his older brother and him.[2] There are two reasons why Ukrainian doctors advise almost all pregnant women to abort. The first is that Ukrainian law states that any handicapped baby that is born becomes the responsibility of the attending doctor, so they err on the "safe side" in order to protect themselves. The second is that preborn children are excellent sources of organs and stem cells. Dr. Lazaryev dug a little deeper and found that the abortion rate in Ukraine is much, much higher than the official figures would suggest -- in fact, about 1.2 million annually in a nation with a population of about 46 million. Three out of four Ukrainian pregnancies end in abortion. To put this number in perspective, Ukraine's abortion rate is more than six times higher than the abortion rate in the United States. As Dr. Lazaryev says, "The only thing which protects unborn life in Ukraine is the courage of pregnant women."[2] According to the United Nations, Ukraine's population is declining by over 600,000 a year, and is expected to continue to plunge to a level that is less than half of what it is today by the year 2050.[4] Dr. Lazaryev, who very much loves his country, laments that After five hundred years, our descendants -- if we leave any descendants with our abortion legislation -- they will remember us not as a people who won the Second World War, but as a people who established and allowed this well-known from ancient times practice of human sacrifice. I mean abortion. So our generation, honestly, from my mind, from point of view of future generations, have nothing to be proud of. It is shame for me to belong to a generation which is responsible for making abortion legal.[2] Dr. Lazaryev realized that Ukraine's enormously high abortion rate is suicide on a national scale -- a kind of self-immolation that has happened before. He says that It is a very painful lesson. When people ask me `Where do you come from,' I say `I am not from Ukraine, I am from the Soviet Union. I am from the biggest graveyard in the world.' If you want a lesson from this graveyard, the State, over seventy years, waged war against the family. and when the State finally won this war, it was the date of the suicide of the State.[2] Continuing his investigations, Dr. Lazaryev found that many women were paid $200 to $300 to carry their pregnancies to a very late stage and to deliver the babies alive, still cocooned in the amniotic sac and attached to their placentas, in a kind of forced premature birth. This procedure allows their organs to be harvested in the freshest possible state.[3] While abortion is legal in Ukraine to 22 weeks, procedures of this sort carried out in the latter half of pregnancy are given a different name -- "artificial delivery" -- and thus sidestep the law. The babies are delivered this way because it is crucial that their cells and organs be harvested from them while they are alive. This can only be accomplished through a live birth -- babies from true surgical abortions and miscarriages are dead and are therefore useless for this purpose.[3] Intrigued, Dr. Lazaryev went to work unearthing the details of what would eventually turn out to be a continent-wide biotechnical conspiracy. He found that every region of Ukraine has twin institutions, one of which does the late-term artificial deliveries, and the other which dismembers the live fetus and passes the parts on to other buyers. The living babies, some at full term, are cut apart without the benefit of expensive anesthesia. As one witness has testified upon seeing one of the baby's exhumed bodies, "Look, here is the grimace of a human crying, it is hurt ... It has the grimace of a shouting person. So this is the proof. I'm saying that he was alive when he was being cut."[5] Dr. Lazaryev also found several Ukrainian Web sites that advertised prices for the parts of late-term preborn children. One of these is Cell Transplantation, which features a menu for practically every part of early- and late-term fetuses -- liver, neuronal cells, thymus and thyroid, ovaries and testicles, eyes, and suspensions of liquefied fetal liver, brain and spine.[6] All of these tissues are tested for various viruses, including HIV and hepatitis-B and -C, and then are frozen live with liquid nitrogen.[7] The (Stem-Cell) Empire Strikes Back. Dr. Lazaryev: "Collecting Troubles in My Life." Dr. Lazaryev was beginning to grasp the depth and breadth of what we might call this "bio-conspiracy," and realized that he would need help if he was to proceed further. In September 1997, he attempted to register a modest little pro-life group called "The Right to Be Born" with the Ukrainian Department of Justice. He was refused on the grounds that his organization "threatened the rights and freedoms of citizens."[3] Undaunted, he continued to give talks, write news articles, and show Dr. Bernard Nathanson's film The Silent Scream. Initially, "Right to Be Born" had about 15 people who kept the discussion abstract, arguing for the humanity of the unborn and for a limitation on the extremely liberal abortion laws in Ukraine, where women might obtain ten, twenty, thirty, or even more abortions, all paid for by the State. Dr. Lazaryev became convinced that the abortion industry was fueled by the simple greed of doctors, who could multiply their income by a factor of ten, twenty, or even fifty times. One of the many central contradictions of all of the anti-life movements is that they are all absolutely convinced that what they are doing is moral and acceptable -- but they savagely attack those who make their activities public. Dr. Lazaryev discovered this principle firsthand. At the end of 1997, Grigorii Bondar, the General Director of the Anti-Inflammatory Center at which Dr. Lazaryev worked, began experimenting with the injection of fetal cells, and began making a lot of money from the practice. When Dr. Lazaryev objected, Bondar fired him, saying that "there is no room for traitors in the hospital."[3] In 1999, he was finally allowed to register his pro-life group. From that moment, government informer Sergei Tikhomirov became a constant and unwanted part of his life, visiting him at home on a weekly basis and grilling him on his activities.[3] As Dr. Lazaryev continued his investigations, he was subjected to greater and greater pressure to cease and desist. First, he was denounced and threatened by his fellow doctors. A high-ranking official, the Commissioner for the Protection of Child Care and Maternity, informed him that he was no longer eligible for medical care in Ukraine. When he became gravely ill in April 2004, local hospitals refused to treat him. One doctor, Yelena Yeremyenko, told him to "look for somewhere else to get treatment" and said "your politics are your death." Two corporations offered him high-paying "plum" assignments -- but only if he gave up his opposition to abortion and stem-call research.[3] He refused to give up, and the pressure rapidly became more and more direct and malicious. On August 13, 2004, an official from the Donetsk Anti-Tumor Center called him and informed him that he was coming over with a gang of thugs to "break his head off."[3] As promised, the official did appear at his house with a gang, but Dr. Lazaryev had called witnesses over and so the threatened physical beating did not occur. Then the Tax Police suddenly began a long and exhaustive examination of his business, which shut it down. The leading tax official in the area told him that he could only begin business again when he made "the right decisions."[3] Meanwhile, an SBU (Ukrainian Security Service) official visited him and told him that he had better get rid of all the evidence he had, or his life was in danger. Major Roman Drebishev, commander of the local anti-crime section, described several instances of people who had found themselves in Dr. Lazaryev's position and had suddenly died of violent -- and naturally uninvestigated and unsolved -- "accidents."[3] These officials apparently were not speaking in theoretical terms, because a few days later, while he was driving to a meeting in Slavyansk on a dark and deserted country road with his colleague Dr. Vladymyr Ischenko, a bus rammed their car at high speed and then drove off into the night. One policeman thought that the incident had been carried out by professionals, because the bus had aimed for the car's fuel tank and had expertly run the car off the road.[8] Although he had properly reported all of these threats and acts of violence to the proper authorities, they repeatedly told him that they would do absolutely nothing. In September 2004, Dr. Lazaryev finally concluded that his position was hopeless, and fled the country of his birth. He traveled via Belarus and Portugal and requested asylum in the Shannon Airport. Two years later, his family finally fled Ukraine in an almost miraculous escape, and he said that "My children, when I leave Ukraine, they were sure I'm going to put my car in the garage. So the father returned from the garage after two years."[2] There is no doubt in Dr. Lazaryev's mind that, if he returns to Ukraine, "I will be killed because investors lost money. I will be killed as a lesson for people who one day decide to raise their voice against this evil."[2] Dr. Ischenko: Getting Personal. In October 2003, Dr. Lazaryev invited pediatrician Dr. Vladymyr Ischenko to join his pro-life group "The Right to Be Born." The abortion issue soon became personal and tangible to him when he and his wife Inna experienced the same ordeal that Dr. Lazaryev and his wife had endured. Medical professionals told Inna that one of her twins had Down's Syndrome, and that the second twin was severely malformed. Inna refused to abort, and carried the pregnancy to term. As with Irina Lazaryev, both were perfectly healthy.[8] The practice of telling pregnant mothers that their babies are handicapped in the hope of obtaining their babies for research or the fetal tissue trade is well-documented. Investigator Sergei Shorobogatko said that "When a doctor wants a foetus [to sell], he tells a girl there is a medical reason for an abortion later than 12 weeks. A special procedure extracts it with the placenta."[9] Dr. Ischenko performed an undercover investigation to test the veracity of the claims of fetal organ trafficking. He traveled to clinics advertising such material in the cities of Donetsk, Mariopol and Kharkov, and was offered small quantities of live fetal brain tissue for 1,500 Euros in each location. He actually succeeded in purchasing a child's brain at the VitaCell Clinic in Donetsk.[8] Such trafficking in living human organs is not only in violation of Ukrainian law, but also contravenes European Council resolutions.[3] Dr. Ischenko soon learned that such practices were not confined to just his own country, but were run by a kind of "biological mafia" that spread throughout Eastern Europe. Eventually, he fled the country with Dr. Lazaryev, and for the same reasons: Death threats and attempts on his life went uninvestigated by an indifferent and corrupt police force. In fact, Dr. Ischenko noted that well-known journalists who are critical of the government, and other witnesses of illegal activities, have been murdered, and the government makes not the slightest effort to bring the killers to trial. He left his wife Inna, pregnant with twins, in Ukraine. Soon after he left, she began to receive phone calls demanding to know where he was. A policeman appeared at her home and, without a warrant, searched it and confiscated her only protection, a properly registered pistol. Frightened, she moved to her sister's house in Kharkov, but the threatening telephone calls followed her there.[8] Inna still languishes in Ukraine, but efforts are being made to rescue her and her twins. Yet, after all of this, Drs. Ischenko and Lazaryev have still not been granted asylum in Ireland, despite the obvious threat to their lives. Speaking of their cases, Irish Member of the European Parliament Kathy Sinnott said that Their situation is very straightforward in terms of being genuine asylum seekers. They are not here for economic reasons, they have put their lives and careers on the line. They are coming from a country where we know that law enforcement is very poor and the government is very corrupt. There is every reason to believe them and, on that basis, they should have been given a favorable decision a long time ago. ... Irish parliamentarians were in Washington lobbying Congress to allow undocumented Irish to stay in the United States, and at the same time I'm driving to the court to plead with the judge to allow a legitimate case to go through here, to allow these people to stay, and I felt that the level of hypocrisy was just breathtaking ...[10] So why is the Irish government so stubbornly denying the doctors a legitimate asylum request? Mrs. Sinnott goes on: We have developed pharmaceuticals as our leading export in Ireland. Our government brings in pharmaceuticals and tells them that they can do what they like. They like their companies to feel comfortable here, and if they want to do tissue research, our government is not going to ask too many questions. In 2001, the head of the research board for the government, Bruce Barrington, said that we really have to get over our opposition to things like embryo research and cloning. In other words, we have to get over our ethical problems and get on with the real business of making money and attracting pharmaceutical companies and frontline research. In Ireland, we have a very poor record, because we have a scandal in which our government and our health boards for years allowed orphans and children in disabilities in homes to be used for scientific experimentation. We have an organ retention scandal that went on for years and even probably involved my own niece, who died at 26 days of age. Babies who died, children, even some adults had their organs removed without any knowledge of their parents, any permission being sought, and many of these organs wound up in drug companies, we know that ... Drug companies seeking tissues and organs haven't stopped seeking them, they've just had to leave countries like Ireland because of parents, because of scandals, but they've moved further East ... Wherever there are poor people it moves. Ireland was very poor, was cash-hungry, when this was happening here. It just moves to wherever people will accept cash and not think too much about how it's being obtained ...[10] In summary, then, the situation is this: The people exploiting the poor, the children and the unborn for their tissues and organs were kicked out of Ireland and moved to Eastern Europe. Now two doctors from Eastern Europe have discovered these horrors and are seeking asylum in the country that helped to start it all -- and are being turned away because their cases are awkward and embarrassing to the government, and because they glaringly highlight its hypocrisy. Just a Simple Matter of Supply and Demand. 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] No End to the Atrocities. 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. Conclusion and Prophecy. 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] Endnotes.
Eastern Europe's Biological Chamber of Horrors |