Posted on 05/23/2012 10:36:05 AM PDT by JohnKinAK
A pro-life leader has won a victory in her efforts to convince soft-drink manufacturer PepsiCo to stop the use of aborted fetal cells in its research for enhancing the flavors of its products. Debi Vinnedge, executive director of Children of God for Life (COGFL), announced that in late April she had received a letter from Paul Boykas, PepsiCo’s vice president for Global Public Policy, confirming that the company will not allow the use of HEK-293 — a cell line derived from human embryonic kidney — in its partnership with Senomyx, the company with which it had inked a four-year, $30 million contract for flavor research.
As reported last November by The New American, a PepsiCo shareholder had filed a resolution with the Securities and Exchange Commission in an effort halt the company from contracting with Senomyx, which, according to documents collected by Vinnedge, used cell lines derived from aborted babies in its process of producing artificial flavor enhancers. According to a report by LifeNews.com at the time, Pepsi had “ignored concerns and criticism from dozens of pro-life groups and tens of thousands of pro-life people who voiced their opposition to PepsiCo contracting with biotech company Senomyx even after it was found to be testing their food additives using fetal cells from abortions.”
But after a nearly year-long campaign led by COGFL that included a nationwide boycott of PepsiCo products, in late April Boykas sent a letter to Vinnedge assuring her that PepsiCo would not “conduct or fund research — including research performed by third parties — that utilizes any human tissue or cell lines derived from embryos or fetuses.” Boykas also assured Vinnedge that “Senomyx does not use HEK cells or any other tissues or cell lines derived from human embryos or fetuses for research performed on behalf of PepsiCo.”
(Excerpt) Read more at thenewamerican.com ...
They forgot about the maxim of never letting the facts get in the way of a good story. When you actually learn the facts of the situation the uproar is quite ridiculous. No fetal cells are winding up in the soda (the favorite overreaction), the baby in question was aborted when Nixon was in the White House. Everybody wants to make this seem like they’re taking fetuses straight out of the womb and dumping them in a vat of Pepsi to see what happens, it’s really silly. It’s a cell culture they’ve been running for 40 years.
We’re talking about scum profitting off of the body parts MURDERED BABIES!!! It pure unadulterated EVIL, and no scientific utopian logic can make it not Evil. It’s not okay, it will never be okay, and those engaged in it will eventually have to answer to GOD over it. How hard is that for you to get through your head?
Lots of people profit from stuff that was bad. Had a surgery ever? Know how surgery got invented? Know how the techniques were dramatically improved? If you’ve ever had a surgery you’re probably alive because of the research of Medieval or Nazi vivisectionists. Which I guess would make you scum profiting off of murder and therefore pure unadulterated EVIL.
Meanwhile out here in non-hyperbole land, it was 40 freaking years ago, get over it. Probably a lot of what you eat and drink was tested on that or a similarly acquired line. It’s how things work.
Soylent Pepsi
Good question. Go up to some pro-choice acquaintance you know and tell them “did you know Pepsi uses aborted fetal cells in flavor research,” and offer them a choice between a soft drink made by Coke and one made by Pepsi. Bet even they would take the Coke product rather than the Pepsi one.
It has to sound nauseating regardless of your position on abortion.
Oh, okay the baby was murdered 40 years ago, that makes all the difference in the world! This thing is a-okay now! I’m sure God wouldn’t have a problem with it being ancient history and all! Afterall, the Obama Regime has ruled this as “Ordinary Business”, but I kinda like the way you put it “its how things work”. Just imagine what great tasting Soda Pop and other Processed Foods we could engineer if you used newer murdered baby parts! What a Utopian New World Order that would be. Yes, sir man as God...........there’s nothing we can’t make better with just a few spare baby parts!
The darkness found in the human heart never ceases to amaze me.
I notice how you studiously ignored the surgery question. Have you had surgery? Do you realize that you only survived it because of what Medieval and Nazi torturers did to people? Does that make you evil?
Really stop throwing around stupid hyperbole and look at the FACTS. A lot of our advances have unfortunate histories. Sometimes people are just trying to not let stuff go to waste. They had aborted fetuses lying around, which is sad and unfortunate but there they were, what to do with them, they harvested some cells, now they have these perpetual cellular test beds. It was either that or throw them out. They weren’t going to unabort the baby, that part was done, so you can either get something useful out of it or not. Kind of like Nazi surgery, can’t undo their evil experiments, but you can still use those advances to save lives every single day. If you start branding things as automatically evil because of the source you lose a lot of medicine and other stuff.
And understand the science will continue. HEK293 WILL continue to be used. Other lines of cell, some from aborted babies some not, WILL continue to be used. People’s live WILL be saved with Nazi surgery. You can’t put the genie back in the bottle, throwing around a bunch of luddite hyperbole might make you feel good but the accomplishment is ZERO, less actually.
Of course there are umpteen considerations for scientific conduct of taste testers. Too sloppy and you end up with the next New Coke, a product which lacked the luxurious, memory-hallowed taste of traditional Coca-Cola, although it was a fair imitation of Pepsi.
But the idea that kidney cells of an unborn baby can substitute for taste buds of people is even MORE preposterous. Better the frying pan than the fire. Anyhow, why would human cells be a must here? Why not animal cells and completely skirt the controversy? (Which it looks like they have.) New improved Pepsi, preferred by 99 out of 100 unborn calf kidneys!
I hope you in turn appreciate the viewpoint of those who say hey, we’re dealing with a cursed item here, at the least one which gives a wink and nod to an abominable practice for a highly questionable reason.
It’s not preposterous at all, you just have to understand what the goal is. And they have to be human cells because the test is to see how the chemicals will react with human cells.
The testing is not to see if it tastes good. It’s to see if they’re changes are having the desired effect. It runs a bit like this:
slap together a new formula
do internal testing to see if the formula is on the right path
if the formula passes that then you get it to cell testing to get your “flavor map” (how much does it taste like various recognizable stuff, 10% lime 40% sweet, that kind of junk)
Then you go to your big human testing run, and you get the feed back from the testers that there’s too much lime taste, of course keep in mind this lime taste wasn’t achieved with lime, it was achieved with chemistry, and while you know which chemicals made it you can never be sure how strong it’s going to come out
Now you decide your goal, you decide to reduce the lime flavor to 6%
tweak the chemicals and back to the cell testing to see if the results are what you wanted
once you hit that it’s back out to field testing to see if that made better
You need the cells because it’s all about reaction to human cells. You need the cells hooked up to machines because people can’t get the flavor mapping down that far, you need bio-electric feedback for that. And animal cells won’t skirt controversy even if they would give you your results, it’ll just be a different group that complains.
I comprehend the viewpoint, but I find it silly. It’s the same kind of illogic that gun grabber use, they declare guns “cursed items” and the next thing you know we’re replacing guns with walkie-talkies in ET. It’s the same crap that leads to pictures of Wernor Von Braun having his ever present cigarettes airbrushed out for textbooks, because cigarettes are “bad” and we don’t want the kiddies seeing that important people smoked. A lot of our world has bad roots, it’s just how it works when the primary advancers of technology are war and crazy people.
Animal cells might offend vegans (OK, then try plant cells) but to not see that is a quantum leap away from the ghastliness of in-womb murder is to be willfully blind.
And you still need live human testers in order to map out “here’s what tastes like lime.” And I still wonder why people who donate their bodies to science couldn’t donate taste buds (and olfactory cells) to the cause, getting as close as possible to the horse’s mouth so to speak.
Cursed is in this case a recognition of the existence of a God who has a moral will. It would apply poorly if at all to firearms, as even Jesus Christ explicitly stated that deadly weapons (in his era, swords) had a recommended use.
I actually knew the whole story but it really is a matter of morals. I knew that they just used them in tests. But those cells originally came from a human being, a human being who wasn’t allowed to live and wasn’t allowed to give consent.
If they wanted to use my cells I’d probably say fine as long as it didn’t kill me or they were taken after my death. The cells aren’t really the point.
It is about the slippery slope from using and replicating cells from an aborted child to growing and aborting children to provide other medical breakthroughs or the most disgusting and immoral, eating them to keep yourself young.
Indeed, it is about the deadening of conscience. Why kidney cells of all things. Why not taste buds and olfactory cells that came from organ donors who lived and died in such a manner that these cells weren’t adversely affected. The kidney cells are going to be seen as “reaching” even by the average scientifically literate adult.
On the surgical advancements, Hitler was pure evil and what he caused to happen was evil, that the scientific community learned something from it is still not worth the evil.
MOST, modern surgery is the product of experimentation in a normal medical setting but once again the patient is told of the risks and the chances and makes the choice.
I have no doubt that God can make good come from evil but it is never his intention.
It’s a quantum leap away for you or me. Hippy douchebags see it the other way around.
You use human testers to say “this thing tastes like lime”, but that’s generally going one combo at a time, when you’re making the product you’re putting in bunches of these things and how they’re going to interact is nearly impossible to track. Which is where the cells come in, you want to see how much of each flavor comes through.
The people who donate their bodies to science could. But there’s not much reason for the labs to be grabbing up new cultures when the old cultures functionally live forever. HEK293 was harvested in the early 70s, they just keep making the cell reproduce spawning what the need for tests and maintenance.
It is impossible for me to make the connection between the two. Even if I could, I wouldn't want to. I'll leave now just to make certain that I don't read how it works.
Didn’t say it was worth the evil, it’s not two directional math, the point if you’re going to say everything that had evil in its roots is evil then all modern surgery is evil. Even the techniques that have come since WWII are building on techniques the Nazis figured out. If we’re going to declare evil is transitory in Pepsi because they did flavor testing with the progeny of cells harvested from an abortion 40 years ago, then it has to be transitory for people whose lives were saved because of surgical techniques pioneered by the Nazis. It’s not a pick and chose world, if evil is transitory then evil is transitory, if it isn’t it isn’t. I say it isn’t, because the whole world gets really Dark Ages if it is.
It’s not about deadening anything, it’s utilizing available tools. It’s the kidney cells because that’s what Alex Van der Eb harvested to make the sample 40 years ago that is still used today. That culture worked well for stuff so it gets used.
None of this is a big secret, these cells have a web page:
http://hek293.com/
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