Posted on 06/11/2003 11:03:48 AM PDT by nickcarraway
A SYDNEY company is involved in a secret plan to collect tissue from aborted babies and export it for medical experiments
The sensitive proposal, to harvest some of the 90,000 foetuses aborted in Australia each year has been condemned by pro-life groups for fostering an international trade in human body parts.
The Daily Telegraph has established that a Dutch bio-tech company, Crucell, working through a Sydney contract research organisation, Parexel International, has applied to the ethics committee of Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Adelaide for access to foetal material.
It is believed to be the first proposed commercial collection of foetuses in Australia, but those behind the project were hoping to carry it out without the public knowing.
The tissue would be sent to Crucell's laboratories in the Netherlands and used to grow cell lines for research into vaccines for infectious diseases such as HIV and ebola.
The abortion doctors who collect the tissue stand to make money out of the project – they would be paid an "hourly rate" for their time.
This appears to contravene National Health and Medical Research Council's guidelines on the use of foetal tissue for research, which state that there should be no "element of commerce" involved.
The NHMRC has no knowledge of Crucell's plan. Crucell, and Parexel's US parent company, are listed on the Nasdaq stock exchange.
Deputy Prime Minister John Anderson, the Federal Government's most vocal critic of embryonic stem cell research, wants secrecy surrounding the project to be lifted.
"I'd like to know a lot more about what sort of guidelines are going to be put in place," he said.
Right to Life Australia spokeswoman Margaret Tighe said the plan was appalling.
"Not only do we kill babies and use Medicare funds for it but here we are contemplating making money and trading in the bodies of these poor unfortunates," she said.
"How much lower can we sink in our lack of respect for human life?"
Both Crucell and Parexel had refused to name the hospital for "commercial reasons".
A Queen Elizabeth spokesman said the application was withdrawn last week but Crucell maintained it was proceeding.
Australia is one of only four countries worldwide that could provide a source of foetal tissue free from mad cow disease contamination.
The Food and Drug Administration in the US has ranked Australia and New Zealand in the top tier of countries free of infectious diseases and it is this "clean bill of health" that has turned Crucell's eye on us.
Parexel's Sydney director, Muriel Boutillon, referred all comment to Crucell's Netherlands-based spokeswoman Louise Dolfing.
Ms Dolfing said if the application was approved it could help to find vaccines for new diseases such as SARS and save many lives.
Just like hit men- Murder for hire.
,,, G'day M! This is news to me.
Ms Dolfing said if the application was approved it could help to find vaccines for new diseases such as SARS and save many lives.
,,, even make a lot of money. Totally crass.
Would be the Netherlands (means low lands...) - normalize homosexuality, then kill babies, "harvest" the bodies of the poor unfortunates to find a way to cure the disease the homosexuals inject into each other.
I never thought I would see such evil in my lifetime.
And the ebola thing is just a ruse. It's such a remote disease - in order to get it you have to eat monkeys and the people who get it have no money.
The LORD saw how great man's wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time.
The LORD was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain.
So the LORD said, "I will wipe mankind, whom I have created, from the face of the earth-men and animals, and creatures that move along the ground, and birds of the air-for I am grieved that I have made them."
I'm thinking God is about ready to say the same thing about our generation.
First, it is scientifically impossible to discover a precise point when the individual alive being transitions from 'only' embryonic to 'fully fetal' in nature. Because that topic is deeply dependent on not so easily explained scientific facts, allow me to move to the next objection to such an arbitrary asignment of value.
It is generally because of the organs being present in the embryo that the arbitrary assignment of fetus is made. Prior to the 'fetal age' of the individual life, the organs necessary for survival as a 'fully functional human being' are not present but are being built by the embryo and looped into the primitive brain, the brain stem. If this is what will be chosen to define an alive individual human being (at the earliest fetal age), it is important to note that the first organ built by the newly conceived individual is cast off at birth! The placenta is the first organ necessary for the survival of the human organism. This organ is so important that even at in vitro fertilization clinics, the technician/physician will not seek to implant an embryo conceived in a petri dish until the organ is already surrounding and protecting the embryonic life. It is the organ of placenta that sends the chemical signals to the woman's uterine lining that initiate implantation and thus further life support from the woman's body. That is why the choice of fetal age is so arbitrary in the false assertion that fetuses should be protected while embryos should not (should not, based on the specious notion of an integrated whole organism functioning for survival and growth and development only when the fetal age, with the organ structures for future survival are in situ, is reached).
In science, it is most often the simplest solution that is the most elegant solution to a problem. Since the embryo builds its own survival capsule (the placenta) to allow it to have shelter and nourishment, it is elegantly factual to assert that the embryo is an alive, integrated whole for that age of its lifetime begun at conception. The embryo is no less an individual human being with at least one functioning organ that allows the integrated whole to survive into the future ages of the lifetime already 'up and running'."
First, it is scientifically impossible to discover a precise point when the individual alive being transitions from 'only' embryonic to 'fully fetal' in nature. Because that topic is deeply dependent on not so easily explained scientific facts, allow me to move to the next objection to such an arbitrary asignment of value.
It is generally because of the organs being present in the embryo that the arbitrary assignment of fetus is made. Prior to the 'fetal age' of the individual life, the organs necessary for survival as a 'fully functional human being' are not present but are being built by the embryo and looped into the primitive brain, the brain stem. If this is what will be chosen to define an alive individual human being (at the earliest fetal age), it is important to note that the first organ built by the newly conceived individual is cast off at birth! The placenta is the first organ necessary for the survival of the human organism. This organ is so important that even at in vitro fertilization clinics, the technician/physician will not seek to implant an embryo conceived in a petri dish until the organ is already surrounding and protecting the embryonic life. It is the organ of placenta that sends the chemical signals to the woman's uterine lining that initiate implantation and thus further life support from the woman's body. That is why the choice of fetal age is so arbitrary in the false assertion that fetuses should be protected while embryos should not (should not, based on the specious notion of an integrated whole organism functioning for survival and growth and development only when the fetal age, with the organ structures for future survival are in situ, is reached).
In science, it is most often the simplest solution that is the most elegant solution to a problem. Since the embryo builds its own survival capsule (the placenta) to allow it to have shelter and nourishment, it is elegantly factual to assert that the embryo is an alive, integrated whole for that age of its lifetime begun at conception. The embryo is no less an individual human being with at least one functioning organ that allows the integrated whole to survive into the future ages of the lifetime already 'up and running'."
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