John Whitehead's Commentary
A Bull Market for Fetal Tissue
Last year, Life Dynamics, a pro-life organization, began investigating rumors of a market for human fetal tissue. What they uncovered shocked and disgusted even the most hardened pro-abortion activists. Brains, livers, eyeballs and even prostate glands are being harvested from babies within minutes of abortions and sold to willing bidders.
Life Dynamic's efforts recently culminated in a rapid succession of events. ABC's 20/20 ran a special investigative report confirming the findings. Congress held special hearings on whether fetal tissue is being bought and sold in violation of federal law. And at the urging of Congress, the FBI announced that it would investigate reports that a Kansas City abortion clinic has been removing and marketing fetal tissue from aborted children.
The controversy revolves around federal laws against profiting from the sale of fetal tissue acquired from voluntary abortions. Organizations are allowed to take the fetal tissue and distribute it to research facilities, but they may only pay clinics what is referred to as a "site fee." In essence, this fee only covers the actual cost that clinics incur by allowing the organization to harvest fetal tissue - it doesn't include any actual profit.
Just a few years ago, the demand for fetal tissue was so low that clinics had to resort to more creative disposal techniques. In one Colorado facility, a doctor took buckets filled with 15- to 22-week-old children and ground them through a hand-cranked meat grinder until they resembled what appeared to be "pink toothpaste." The remains were then flushed down sink drains.
In 1993, President Clinton removed the moratorium on the federal funding of research on fetal tissue. Since then, demand has steadily increased. And it has led to a bull market. Reporters for ABC found that Opening Lines, a fetal tissue harvesting company, charges $325 for a spinal cord, $550 for a reproductive organ and $999 for a brain.
Rep. Thomas Bliley (R-Va.) chairs the House Commerce Committee that is investigating these reports. He told ABC that his concern was that companies like Opening Lines are getting more than their legitimate costs and appear to be "trafficking in tissue parts."
During recent committee hearings, the testimony was gruesome. One former technician told stories of cutting open the chests of fetuses, only to discover their hearts still beating. He reported seeing twin fetuses moving and breathing in a pan of blood moments before they were cut open so their organs could be harvested.
Congress acted immediately to shut down the illegal fetal tissue market. And hopefully the involvement of the FBI will present such a sufficient threat that other companies won't follow Opening Lines' example.
But the problem runs much deeper than just a fetal tissue market. The truth is that Congress wasn't only concerned with the gruesome picture of fetal tissue harvest presented during the hearings. The committee's overriding concern seemed to be money, specifically whether or not companies are making any.
Yet the simple fact that our nation's government funds fetal tissue research should chill each one of us to the bone. The potential abuse by avaricious entrepreneurs is simply too great, despite congressional oversight. And with money often comes coercion - mothers encouraged to have abortions, for the sole purpose of selling the tissue.
Fetal tissue research can also increase abortions in another, more subtle, way. For instance, if fetal tissue research is allowed, women may look to it as "moral compensation" for abortion. Indeed, a 1995 Canadian study backed up this observation, finding that 17percent of women said they would be more likely to have an abortion if fetal tissue could be used for research.
Unfortunately, President Clinton's 1993 decision opened a Pandora's Box that may be impossible to shut. In the congressional committee hearing, four of the six witnesses were there simply to urge Congress not to use the fetal tissue market as an excuse to ban fetal tissue research altogether. They included doctors, representatives of Parkinson's groups and the American Society for Cell Biology, which represents 10,000 biomedical researchers.
In addition, demand for fetal tissue is only increasing. Annual growth of greater than 10 percent is expected. And the consulting firm of Frost and Sullivan estimates corporate revenues from the global fetal tissue market to reach $1 billion annually by 2002.
Moreover, any rollbacks to abortion will increasingly be met by opposition, not just from traditional pro-abortion interest groups but the medical community and its affiliated organizations as well. Even if the Supreme Court were to overturn Roe v. Wade, the medical lobby could work state by state to legalize abortion in order to keep a supply of fetal tissue research material.
All of which reminds me of the story of Dr. Peter Adam. Six months after the Roe v. Wade decision in 1973, Dr. Adam took 12 babies who were born alive by hysterotomy abortion and decapitated them. A tube was then placed in the main artery feeding the brain, keeping the heads alive. "I don't see any ethical problem," he said.
The bull market in human fetal tissue research is bringing us full circle back to Dr. Adam and the decapitated babies' heads. And it may very well fulfill the prophecy of C.S. Lewis, who noted, "[I] wouldn't do to minerals and vegetables what modern science threatens to do to man himself."
879 words
Life Dynamic's efforts recently culminated in a rapid succession of events. ABC's 20/20 ran a special investigative report confirming the findings. Congress held special hearings on whether fetal tissue is being bought and sold in violation of federal law. And at the urging of Congress, the FBI announced that it would investigate reports that a Kansas City abortion clinic has been removing and marketing fetal tissue from aborted children.
The controversy revolves around federal laws against profiting from the sale of fetal tissue acquired from voluntary abortions. Organizations are allowed to take the fetal tissue and distribute it to research facilities, but they may only pay clinics what is referred to as a "site fee." In essence, this fee only covers the actual cost that clinics incur by allowing the organization to harvest fetal tissue - it doesn't include any actual profit.
Just a few years ago, the demand for fetal tissue was so low that clinics had to resort to more creative disposal techniques. In one Colorado facility, a doctor took buckets filled with 15- to 22-week-old children and ground them through a hand-cranked meat grinder until they resembled what appeared to be "pink toothpaste." The remains were then flushed down sink drains.
In 1993, President Clinton removed the moratorium on the federal funding of research on fetal tissue. Since then, demand has steadily increased. And it has led to a bull market. Reporters for ABC found that Opening Lines, a fetal tissue harvesting company, charges $325 for a spinal cord, $550 for a reproductive organ and $999 for a brain.
Rep. Thomas Bliley (R-Va.) chairs the House Commerce Committee that is investigating these reports. He told ABC that his concern was that companies like Opening Lines are getting more than their legitimate costs and appear to be "trafficking in tissue parts."
During recent committee hearings, the testimony was gruesome. One former technician told stories of cutting open the chests of fetuses, only to discover their hearts still beating. He reported seeing twin fetuses moving and breathing in a pan of blood moments before they were cut open so their organs could be harvested.
Congress acted immediately to shut down the illegal fetal tissue market. And hopefully the involvement of the FBI will present such a sufficient threat that other companies won't follow Opening Lines' example.
But the problem runs much deeper than just a fetal tissue market. The truth is that Congress wasn't only concerned with the gruesome picture of fetal tissue harvest presented during the hearings. The committee's overriding concern seemed to be money, specifically whether or not companies are making any.
Yet the simple fact that our nation's government funds fetal tissue research should chill each one of us to the bone. The potential abuse by avaricious entrepreneurs is simply too great, despite congressional oversight. And with money often comes coercion - mothers encouraged to have abortions, for the sole purpose of selling the tissue.
Fetal tissue research can also increase abortions in another, more subtle, way. For instance, if fetal tissue research is allowed, women may look to it as "moral compensation" for abortion. Indeed, a 1995 Canadian study backed up this observation, finding that 17percent of women said they would be more likely to have an abortion if fetal tissue could be used for research.
Unfortunately, President Clinton's 1993 decision opened a Pandora's Box that may be impossible to shut. In the congressional committee hearing, four of the six witnesses were there simply to urge Congress not to use the fetal tissue market as an excuse to ban fetal tissue research altogether. They included doctors, representatives of Parkinson's groups and the American Society for Cell Biology, which represents 10,000 biomedical researchers.
In addition, demand for fetal tissue is only increasing. Annual growth of greater than 10 percent is expected. And the consulting firm of Frost and Sullivan estimates corporate revenues from the global fetal tissue market to reach $1 billion annually by 2002.
Moreover, any rollbacks to abortion will increasingly be met by opposition, not just from traditional pro-abortion interest groups but the medical community and its affiliated organizations as well. Even if the Supreme Court were to overturn Roe v. Wade, the medical lobby could work state by state to legalize abortion in order to keep a supply of fetal tissue research material.
All of which reminds me of the story of Dr. Peter Adam. Six months after the Roe v. Wade decision in 1973, Dr. Adam took 12 babies who were born alive by hysterotomy abortion and decapitated them. A tube was then placed in the main artery feeding the brain, keeping the heads alive. "I don't see any ethical problem," he said.
The bull market in human fetal tissue research is bringing us full circle back to Dr. Adam and the decapitated babies' heads. And it may very well fulfill the prophecy of C.S. Lewis, who noted, "[I] wouldn't do to minerals and vegetables what modern science threatens to do to man himself."
879 words
ABOUT JOHN W. WHITEHEAD
Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His most recent books are the best-selling Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the award-winning A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, and a debut dystopian fiction novel, The Erik Blair Diaries. Whitehead can be contacted at staff@rutherford.org. Nisha Whitehead is the Executive Director of The Rutherford Institute. Information about The Rutherford Institute is available at www.rutherford.org.
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