Althouse: "If you think fetal-tissue research is wrong and should be banned, would you refuse to use any therapies that may come out of it?"

October 8, 2015

"If you think fetal-tissue research is wrong and should be banned, would you refuse to use any therapies that may come out of it?"

"I thought not. I’ve posed this question to abortion opponents before, but so far, no one has said, Yes, Katha, I would rather let Alzheimer’s turn my brain into cottage cheese and ketchup than benefit from this diabolical practice. If I get Parkinson’s, HIV, breast cancer, diabetes, or the flu; if I go blind from macular degeneration; if I have a miscarriage, so be it. Treatments for those conditions are still being developed, but surprise! If you have been vaccinated for polio, mumps, measles, chicken pox, hepatitis, or rabies, it may be too late for you to stand your ethical ground: You have already benefited from fetal-tissue research. This is, after all, a practice that’s been legal since the 1930s. In 1954, John Enders, Thomas Weller, and Frederick Robbins won the Nobel Prize for work on the polio virus that paved the way for the Salk and Sabin vaccines. They used fetal tissue, the monsters. Should their heirs return the medals?"

Writes Katha Pollitt in The Nation in a piece titled "Fetal-Tissue Bans Are All About Making Abortion Providers Look Like Monsters/Life-saving research is collateral damage in the war on Planned Parenthood."

111 comments:

jr565 said...: How many cures have come out of FETAL stem cells?
Also, you could make this same argument about ANIMAL research. How many people want to do away with animal research. Would they not take a cure if it was produced by animal research?; 10/8/15, 9:57 AM
Big Mike said...: So far it's a moot point. My understanding is that all of the successful stem cell therapies have come from using adult stem cells.; 10/8/15, 9:57 AM
Jaq said...: I wouldn't refuse a liver from a 20 year old who was driving his motorcycle at 100 mph on a city street either, but if given the chance to convince him not to do it, I would, and if the motorcycle manufacturers were getting a percentage on every liver delivered, I am betting these same people would throw a fit.; 10/8/15, 10:01 AM
mccullough said...: This is a fun way to approach issues.; 10/8/15, 10:01 AM
traditionalguy said...: Can the loving parents get a Mapplethorpe tattoo lampshade on fetal skin from their murdered son? That would be quite a conversation piece worthy of the World renewal of Baal worship.

Seriously, its a privacy issue. If your mom is a murderer, its better to go quickly than slowly.; 10/8/15, 10:03 AM
Nonapod said...: There's still lot of issues with reliably producing induced pluripotent stem cells I guess.; 10/8/15, 10:03 AM
damikesc said...: So, using her logic...what was wrong with the Tuskegee experiments or what Mengele did? They also experimented on non humans without their consent.; 10/8/15, 10:03 AM
Qwerty Smith said...: Josef Mengele's research didn't produce anything useful, but suppose it had. If he had discovered a cure for juvenile leukemia, would you let your kid die, rather than employ a cure that was originally derived from Nazi experiments on Jewish and Roma children? I would condemn Mengele and use the cure. I don't see why that is supposed to be hypocritical.; 10/8/15, 10:05 AM
Mr. Colby said...: If we can help people using knowledge gained from past research that we all agree was immoral (e.g. Nazi scientists experimenting on prisoners), should we do so? There's a discomfort, a hesitation, but I would say yes. Using that knowledge doesn't do any further harm to the ill-used victims.

Does that mean that, in the present and the future, we should continue to do that same kind of evil research, in the hope that by doing evil, good will result? Of course not.; 10/8/15, 10:05 AM
Moose said...: Sounds like a typical conversation that surrounded Nazi medical research in WWII. People chose to overlook where it came from and use it for good, all the while condemning the people that conducted the researching. Should be pretty much the same for fetal tissue research I think...; 10/8/15, 10:06 AM
ELC said...: I’ve posed this question to abortion opponents before, but so far, no one has said, Yes.... I don't believe her.; 10/8/15, 10:09 AM
Bob Ellison said...: Pollitt's logic follows the logic of the exclusionary rule in criminal justice.; 10/8/15, 10:09 AM
Jaq said...: Remember that we weren't talking about non humans. Cells from non humans would be of little value, we are talking about legal non persons. You know, like the Jooos in Germany.

Sorry to keep bringing that up but it is hard to find examples of humans being defined as legal non persons without going to some pretty execrable regimes.

The ante-bellum US, but enslaved people were more valuable alive, so I guess you sort of have to go the the Nazis.; 10/8/15, 10:12 AM
Darcy said...: I see. There are no ethical lines to worry about unless people with the ethical standards and vision comparable to, say, Katha Pollitt tell me there are. End justifies the means, here.

I'm actually despairing that this discussion is futile, no matter how genuinely put forth. This is the result of the slippery slope. People give up the fight, but that cannot always mean that the fight was wrong, having been defeated.; 10/8/15, 10:15 AM
Saint Croix said...: Next she'll be telling me I have to give up my moon rocks because Nazi scientists worked for NASA.; 10/8/15, 10:20 AM
Renee said...: What if a cure came from a person who was murdered?

Not the researchers fault, someone was murdered and the next of kin donated the body to science. The murderer is published, and the family has experienced a lost.

But what makes this different is the premeditation, planning, and coordination. For the woman, there is no lost, since culturally speaking the fetus is not her baby. The abortion clinic is not a criminal murderer, there is no criminal penalty under the law.

This wasn't donating medical waste to research, but paying per an organ though....

If it was the remains of my aborted fetus, and a researcher became rich... Do I get a share of the profits, how was the woman compensated for her contribution to humanity?; 10/8/15, 10:20 AM
YoungHegelian said...: Deathwalker!!!!!!

(C'mon, admit it. Katha Polllitt does kinda look like Jha'Dur).; 10/8/15, 10:20 AM
Saint Croix said...: 2 questions for pro-choice people:

How do people classified as non-people produce such wonderful human tissue and

Why do you feel the need to censor abortion photographs?; 10/8/15, 10:20 AM
Unknown said...: The hypothetical is like asking Baptists to give up scholarships funded by lotteries.; 10/8/15, 10:21 AM
Hagar said...: Miscarriages do happen. There is quite a stretch between using tissues from such (with parental consent) and setting up an industrial scale operation to collect and sell fetal tissue to all comers for profit (whether the profit comes from the sales or a government grant in a pea and shell scam) and not telling the mothers just what is going on either.; 10/8/15, 10:22 AM
fivewheels said...: Katha Pollitt, who hates America so much she refused to let her daughter fly an American flag on their house after 9/11, still seems to live here.; 10/8/15, 10:22 AM
Bay Area Guy said...: Katha Pollitt, if she had any guts, would write the same article substituting "homeless people" for fetal tissue. Heck, the homeless have fully developed organs, not just tissue, we could use to research for the betterment of mankind. Katha - we're waiting?; 10/8/15, 10:23 AM
Jaq said...: But what makes this different is the premeditation, planning, and coordination. For the woman, there is no lost, since culturally speaking the fetus is not her baby.

That's sort of the question isn't it? I mean suppose that we decide that "culturally speaking" a man's wife is his property to do with as he sees fit, and he sees fit to kill her (not murder, since she is his property) , then he may as well donate the body for medical research as this will save him disposal trouble and expense.

This is all so easy, isn't it?; 10/8/15, 10:24 AM
traditionalguy said...: The ethics of the parts business is long established. They are the clean up crew of abandoned lives. In Dickens" London the profession was Dustmen. It is lucrative because they can create a market for the trashed and junked parts.

The issue remains the financial assistance of Government for the Murder that creates the baby parts. If that is covered by a Constitutional Right to Privacy, so is the resale of baby parts.

Harsh reality strips off the comforting idea that a fetus is not a human's discarded baby. Planned Parenthood just uses that niche of comfort to buy Lamborghinis.; 10/8/15, 10:25 AM
William said...: I'm not against fetal tissue research. I'm against the harvesting and sale of body parts. Take the profit motive out of baby dismemberment. Nation readers should be able to understand that simple principle. If it's wrong to sell drugs at a profit, it should be wrong to sell baby parts for commercial gain.; 10/8/15, 10:25 AM
Roughcoat said...: This is a bullshit hypothetical, and the commentators preceding me have a done a good job explaining why.

Next subject.; 10/8/15, 10:26 AM
JAORE said...: I, reluctantly, fall into the pro-choice side. (But, man do the All Abortions All The Time!!!! crowd turn my stomach.)

However, this is a particularly STUPID argument since I find it obvious it is being brought out as a defense of the actions of PP.

It ignores the harvesting at a particular time to increase the value to PP, never mind the woman involved. (And YES I have watched some of the PP videos, particularly #7.)

It ignores the central issue of having taxpayers PAY for such procedures. Money is fungible, people. There should be a clear, bright line between groups that provide abortions and those that get tax dollars.; 10/8/15, 10:26 AM
Jason said...: The Nazi Doctors actually did learn information of value from the Nazi experiments on Jews and other prisoners. Me gels was not the only one conducting them. There were scores of them. Maybe hundreds.

I believe the largest effort was not even at Auschwitz, but at Ravensbruck conducted on women prisoners, whom they called "Rabbits."

The Japanese also developed useful medical information by conducting monstrous "experiments" on Chinese and others. This was one of the reasons the Allies did not hang the medical director... The Deborah Nucatola of Unit 732 or whatever it was. Hecht a deal in exchange for information.

We have confronted these issues before. Pollitt thinks she is being profound but as is always the case with liberals she is quite banal.

Hannah Arendt was right about the banality of evil.; 10/8/15, 10:27 AM
Brando said...: I assume they feel the same about cures and methodologies that are derived from involuntary testing on death row inmates. It raises an interesting question of ethics--if something you consider evil has created great benefits, is it worse to deny yourself those benefits (when doing so does not prevent the evil from happening, only prevents you from getting the benefit) or accept them? Had Nazi doctors gained any great medical breakthroughs from their experiments on concentration camp inmates, we'd be faced with the same quandary.

But for Pollitt to act as though this is some brilliant "gotcha" against pro-lifers just shows how deep up her own ass she is.; 10/8/15, 10:29 AM
Jaq said...: What really stumps the Murder Incorporated types is why, once the SCOTUS declared unborn babies 'not legal persons' why everybody didn't just accept that finding as a fact as real as gravity, and make the further leap, that these babies are not human.

The SCOTUS never said that an unborn baby, or its corpse, known as a fetus, is not human.; 10/8/15, 10:29 AM
Matt Sablan said...: So the only way to do this research is by lying to women about the medical procedures you are going to do on them and selling the results to the highest bidder?; 10/8/15, 10:29 AM
Jaq said...: Imagine having sympathy for 'slaves' even after the SCOTUS declared them property, like so many cattle. Some people didn't think of them as 'slaves' but rather as 'enslaved persons' and those people were reviled at the time, and are celebrated now. Go figure...; 10/8/15, 10:32 AM
Mary Martha said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 10/8/15, 10:33 AM
Mick said...: The disease of the liberal mind, moral relativism, in plain view.; 10/8/15, 10:34 AM
Bill said...: I can't imagine her rubbing elbows with anyone who's prolife. Unless she's among the Left who still speak to Nat Hentoff.; 10/8/15, 10:35 AM
dbp said...: As had been pointed out above: Pollitt's argument is silly--nobody would countenance continued experimentation on unwilling Jews, even if lots of cures were found.

In addition, her Polio vaccine example is not what I remember from virology and immunology. The Polio vaccines were developed using HeLa cells (from a cervical tumor) and monkey kidney cells.; 10/8/15, 10:44 AM
lgv said...: This is why all members of PETA and all vegans should never use any life saving drugs. They have all been tested on animals and caused many such animals to die. No drugs whatsoever.; 10/8/15, 10:45 AM
Ambrose said...: The actions that a desperately ill person would take to save himself - or what a parent would do to save a sick child - are not necessarily what we should use as a basis for public policy. For example, if the only means to save your 3 year old from a prolonged and painful death was to accept a transplant organ that had been harvested from late term aborted fetus, what would you do? Should public policy regarding late term abortions be made based on the decision made by a parent in those circumstances?; 10/8/15, 10:46 AM
Mary Martha said...: I do not believe that she has actually asked any pro-life people this question. Maybe she has yelled it at them in the middle of a screaming fight... but never politely asked in a discussion.

Every pro-life person I know (including myself and I am *not* militant at all) would refuse treatments that come from aborted fetal tissue.

If someone said that all your ills could be cured - you (not someone else - you) just have to strangle and boil a six month old baby and consume soup of it's body parts... would you do it?

This is something that those who push 'abortion can somehow, someday, hopefully cure disease' line don't get. If I believe that abortion is murder - the price is too high.

I would rather die than kill a child.; 10/8/15, 10:49 AM
Ron Winkleheimer said...: I agree, she has never actually had a conversation with a Pro Life person, at most she has yelled "hypocrite" at them because she assumes that if they had an inconvenient pregnancy they would quietly end it. That is one of the things that bothered them about Sarah Palin, she didn't kill her baby when she found out that it had Downs. In fact, I say posts stating straight out that she had a duty to abort a baby that would end up as a burden on society.

Kill them for useful body parts, or because they will be a burden on society, (isn't that the Freakonomic argument for abortion, it reduces crime) either way, there are dead babies.; 10/8/15, 10:50 AM
Michael said...: That is a good question. But let me Ask you one.
If your child was being murdered and you had a gun to stop the murderer would you use it?
Hypotheticals are good.; 10/8/15, 10:57 AM
Ron Winkleheimer said...: http://www.al.com/news/huntsville/index.ssf/2014/06/abortion_protestors_say_propos.html; 10/8/15, 10:58 AM
bleh said...: That's just an idiotic argument.

Slavery was also evil, but the United States surely benefited economically from slavery for decades before the Industrial Revolution. Does that mean whatever social, technical, medical or scientific advances were funded or facilitated in some way by slave labor have to be wiped from history? How is that even possible when knowledge builds upon knowledge?

What the author is advocating is the closing of the mind.; 10/8/15, 11:01 AM
Beth B said...: I wonder how she would feel about the sale of organs from death row inmates? Would she mind if the prison got a piece of the action?; 10/8/15, 11:02 AM
Saint Croix said...: Pollitt's mistake is based on the idea that an evil tree always produces bad fruit. This is obviously not true. For instance, the United States Constitution was written by a slave-owner. Using Pollitt's logic, Article III is evil, the Supreme Court is evil, and Roe v. Wade is evil, since all these things purport to be based on that corrupt document.

Or, to give another example, if evil Katha Pollitt were to have sex with a man and have a baby, that baby would be evil, since it came from evil Katha Pollitt.

And yet, babies are not evil.; 10/8/15, 11:05 AM
Darcy said...: Oh, Beth B. That is such a brilliant question for Ms. Pollitt. Well done.; 10/8/15, 11:06 AM
Jaq said...: Not the prison, but the police and the prosecuting attorney and the jury.; 10/8/15, 11:07 AM
Blue Ox said...: Ooh! This is a fun game!

Someone needs to as Katha if she approves of abortion even if it means aborting the scientist who will one day cure cancer.; 10/8/15, 11:14 AM
Blue Ox said...: *ask*; 10/8/15, 11:15 AM
Hagar said...: Gouvernour Morrs owned slaves?; 10/8/15, 11:16 AM
Lewis Wetzel said...: It's always the same, back to the worship of Ba'al. "If we kill the children, we can save ourselves."; 10/8/15, 11:16 AM
SweatBee said...: So she's never asked Alan Keyes that question, then. http://www.keyesarchives.com/transcript.php?id=154; 10/8/15, 11:16 AM
Todd said...: Renee said... [hush][hide comment]

This wasn't donating medical waste to research, but paying per an organ though....

If it was the remains of my aborted fetus, and a researcher became rich... Do I get a share of the profits, how was the woman compensated for her contribution to humanity?

10/8/15, 10:20 AM

Of coarse she should! It is only illegal to sell YOUR body parts. The mother may own the fetus but the organs belong to the fetus especially once it is removed from her body, so sure, she should profit from it just like all of the others involved in the process.; 10/8/15, 11:17 AM
Charlie Eklund said...: Well, she never asked me but I'll say it.

Yes. I'm willing to lose my life rather than participate in the killing of an unborn person, whose right to life is equal to my own.; 10/8/15, 11:20 AM
exhelodrvr1 said...: If we vote against a bond for highway improvements, are we not supposed to subsequently drive on the roads?; 10/8/15, 11:31 AM
grackle said...: Ran across this bit of info on Instapundit the other day, the title of the post was BUT THEY SAID THEY NEEDED EMBRYONIC STEM CELLS

http://tinyurl.com/jvzpomr; 10/8/15, 11:35 AM
Jaq said...: Beethoven was the 15th child to a poor family. Only heartlessness towards the mother prevented his abortion.; 10/8/15, 11:41 AM
bleh said...: I am sure to be consistent the Obama administration destroyed all intelligence gleaned during the Bush years from the use of enhanced techniques like waterboarding. Presumably, being non-hypocritical, they sprung loose any terrorists apprehended in part thanks to that intelligence and ceased investigating any leads that were tainted in any way by waterboarding.; 10/8/15, 11:42 AM
Beta Rube said...: If you abhor and rail against Big Pharma, will you cease using their products?
If you are terrified of global warming, will you quit taking first class flights with your wealthy pals?
If you're certain we have too many folks incarcerated, let me know how many you want released in your neighborhood.
And on and on. The liberal elite never come anywhere near the consequences of their remedies for others.; 10/8/15, 11:52 AM
MacMacConnell said...: Dr. Michelle Cretella, president of the American College of Pediatricians (ACPEDS), actually goes one step further.

“Let’s be clear: selling organs of aborted babies for fetal tissue research is unnecessary and prolongs human suffering,” she tells Breitbart News. “Fetal tissue research, like embryonic stem cell research, has failed to produce a single successful treatment for human disease, and both have been associated with significant side-effects including overgrowth of cells and the need for immunosuppressive chemotherapy.”

Cretella further explains:

Adult stem cell research, in contrast, has yielded treatments for 73 different diseases including several forms of cancer, diabetes, Parkinson’s, cardiac disease, autoimmune illnesses and more. Adult stem cells do not overgrow or require immunosuppression, and most importantly, they do not require the killing of innocent human life.

“Each dollar spent on fetal tissue transplants from aborted babies and embryonic stem cell research is a dollar not spent on expanding the success of adult stem cell therapies,” she adds.; 10/8/15, 11:58 AM
damikesc said...: Josef Mengele's research didn't produce anything useful

Which means it's had the same benefit as fetal stem cell research.

I don't see why that is supposed to be hypocritical.

Why don't we use the benefits derived from slavery/mass genocide?

There's plenty of reasons. If you are unaware of that, I'm not sure you can be educated as to those reasons. Education and working miracles aren't synonymous.

As pointed out, we will allow a murderer to walk free if the evidence that put him/her in jail was gained illegally. We routinely will ignore "good" things derived from bad methods.

This is why all members of PETA and all vegans should never use any life saving drugs. They have all been tested on animals and caused many such animals to die. No drugs whatsoever.

But a VP of PETA was nailed for using medication, an insulin derivative I believe, derived from animal testing. She felt that her advocacy of animals gave her moral justification for doing so.

The actions that a desperately ill person would take to save himself - or what a parent would do to save a sick child - are not necessarily what we should use as a basis for public policy. For example, if the only means to save your 3 year old from a prolonged and painful death was to accept a transplant organ that had been harvested from late term aborted fetus, what would you do? Should public policy regarding late term abortions be made based on the decision made by a parent in those circumstances?

If I had to shoot somebody to save my child, I'd do so. Doesn't make it a great policy to murder people.

Let's also remind you that the mother would be forbidden from selling the baby's organs. PP, however, seems less tied down, oddly.; 10/8/15, 12:13 PM
Jason said...: Suppose we sold organs harvested involuntarily from prisoners sentenced to death.

Suppose further, as someone else mentioned above, that the prison got a cut of the cash. Would that present an ethical problem for liberals?

Suppose further that the judge in the case got a cut of the cash. Would that present an ethical problem?

Suppose further that cash payments also went to prosecutors? Would that present an ethical problem?

Suppose further that cash payments also went to defense attorneys. Would that present an ethical problem?

Suppose further that cash payments also went to jurors. Would that present an ethical problem?

Suppose further that cash payments also went to police officers and departments who made arrests on people later sentenced to death and had organs harvested and sold. Would that present an ethical problem?

Because that's pretty much the situation we have now. It's just a matter of someone upstream settling for a Ford instead of a Lamborghini.

Pollit seems to think she's the only person who ever thought more than five minutes about medical ethics.; 10/8/15, 12:27 PM
laura said...: is the argument that science and discovery of cures is completely halted if planned parenthood is stopped?
is it not possible to use the tissue from fetuses that died naturally?; 10/8/15, 12:34 PM
Fen said...: Can we kill Katha Pollitt if it produces a cure for Cancer?

I think so, she's obviously subhuman.; 10/8/15, 12:35 PM
damikesc said...: is it not possible to use the tissue from fetuses that died naturally?

They don't die often enough for their tastes.; 10/8/15, 12:57 PM
Theranter said...: Blogger Matthew Sablan @ 10:29 said...
"So the only way to do this research is by lying to women about the medical procedures you are going to do on them and selling the results to the highest bidder?"

Pretty much. That's why I was surprised by the reactions when advocating that the proper thing to do for women's psychological health is to have a comprehensive, yet concise, donor form wherein each "part" is listed and must be initialed for consent (e.g. Brain, foreskin, ovary/eggs, eyes, skin, liver etc.) and its concomitant use(s) in research are listed (especially noting if that part is going to be used to harm an animal, (see "humanized mice liver" where the infant's liver is grafted to a mouse and grown)); and especially noting if that "part" will be used to create another life that is then destroyed (because then she is really responsible for the taking of yet another life), and that those "parts" not consented to (including the entire child if donation is not elected) are returned to her in a bag prior to her leaving the procedure room. (If it isn't a person, surely can bury it the yard as you would the family pet.)

But lefty's feel that is too insensitive for women (I say toughen up bitches, if you can kill your own kid via someone shoving an instrument up your vagina and into your uterus to yank the kid out, and the reality is it's going to be parted out faster than an L.A. chop shop, you can, and for your future well-being, should, have a say which, if any parts are "used") And I am baffled why the right is not okay with this, and am beginning to wonder if they really want to reduce abortions, or are they just wanting to keep collecting $ to fund their organizations?; 10/8/15, 1:34 PM
Sammy Finkelman said...: But the abortions that provided the starter tissue that was used for vaccine research were all done before most abortions became legal.

Therefore they were probably therapeutic abortions approved of by a hospital ethics committee or came from miscarriages.

This issue here is more like the Henrietta Lacks case.; 10/8/15, 1:37 PM
Sammy Finkelman said...: damikesc said...on 10/8/15 at 12:13 PM

Let's also remind you that the mother would be forbidden from selling the baby's organs. PP, however, seems less tied down, oddly.

Planned Parehnthood claims they don't charge for babies' organs. It's free.

But they do charge for shipping and handling.; 10/8/15, 1:41 PM
n.n said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 10/8/15, 1:43 PM
n.n said...: So, human life does not have intrinsic or exceptional value. The scientific evidence and self-evident knowledge about human evolution from conception can be [selectively] denied. There is only [class] diversity, personal and special interests, and individual lives do not matter. Is that really the belief that people want to normalize or promote?

The consequences of establishing a religious/moral philosophy that debases human life will not be contained to the abortion industry and Planned Parenthood, and not to the women and men who sacrifice their unwanted or inconvenient Posterity/children. It is a direct cause of progressive corruption and dysfunction. History, it seems, will inevitably repeat itself.

To be clear, the moral hazard is created with elective abortions or premeditated killing, not spontaneous abortions or natural deaths. The hazard is further aggravated through the normalization or promotion of this wicked solution to a "wicked problem".; 10/8/15, 1:47 PM
Nichevo said...: Fink, that s&h dodge doesn't fool us when Ronco uses it to sell more rotisseries or Hair in a Can. Why pretend to take it seriously in the case of a cannibal chop shop like PP?; 10/8/15, 1:47 PM
Sammy Finkelman said...: Beth B said... 10/8/15, 11:02 AM

I wonder how she would feel about the sale of organs from death row inmates? Would she mind if the prison got a piece of the action?

This actually goes on in China - and many of these people probably do not deserve death. It is illegal for Americans to benefit from such a transplant, but hospitals in Beijing still perform them say, for people from Thailand. Or they were doing it till this year. Of course they lie about it too.

People in the government with some foresight (they might wind up prisoners themselves!) have been trying to find a different source of transplants for some years.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1165416/Chinas-hi-tech-death-van-criminals-executed-organs-sold-black-market.html

http://www.christusrex.org/www1/sdc/organs.html

http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2014/12/05/china-to-halt-harvesting-of-organs-from-executed-prisoners-for-transplant/

http://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/1842647/china-perform-record-number-organ-transplants-despite-ban

On the upside, saving prisoners for use in transplants cab prevent the carrying out of death sentences (most o not become matches); 10/8/15, 1:51 PM
n.n said...: Elective abortion or premeditated killing with the intention to harvest parts, tissue, and cells is equivalent to cannibalism.

How many people would consume another human being in order to save their life?

This is the specific issue that bears on Planned Parenthood's corporate practices and their customers. The abortion industry's elective abortion or premeditated killing for other causes creates its own moral hazards that deserve to be considered separately.; 10/8/15, 1:58 PM
Qwerty Smith said...: "Why don't we use the benefits derived from slavery/mass genocide? There's plenty of reasons. If you are unaware of that, I'm not sure you can be educated as to those reasons."

We already, unavoidably, do benefit from such things. Nobody alive today would be alive were it not for such things. The current world is a product of everything that has happened in the past, for better or worse. Presumably every single person on the planet has an ancestor who, at some point over the past hundreds of thousands of years, was the offspring of rape. Every currently occupied space was probably forcibly taken from somebody at some point. Slavery and slaughter have touched everything.

If we wish to avoid benefiting from past injustice, the only way to do so is to cease existing. It seems to me, however, that our obligation is to stop or prevent current injustices, and not to keep flagellating ourselves about what the dead have wrought.; 10/8/15, 2:28 PM
damikesc said...: If we wish to avoid benefiting from past injustice, the only way to do so is to cease existing. It seems to me, however, that our obligation is to stop or prevent current injustices, and not to keep flagellating ourselves about what the dead have wrought.

You're aware she's advocating CONTINUING the atrocity right now, right?; 10/8/15, 2:33 PM
HoodlumDoodlum said...: Horseshit pseudo-logic of the first order, not even sophomoric.

"If you oppose the protection afforded by personal ownership and possession of firearms, would you be willing to put a sign in your yard and wear a large flashing button declaring you don't have any guns? Yeah, I thought not."

"If you oppose aggressive policing and the way cops discriminate against group X, would you be willing to never call 911 in an emergency? Yeah, thought not."

"If you oppose environmental degregation caused by energy production, would you be opposed to taking any modern transport (car, airplane, bus, train) and only travelling by bicycle? Yeah, thought not."

Deep thoughts from the Left, indeed.; 10/8/15, 2:36 PM
HoodlumDoodlum said...: We've all benefitted from science (in particular in the field of rocketry & space exploration) derived in large part from Nazi (or anyway ex-Nazi) scientists, but that's not a good argument for continuing to do other things the Nazis did.

We've all benefitted from scientific discoveries achieved during numerous atmospheric nuclear explosions/testing, but it does not follow that we ought to keep poppin' off nukes.; 10/8/15, 2:39 PM
HoodlumDoodlum said...: Wait, this is the Nation, right? To them America was founded & built on slavery & injustice, right? Since they claim to oppose slavery they either have to renounce all the good things they get from America now...or allow slavery?
Tight, tight argument, there.; 10/8/15, 2:41 PM
HoodlumDoodlum said...: Goddamn it takes a lot of handwaving to try and obscure something so ugly as what those videos made clear.
The sad part is it's unnecessary. Every person in America could watch all of those videos (and go in with a credible attitude) and at least 40% would still support Planned Parenthood.
You don't have to shill so hard, Katha! If you like your ability to terminate pregnancies at any time and for any reason you can keep your ability to terminate pregnancies at any time and for any reason! Hell, we can't even stop the US government from underwriting PP to the tune of half a billion dollars! Seems like one of those "lady doth protest to much" things, huh?; 10/8/15, 2:44 PM
policraticus said...: ::Raises hand.::

Even if the best medical research convinced me I could reverse my Alzheimer's by eating the liver of a person from Ghana, a stranger with whom I had no connection, I would not do it.

Even if Dr. Mengele had, in fact, cured Alzheimer's by vivisecting young Jewish twins, I would take his research and use it to do the best I could to erase the horror of its creation by actually curing Alzheimer's. However, I would not advocate continuing to use the vivisection of Jews as a way to cure Parkinson's or ALS.

Karen Pollitt is obviously not asking the right people this simple question.; 10/8/15, 2:49 PM
Bushman of the Kohlrabi said...: Can we kill Katha Pollitt if it produces a cure for Cancer?

I think so, she's obviously subhuman.

A more appropriate question would be:

Can we kill Katha Pollitt if there is a chance that her death produces a cure for cancer?; 10/8/15, 3:02 PM
HoodlumDoodlum said...: You can almost taste how badly Pollitt wants to be Colonel Jessup--"deep down in places you don't talk about at parties you WANT me aborting late term fetuses and using their organs for medical research, you NEED me aborting late term fetuses and using their organs for medical research!" but she just can't figure out how even that conviction means that it's necessary to have Planned Parenthood be the one to serve that function in the particular way it does. Let's grant her that fetal experimentation/tissue from fetuses is needed for certain research. Does that mean that Planned Parenthood's actions are ok, or that any objections to Planned Parenthood's methods, lack of transparency, government funding, etc, can therefore not be questioned? Certainly not. Even on her own terms Pollitt fails to defend PP, and relies on conflating PP with "any fetal research or method to obtain fetal tissue," which is self-evidently ludicrous. You fail, madam.; 10/8/15, 3:03 PM
Laslo Spatula said...: From Wiki:

"Antenatal depression, also known as Prenatal depression, is a form of clinical depression that can affect a woman during pregnancy, and can be a precursor to postpartum depression if not properly treated. It is estimated that 7% to 20% percent of pregnant women are affected by this condition."

What if the desire for abortion is not a rational choice of a woman's rights but rather simply a symptom of a Disease? What if Desire for Abortion = Clinically Depressed?

Or perhaps it is a related form of Body integrity identity disorder (BIID), in which otherwise sane and rational individuals express a strong and specific desire for the amputation of a healthy limb or limbs.

We would not advocate giving guns to the severely depressed, yet we let potentially depressed women abort their own offspring due to the mother's sickness. Hell, we'll pay for it and practically call it therapy.

Ladies. it is not your uterus I am concerned with: it is your head.

I am Laslo.

We DO need to do more about Mental Health: Ladies, first.

I am Laslo.; 10/8/15, 3:12 PM
Todd said...: HoodlumDoodlum said...

10/8/15, 3:03 PM

In addition, if you take the PP supporters at their own word, there should be more than enough "medically necessary, for the life of the mother" abortions that must be performed to supply the stem-cells and other organs needed for research.

The problem is that PP is so far past "reasonable" that it can't even be seen in the rear view mirror anymore. They have progressed from a business that kills babies into a for profit baby parts chop shop.; 10/8/15, 3:14 PM
CStanley said...: When the PP videos first broke, and I learned the extent to which fetal tissue is being used in research, I immediately felt a need to keep myself more informed so that I will know to avoid the therapies that might result from it. I feel an ethical imperative to do so. I think I may have commented on this right here on this blog.

So no, I don't believe that Politt has actually put the question to pro life people. I think he's just assuming that most people would agree with him. The question should be turned around: would you abort a child in order to use its parts to treat your own illness, or that of a loved one? Could you become pregnant or impregnate another person to create a donor to do this? If not, then why would you accept that practice from someone you don't know?; 10/8/15, 3:21 PM
Laslo Spatula said...: You would think that, with the amount of black babies that are aborted, the likes of Politt would at least toss 'Sickle cell anemia' onto their lists of diseases to be cured.

I mean, these lists look like Things White People Fear.

Throw the black people a bone.

I am Laslo.; 10/8/15, 3:25 PM
Unknown said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 10/8/15, 3:27 PM
Unknown said...: The author is confabulating fetal tissue with stem cells. There are fetal stem cells and adult or non-fetal stem cells. The jury is still out if fetal stem cells will be needed.

The author is also disingenuous about the polio vaccine. HELA cells and monkey kidney cells were used by Salk and Sabin respectively. Maybe is was a fetal monkey.

In a quick Google search, I find nothing that says human fetal cells were used by or Salk and Sabin. It is implied by CNN and others. John Enders, Thomas Weller, and Frederick Robbins, did use fetal or embryonic cells, but the origins, spontaneous abortions versus induced abortion is not mentioned. I have yet to hear ethical complaints against embryonic stem cells from spontaneous abortions.; 10/8/15, 3:34 PM
NorthOfTheOneOhOne said...: "...If you have been vaccinated for polio, mumps, measles, chicken pox, hepatitis, or rabies, it may be too late for you to stand your ethical ground: You have already benefited from fetal-tissue research. This is, after all, a practice that’s been legal since the 1930s. In 1954, John Enders, Thomas Weller, and Frederick Robbins won the Nobel Prize for work on the polio virus that paved the way for the Salk and Sabin vaccines. They used fetal tissue, the monsters. Should their heirs return the medals?"

All done pre-Roe v. Wade, well before Planned Parenthood started doing a volume business. Totally irrelevant to the discussion.; 10/8/15, 3:41 PM
Fen said...: Again, anyone who advocates for the harvesting of babies for medical research should in turn be deemed subhuman and harvested for medical research.; 10/8/15, 4:09 PM
SweatBee said...: "But the abortions that provided the starter tissue that was used for vaccine research were all done before most abortions became legal.

Therefore they were probably therapeutic abortions approved of by a hospital ethics committee or came from miscarriages."

I don't know the origin of the tissue used by Enders, Weller, Salk, etc., but most likely the abortions were done in other countries. In Sweden, for example, abortion has been legal since the 1940's.

I doubt they would have used the product of a miscarriage because for vaccine manufacturing purposes, they need the cells to come from a source that is otherwise healthy to the best of their knowledge.

The two cell lines that are used in the manufacture of the vaccines that are currently-available in the U.S. are WI-28 and MRC-5. WI-38 is reported to be from an abortion that was performed in 1962 in Sweden: “This fetus was chosen by Dr. Sven Gard, specifically for this purpose...The abortion was done because they felt they had too many children. There were no familial diseases in the history of either parent, and no history of cancer specifically in the families.”

MRC-5 is reported to be from the lung tissue of a 14-week boy whose physically-healthy 27-year-old mother had an abortion "for psychiatric reasons."

The cell strain being used in newer vaccine research (HIV, ebola, a new one for flu, etc.) is PER C6. It was developed by researchers in the Netherlands: "So I isolated retina from a fetus, from a healthy fetus as far as could be seen, of 18 weeks old. There was nothing special in the family history, or the pregnancy was completely normal up to the 18 weeks, and it turned out to be a socially-indicated abortus...and that was simply because the woman wanted to get rid of the fetus.”

In the case of the rubella vaccine, the virus was isolated from the kidney of a baby that was aborted because the mother had contracted rubella during pregnancy and decided to abort rather than risk birth defects. I believe that one might have been in the U.S.

They do not HAVE to use human diploid cells to manufacture vaccines. They can also use cells from other animals. They use eggs for the flu vaccine. So there are "pro-human-life" alternatives. The trade-off is that it's considered to be less safe for the end-users of the product.; 10/8/15, 4:19 PM
Smilin' Jack said...: Jeez, this thread is depressing in so many ways. It needs some humor to lighten things up.

Q: Why can't you fool an aborted baby?

A: It wasn't born yesterday!; 10/8/15, 4:24 PM
Unknown said...: http://www.thenation.com/article/fetal-tissue-bans-are-all-about-making-abortion-providers-look-like-monsters/
...fetal tissue bans are about making abortion providers look like monsters

They don't seem to need any help in that regard.; 10/8/15, 4:44 PM
Michael K said...: "Josef Mengele's research didn't produce anything useful,"

The number of useful therapies from fetal tissue are vanishingly small. It is mostly scam on the order of climate research.

Send to:
Fetal Diagn Ther. 1994 May-Jun;9(3):196-203.
Abortion and fetal tissue research: some ethical concerns.
Shorr AF1.

Abstract
Proponents of human fetal tissue research argue that this endeavor is morally separate from abortion. They claim that one's views about the morality of abortion should not effect decisions about the ethics of fetal tissue research and transplantation efforts. In lifting the ban on federal funding for fetal tissue research, President Clinton embraced this logic. However, a careful review of (1) the impact fetal tissue research and transplantation will have on the rate of abortion; (2) the concept of informed consent, and (3) the question of complicity demonstrates that abortion and fetal tissue research are morally connected.

The use of fetal tissue in therapy, not pure research is rare.; 10/8/15, 5:18 PM
Michael K said...: "I don't know the origin of the tissue used by Enders, Weller, Salk, "

Green monkey kidney.; 10/8/15, 5:19 PM
Robert Cook said...: "Katha Pollitt, who hates America so much she refused to let her daughter fly an American flag on their house after 9/11, still seems to live here."

Assuming that's true, why does it mean she hates America?; 10/8/15, 5:59 PM
Robert Cook said...: "Goddamn it takes a lot of handwaving to try and obscure something so ugly as what those videos made clear. "

What videos do you refer to? The one Carly Fiorina lied about? The ones filmed surreptitiously by anti-abortion activists and then doctored and deceptively edited so they would present a false picture of Planned Parenthood's motives and methods?; 10/8/15, 6:12 PM
Gahrie said...: What videos do you refer to?

Jesus Christ Comrade Cookie...put the Kool Aid down!

At worst Carly mis-spoke, the videos weren't deceptively edited, and the unedited versions are available anyway.

We are talking about dissecting human babies for their body parts which are then sold for a profit...you can't spin away from that.; 10/8/15, 6:39 PM
Jason said...: Cookie illustrates the fundamental intellectual dishonesty of the left.

They'll bitch about editing on tapes where the entire unedited footage is made freely available and has nothing whatsoever in it to mitigate or exonerate Planned Parenthood, all the while inviting filmmakers like Michael Moore to the State of the Union Addresses and lauding his work.

Fecking hypocrites.; 10/8/15, 7:24 PM
Drago said...: Jason: "Cookie illustrates the fundamental intellectual dishonesty of the left."

That would be "October Surprise Truther" Robert Cook, so, yeah. Intellectually dishonest.; 10/8/15, 7:44 PM
BN said...: Darcy 10:15
"I'm actually despairing that this discussion is futile, no matter how genuinely put forth. This is the result of the slippery slope. People give up the fight, but that cannot always mean that the fight was wrong, having been defeated."

Thiis.

I will say, however, that all societies make mistakes. Sometimes those societies are fortunate enough to have the opportunity to correct them. So despair doesn't have to win.

Despair doesn't have to win.; 10/8/15, 9:21 PM
BN said...: "...so, yeah. Intellectually dishonest."

Not just intellectually. Totally. And not accidentally either.; 10/8/15, 9:26 PM
Smilin' Jack said...: My sperm + Jennifer Lawrence's egg = potential SACRED HYOOOMAN LYEEEF!! How can she possibly say no? Come on, Bible pounders, help me shame her into it. I promise I'll never make fun of the Pope again.; 10/8/15, 10:22 PM
Birkel said...: Smilin' Jack went 'round the bend.; 10/8/15, 11:18 PM
chickelit said...: @Althouse: This is not the "list of diseases conquered and lives saved" which I asked you to produce over a month ago when I realized that you were on the side of PP and defended their sale of fetal tissue.

Please try harder -- maybe produce some original thought instead of links.; 10/9/15, 12:05 AM
Qwinn said...: I hope this thread has finally put to rest the tired "Robert Cook may be a full blown communist but at least he's honest/consistent!" BS that I've seen stated so often. First, it is a logical impossibility to be a communist and honest/consistent. Second, the only reason he ever attacks the Left is from the even-further Left. Third, as he has just demonstrated here, he'll happily resort to parroting the wildest and most indefensible lies of the Left ("deceptively edited!!1!11!") as soon as he finds it impossible to go even further extreme Left - and really, how could you in this case?; 10/9/15, 6:26 AM
Paul said...: Yes...I would...; 10/9/15, 8:22 AM
Laura said...: The question is not whether fetal tissue research should be banned, but rather how fresh the kill, er, tissue must be.

Curettes and sanitary clinics don't intrinsically change the people who were and would be willing to perform the act with dirty coat hangers in back alleys. Monsters are as monsters do.; 10/9/15, 9:12 AM
JamesB.BKK said...: Gutfeld had a cogent response: "God bless you. I hope you live long on the backs of dead fetuses!"; 10/9/15, 9:48 AM
JamesB.BKK said...: North of the 101 and others of his ilk- How about this: Under Federal law, let all of the fetal abortions be allowed to take place as any patients and abortionists desire depending on the sense of which of the several states in which they are present. If the sense of the state is undesirable to their goals, let them move to better, er, climes or try to get proper political change there, instead of going to nine old people in robes. Let the mothers and maybe fathers take a share of the proceeds (it's their "tissue" right?) including from the sales of all of these wonderful medicines to result, instead of these proceeds continuing to be captured by the abortionists, the managers of the related "non-profits," and channels from abortion room to testing lab to production facility. Let all research be done that should be done on fetal tissue at any time - without using money seized by the federal government, including "tissue" that otherwise resembles a functioning human which also could be viable outside the womb if it were allowed to survive - were it not to be purposely killed. Let abortions continue until the time of actual birth, or hell, even after if that's what you would all still call it when one won't die and you snip it up or put it in a closet 'til it expires.

How about stopping all of your sanctimonious lecturing about why one could not object to the Planned Parenthood practices and the conduct of the abortionists. The latter two items are appalling, and let's face it, you're just being thick. We have lots of medicines resulting from abuse of adult humans, let alone the helpless fetuses. You have not discovered some super-clever excuse for this monstrous enterprise. Why do you require that I accept this as a forced participant or somehow bless it due to past research? Are you feeling guilty? If you guys are all so organized and there is so much support around this, how about you stop asking government to pick my pocket to help fund this monstrous industrial-scale enterprise in body parts worth billions of dollars per annum? This ain't about the health of the mother or "women's health."; 10/9/15, 10:25 AM
Tina848 said...: Normal miscarriages provide fetal tissue also, and women are sent to a hospital for a D&C to remove the fetal tissue. I know of no reason this cannot be used.

Now if you want intact fetuses, I guess you need an abortion clinic to change their process to get an intact child.; 10/9/15, 11:06 AM