In an attempt to spin their organ harvesting business into a humanitarian effort, Planned Parenthood argues that “lifesaving” discoveries are made through conducting research on babies killed in abortions.
In an interview with ABC News, the President of Planned Parenthood, Cecile Richards said, “What happens in this country, at Planned Parenthood and other hospitals is that, women in very few places are allowed to donate fetal tissue for life-saving medical research. Research, you know, developing cures for Parkinson, even the Ebola vaccine.”
Then, in a press release, the abortion giant reiterated this point.
They wrote, “In health care, patients sometimes want to donate tissue to scientific research that can help lead to medical breakthroughs, treatments and cures for serious diseases. Women at Planned Parenthood who have abortions are no different. At several of our health centers, we help patients who want to donate tissue for scientific research, and we do this just like every other high-quality health care provider does — with full, appropriate consent from patients and under the highest ethical and legal standards.”
However, the problem with Planned Parenthood’s claim is that scientists indicate that fetal “tissue” research has been disappointing. For example, Harvard researcher, Ole Isacson, MD, said they have been fairly unsuccessful in using it to finding a cure for Parkinson’s. He said, “It is very difficult to obtain dopamine nerve cells from fetal tissue. It would be far easier to grow the cells in a laboratory from stem cells. There have been no stem cell transplants as of yet for Parkinson’s patients.”
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The Federalist reports that even though fetal tissue research receives $76 million in taxpayer funding, scientists are moving on to other methods because they believe it will produce better results. The associate professor of bioethics at Case Western Reserve University, Insoo Hyun, explained, “Despite the long history of using fetal tissue in medicine and research, the practice could be on the way out. Even though it has led to important medical advances in the last several decades, ‘in the future, the need for fetal tissue will go down because of advances in stem cell [technology] that will take over.”
One of the reasons Professor Hyun argues this position is because the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) believes that fetal tissue is no longer needed to create vaccines. They explain, “…Some vaccines such as rubella and varicella [were] made from human cell-line cultures, and some of these cell lines originated from aborted fetal tissue, obtained from legal abortions in the 1960s. No new fetal tissue is needed to produce cell lines to make these vaccines, now or in the future.”
Ultimately, regardless of whether fetal tissue research is beneficial, the end doesn’t justify the means, and it is quite unbelievable that Planned Parenthood thinks Americans will disregard the plethora of problems with their sketchy practices.
In the first video released by the Center of Medical Progress, Planned Parenthood’s Medical Director, Dr. Deborah Nucatola, describes her own technique for killing babies and collecting their organs. She said, “We’ve been very good at getting heart, lung, liver, because we know that, so I’m not gonna crush that part, I’m gonna basically crush below, I’m gonna crush above, and I’m gonna see if I can get it all intact.”
Additional sequel videos expose more shocking tactics of Planned Parenthood executives, with one director haggling over the price of body parts and joking about buying a Lamborghini. The third and fourth videos show one of their doctors discussing ways to avoid legal trouble.
In an article published by USA Today, their editorial board offered their prospective on the Planned Parenthood scandal. Although their conclusions were pro-abortion, they didn’t deny the simple facts. They said, “The videos raise troubling questions about how far Planned Parenthood doctors are willing to go to collect intact specimens, how broadly collection is conducted, why the cost would differ among affiliates, and whether the century-old group is treating this work with the respect and sensitivity it deserves.”
They added, “The words of the organization’s own officials suggest it is not. Between sips of wine and forkfuls of salad, the group’s senior director of medical research talks of how easy it is to “crush below” or “crush above” certain organs to keep them intact. A California affiliate’s medical director asserts that “the money is not the important thing, but it has to be big enough that it is worthwhile.” And a physician in Colorado worries about how it would look if an affiliate in an anti-abortion state got “caught.”
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