Leading Researcher: It’s Not Necessary to Use Aborted Baby Parts to Produce a Zika Virus Cure

National   |   Steven Ertelt   |   Apr 5, 2016   |   3:48PM   |   Washington, DC

As evidence mounts up against the Planned Parenthood abortion business, a growing list of researchers are confirming that aborted babies’ body parts are not essential to scientific research.

One of abortion advocates’ main defenses since undercover videos began revealing Planned Parenthood’s involvement in trafficking aborted babies’ body parts has been that fetal tissue is contributing to life-saving medical advances. Planned Parenthood used this line to persuade women to donate their aborted baby’s body parts to research; however, even one of the abortion group’s key supporters says it mislead women about the research.

During a Congressional investigation hearing in March, pro-abortion witnesses for the Democrats also claimed that a vaccine and cure for the Zika virus would require fetal tissue research. The virus has been declared a health emergency in South America, and some fear it may be causing birth defects in newborns.

But prominent researcher Dr. David Prentice of Charlotte Lozier Institute told One News Now that successful results are not coming from research with aborted babies’ body parts:

[Prentice] maintains that many contentions are being made to justify using aborted baby body parts, especially with the latest Zika outbreak.

“In fact, lately the hot topic has been the Zika virus and its potential to cause some birth defects in little babies,” Prentice told OneNewsNow. “And now we’re hearing that we’ve got to have fetal tissue if you’re going to study the Zika virus and what it does to little babies — and especially [that the tissue is needed to] come up with a vaccine.”

This is not true, according to Prentice, who says it is hard to believe that some scientists are making the statements about aborted fetal tissue — especially because there is no evidence fetal tissue is needed.

In fact, Prentice maintains that a 2012 Nobel prize was granted for a vaccine for another disease impacting preborn children — using induced pluripotent stem cells which can be made from skin from an adult.

“It’s very similar to the Zika virus that everybody’s concerned about right now,” the doctor explains. “[There is] a hundred-percent effective vaccine against this similar virus. No fetal tissue at all was used.”

The scientists involved used monkey and mosquito cells, and it is the mosquito that is believed to be the culprit in Zika. Prentice believes that the reason some scientists claim to need aborted babies is simply because they support abortion.

A number of other scientific researchers also have publicly stated that aborted babies’ body parts are not essential to medical advancements. In an op-ed in the Milwaukee Wisconsin Journal Sentinel last September, six doctors explained why using fetal “tissue” for research is unethical and unnecessary for scientists.

“The argument that fetal-derived tissues must be used in research to develop medical treatments is false,” they wrote. “Many therapies have been developed using cell lines not of fetal origin, including insulin for diabetes (produced in bacteria), Herceptin for breast cancer and tissue plasminogen activator for heart attack, stroke and pulmonary embolism (both developed in Chinese hamster ovary cells).”

Even if aborted babies’ body parts did contribute to scientific advancements, many argue that the horrific way the parts are obtained still should bar them from being used.

Breitbart columnist Thomas D. Williams recently pointed out the ethical problems with research using aborted babies’ body parts:

regardless of the possible medical knowledge gained from research on the tissue of aborted babies, there is a moral issue at play that deeply concerns a growing number of U.S. citizens. The sort of activity involved in harvesting human tissue is not indifferent to the morality of the research done on it.

Historians acknowledge, for instance, that significant advances in medical science came about as a result of research on prisoners of the Third Reich during World War II. But no amount of positive medical benefit can possibly justify the immoral activities involved in obtaining it.

In reaction to public outrage against Planned Parenthood, legislators in a number of states have moved to ban the sale and/or use of aborted babies’ body parts in research. However, abortion activists have been attacking these bills as “anti-science.”

A federal law also technically prohibits the sale of aborted babies and their body parts, but it was written by a pro-abortion Congressman decades ago and essentially spells out a process by which sellers of aborted baby body parts can meet certain criteria that allows the sales to be legal. That’s why a Colorado congressman has introduced federal legislation to totally ban the sales of aborted baby body parts.

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