Loma Linda Harvesting Organs....Unbelievable!

[Tammy]

In China they are eating babies,

in Loma Linda, they are —

Harvesting Organs

The following is excerpted from an article in the January 1996 issue of Rutherford, the official journal of the Rutherford Institute (Charlottesville, VA). We have added subheads.

When reports of Chinese citizens eating human fetuses for health reasons surfaced in Hong Kong last year, many dismissed them as fiction . . , but when Eastweek and Eastern Express, two English- language publications based in Hong Kong, investigated, the reporters were in for a shock.

DISCOVERY IN CHINA

One investigator feigned illness and asked a Shenzhen hospital doctor for fetuses. Holding up a fistsized glass bottle stuffed with ten thumb-sized unborns, the doctor said, “[They were] all aborted this morning. You can take them. We are a state-run hospital and don’t charge anything.” A private hospital spokesman offered to sell the reporters full-term unborn, which he claimed “contain the best healing qualities.”

Zou Qin, a doctor who claimed to have aborted several hundred unborn and eaten 100 fetuses herself,

said, “People normally prefer [fetuses from] young women, and even better, the first boy and a

male.”

She justifies the practice: “They are wasted if we don’t eat them . ..Zou Qin has fed fetuses to her

sister’s children. “I wash them with clear water until they look transparent white and then stew them. Making soup is best.” A photo depicts Zou Qin smiling, holding up a tiny fetus which hasn’t made it to her bowl yet.

WHAT DO WE DO HERE?

The stories are gruesome and almost unreal. Eating babies? But that, of course, is China, we say. In

America, we abort babies, but we don’t eat them.

Or do we?

The ongoing American debate over using fetuses in medicine bears some striking parallels to China.

One big difference is that America better understands the importance of “spin” and proper marketing

techniques . .

Donating one’s own organs, or even allowing a loved one’s untimely death to take on added meaning by permitting doctors to use her organs to help another, has a long and respectable history. But by interweaving the taking of life with the giving of life, medicine and science begin to confuse their mission. A quick mention of the aborted fetus, and then on to the happy ending, the discovery, the patient’s cure, the family’s joy!

Real life isn’t that simple.

FETAL RESEARCH IN AMERICA

The history of fetal research is inextricably linked to the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion

on demand in America. Other than a very few failed experiments around mid-century, little fetal research had been done before the 1970s. Roe and its progeny placed the preborn human’s body into legal limbo. Thus it became possible to observe the incredible irony of using the body parts of an allegedly non-human fetus to treat specifically human ailments. The heart might still beat, and the [unborn] child feel pain, but the fetus was now considered a “product.”

And like most products, “The fresher, the better.” Deterioration of brain tissue, as well as other bodily organs, commences almost immediately after death. So it became important to create an efficient assembly line which would seamlessly take the baby from the warm womb to deep frozen sterility . .

Finnish and American scientists did an experiment in 1973, described in Newsweek:

“[The team] decapitated a dozen human fetuses, each aborted live through hysterotomy, and kept the heads alive artificially for study. The ghoulish experiment—partially funded by the National Institute of Health—was designed to measure fetal metabolism. At about the same time, another research team kept a batch of aborted fetuses alive in saline solution in order to find out if they could absorb oxygen. One fetus survived for nearly a day.”

STILL BEING DONE TODAY

In 1974, responding to public censure of such science, Congress banned the federal funding of research on aborted fetuses, and tightened those restrictions in 1985. This did not, however, forbid private institutions from conducting fetal research, since the fetus is not protected by law in the U.S. And the restrictions on [federal] funding were not total: Fetal tissue transplant research, which to this day remains the most medically and monetarily promising “use” for the unborn, was sponsored by the NIH until 1988, when President Reagan’s administration imposed a moratorium on such funding.

Much fetal tissue research remained unaffected by the moratorium, which continued under the Bush administration. The National Committee for a Human Life Amendment observed:

“Since the Moratorium took effect, NIH has spent more than $23.4 million to support 295 research projects involving human fetal tissue.”

As the old reporters’ saw goes, “Follow the money.” During the 1980s and early 90s, research pressed

on in a number of areas.

ONE OF THE MOST CONTROVERSIAL: AT LOMA LINDA UNIVERSITY

One of the most controversial programs of the 1980s was that of Loma Linda University Medical

Center, who chose to “harvest” the organs of [live] infants with some or most of their brains missing.

The harvesting did, of course, cause the death of such infants; but, since these infants did not in Loma Linda’s opinion qualify for personhood, their organs were considered fair game. In 1988 the University gave up the program—but not for moral reasons: The transplants didn’t work.

LOMA LINDA RESEARCH CONTINUES

Loma Linda’s, and other American, fetal research does have a Chinese connection. As Loma Linda’s

Medical Center notes in an Internet post:

“A fetal brain bank has been established at Hua Shan Hospital, where fetal brain tissue is held in

cryogenic [super cold] preservation as part of a long range basic sciences research program. Parkinson’s is only one of many potential uses for the tissue samples.”

The [LLU] Internet post goes on to note that, for qualified doctors, “potential withdrawals” are available from the Chinese “brain bank.”

In addition, seven North American Parkinson’s sufferers were taken to China between 1989 and 1991 for fetal transplants. [About this project of theirs, the LLU post notes:]

“Success was impressive, but the long standing ban on [aborted] fetal tissue research made this kind of surgery impractical in the U.S.”

And Dr. Z.S. Tang, a fetal tissue research pioneer from China’s Shanghai Medical University and Hua

Shan Hospital, was a visiting professor at Loma Linda University Medical Center during the summer

and fall of 1992.

A Loma Linda doctor, Robert P. Iacono, returned Tang’s visit by doing fetal tissue graft implants in China.

Back in the U.S., in only the third day of his presidency, Bill Clinton repealed the Reagan/Bush ban in order, he said, to “free science and medicine from the grasp of politics” . .

WHY THE INDUSTRY WANTS PARTIAL-BIRTH ABORTIONS

But the industry has continued to research and develop their “product.”

Though many pro-lifers have heard about the newest abortion method, the so-called “D&X” [dilation

and extraction, more commonly known as partial-birth abortion], few know that the method is often touted as a superior way to obtain “undamaged” viable fetal tissue. Former abortionist Bernard Nathanson described the technique as used by Swedish doctors harvesting unborns’ brain tissue for treating Parkinson’s disease:

“Pregnant women at 13 to 18 weeks are placed on an operating table, the cervix is dilated, the bag of water is broken, the fetal head is guided into position just above the open cervix, the fetal skull is drilled open and a suction device is placed into the brain . . the brain substance is then suctioned out and placed immediately on ice to preserve its viability, then the fetus is aborted.”

Similar processes, according to Nathanson, are used in procuring fetal pancreas, fetal liquid and fetal thymus . .

WHERE WE ARE HEADED

And finally, the runway is being smoothed for full-blown research on living, fertilized embryos, including those artificially inseminated in the laboratory. If embryos, why not grow fetuses in the lab as

well? Scientists could then replace laboratory rats with a superior “product” more closely related to the human species.

When, in late 1994, an NIH panel recommended giving the green light to embryo experimentation,

First Things observed:

“We are confident that most people, to the extent that they are aware of the Panel’s recommendation,

experience an immediate and strong revulsion. This is not to be dismissed as an irrational reaction.

It signals a deep, intuitive awareness of lines that must not be crossed if we are to maintain our sometimes fragile hold upon our own humanity.”

Loma Linda Harvesting Organs http://www.sdadefend.com/Abortion/Harvest-organs.pdf

[John317]

Do you have any other evidence, outside these sources, that shows those things to be happening in China?

[Tammy]

Do you have any other evidence, outside these sources, that shows those things to be happening in China?

[Gerr]

Let me ask you, if you are faced with the choice of sacrificing one that has only the rudiments of a brain which has zero potential, and saving the life of someone who has the potential to develop into something/someone, what would you choose? You claim the Lord is on your side, who is to say that the Lord is not on Walter's side?

We are in a world of diminishing resources. Not everyone can get an organ transplant. There are not enough organs to go around. So who among the many potential recipients is to receive the few available organs? There are many expensive technologies that are available today that could extend lives, but there are not enough financial resources to do them all. Who is to receive the scanty resource? These are tough moral/ethical choices. Does the Bible provide clear, incontrovertible guidance on these matters?

[Gerr]

I have no idea why your response to my post!

I don't know what high horse you are talking about. FYI, I've sent substantial

donation twice to ADRA for Haiti, once after the earthquake and then when I heard

about the cholera outbreak. So maybe you should get off yours.

[Jeannieb43]

I agree. Our Adventist hospitals have been established for the purpose of bringing medical care to the public -- not for the purpose of proselytizing for any one doctrine or another.

And besides, God created mankind with FREE WILL. We are all free to make our own choices in life, and God is protecting that free will on our behalf. We're all free to make *wrong* choices, too, if we so choose.

So. If some woman chooses, along with her doctor's medical advice, to have an abortion -- it is not anyone else's business! And the hospital is there to make sure she stays healthy throughout the procedure [rather than having some back-alley quack perform the operation using a coat hanger, resulting in her hemorrhaging to death].

So please* get off that "high horse" of trying to make everybody PERFECT [i.e., making the same decision YOU might make]. Because nobody's perfect, and nobody else has the right to control someone else's actions.

How, pray tell, can we expect to witness for our faith in a loving God, if we try to coerce certain behaviors from others? That's just a DISCONNECT.

==========

*I don't know who started this thread. I'm addressing my remarks to that person, not to the previous poster.

Ed: I guess I was getting mixed up with the abortion thread. But the same principle applies to harvesting organs. The organs are never harvested without the donor's [or his agent's] PERMISSION. (I myself have signed a donor authorization.) And how else could the miracles of modern science be expected to work, if the doctors are to be deprived of donor organs when they're needed?

If you don't want to be a donor or to receive a kidney transplant yourself, you aren't required to do so. But we're in no position to deny others the right to have a transplant if there are donor organs available.

[Nan]

Probably not very relevant but my personal take....my first child was one of those with very little brain tissue - the diagnosis was made only at birth...if she had been born at

a time and in a place where her organs could have been used to help other babies, I would willingly have consented. Such individuals (anencephalics) do not have any conscious life. Their organs function for a time and then they die.

[skyblue888]

So please* get off that "high horse" of trying to make everybody PERFECT [i.e., making the same decision YOU might make]. Because nobody's perfect, and nobody else has the right to control someone else's actions.

Jeannie

_______________________

Jeannie, is not God in the business of building characters, perfect characters?

sky

[Gerr]

Sorry, I thought you were responding to me. No wonder it sounded like a non-sequitor.

[phkrause]

Sorry, I thought you were responding to me. No wonder it sounded like a non-sequitor.

I didn't think he was responding to your post Gerry. Its getting harder and harder to figure out sometimes who's post people are responding to.

[rudywoofs (Pam)]

So please* get off that "high horse" of trying to make everybody PERFECT [i.e., making the same decision YOU might make]. Because nobody's perfect, and nobody else has the right to control someone else's actions.

Jeannie

_______________________

Jeannie, is not God in the business of building characters, perfect characters?

sky

I think God is looking down at this forum and shaking His head about the intolerance and disrespect being given in His name.