Why Planned Parenthood Shouldn’t Be on the Defensive

[Valin]

The Nation:

Fetal-tissue donation has helped produce treatments for Parkinson’s, cystic fibrosis, and diseases that affect infants.

Michelle Goldberg

July 21, 2015

 

Well, we knew this was coming. Today, the Center for Medical Progress, the anti-abortion group waging a guerrilla media war against Planned Parenthood, released its second undercover video. Once again, activists posing as representatives of Biomax, a fictitious biomedical procurement company, met with a senior Planned Parenthood official—in this case, Dr. Mary Gatter, medical director of the Pasadena affiliate and president of Planned Parenthood’s Medical Directors Council. Once again, the recording does not support the Center for Medical Progress’s central claim, which is that Planned Parenthood “sells” fetal body parts. Even in the heavily edited version of the recording that the Center for Medical Progress initially put out, Gatter repeatedly makes it clear that she’s not interested in profiting. “[W]e’re not in it for the money, and we don’t want to be in a position of being accused of selling tissue, and stuff like that,” she says. “On the other hand, there are costs associated with the use of our space, and that kind of stuff.”

 

(Snip)

 

What’s needed is a forthright defense of fetal-tissue donation, which has been used to develop vaccines, to search for treatments for Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, and cystic fibrosis, and, crucially, to protect infants. “Fetal tissue is often used in research on diseases and disorders that affect babies,” Danielle Paqette writes in The Washington Post. “Scientists use it to better understand fetal anatomy and how it may react to certain treatments. Liver is particularly helpful when assessing whether a medicine may be toxic.” Refusing to use fetal remains for research would do nothing to curb abortion. It would only make sure that nothing positive could come from abortions that will happen regardless.

 

More people should be out there saying that—not just Planned Parenthood, but researchers, patient advocates, and neonatologists. We should be having the same debate we had about stem cells. The anti-abortion movement can’t expose something that isn’t kept in the dark.

[Valin]

A Blast From The Past....

 

Minnesota Scientist Plans to Publish Nazi Experiment on Freezing
AP
May 12, 1988

 

MINNEAPOLIS, May 11— A university scientist specializing in hypothermia is planning to republish, along with his own analysis, a Nazi study in which concentration camp prisoners were subjected to extreme cold.

 

An undetermined number of the prisoners died in the experiment, and the plans of the scientist have reopened a debate among medical ethicists and leaders of Jewish groups about whether such data obtained in the Holocaust should be used by postwar researchers.

 

The scientist is Dr. Robert Pozos, the 45-year-old director of the hypothermia research laboratory at the Duluth campus of the University of Minnesota. He wants to analyze for publication ''The Treatment of Shock From Prolonged Exposure to Cold,'' compiled by doctors of the concentration camp at Dachau, Germany, to show the study's possible application to modern hypothermia research.

 

The Dachau doctors, motivated in part by the loss of German pilots in the frigid North Sea, used 100 to 300 prisoners for the experiment, Dr. Pozos said, although the number who died is unclear. The doctors took physiological measurements of subjects placed in vats of freezing liquid and also experimented with warming techniques ranging from body-to-body contact to alcohol ingestion. 'Could Advance My Work'

 

(Snip)