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Company, Researchers Use Aborted Children to Treat Heart Disease

Medical companies, funded by financial opportunists, are using stem cells from aborted fetuses to treat heart disease according to a presentation at the Annual Meeting of the International Society of Minimally Invasive Cardiothoracic Surgery. In a session titled "Late Breaking News", two investigators revealed that during the past 90 days they have injected fetal liver cells from 8-12 week old aborted children into the hearts of patients at a clinic in Ecuador.

The conference presentation, "Human Fetal Stem Cell Therapy for Dilated Cardiomyopathy", was authored by Dr. Valavanur A. Subramanian, Chairman of the Department of Surgery, Lenox Hill Hospital, and Federico Benetti of Rosario, Brazil. Subramanian is on the Board of Directors of ISMICS and, according to a source who attended the conference, has claimed leadership in the program.

The research was sponsored by The Institute for Regenerate Medicine, Villa Nova, St. Johns, Barbados. According to the Financial Times, the company was recently founded after Ukrainian stem cell researchers teamed up with American investors and "the Caribbean tourist trade". Apparently, the Ukrainians provide the treatment protocols and stem cells from aborted children while the Americans contribute the funding.

Business Week reports that the Institute’s CEO and founder, Barnett Suskind, started his company in Barbados because he feared the "political storm" surrounding stem cells in the U.S.

"The government here [in Barbados] has welcomed us," Suskind says. "We can conduct our work with their blessing." Although fetal cells are technically different from embryonic stem cells, "most people use the terms interchangeably, and that could present problems," he points out.

Given the treatment cost of $25,000 per patient, Suskind apparently has another motivation for operating abroad where his company is able to circumvent the safety and effectiveness requirements of the United States Food and Drug Administration and the Internal Review Board (IRB) approval that is necessary for research in the United States.

However, pro-life leaders state that the fundamental (and obvious) problem with Subramanian and Suskind's research is that the use of the bodies of abortion victims is immoral. Unfortunately, the Institute for Regenerate Medicine bases its therapy and profit upon the abortion industry and the company's medical researchers have become abortion's willing accomplices.

Shane Wikfors, Executive Director of Arizona Right to Life comments,

"Resorting to human experimentation through use of fetal tissue is akin to what happened in the Nazi death camps." He added that the use of fetal tissue "would further take our society down the slippery slope in which humans are treated as utility instead of unique creations of God."

The Institute for Regenerate Medicine is not the only Central American Clinic that thrives on Russian abortions and traces its roots to the Institute for Problems of Cryobiology and Cryomedicine in Kharkov, Ukraine, directed by Dr. Valentin Grischenko. In the early 1990s, a group of Ukrainian researchers started a Kiev company called EmCell, charging $25,000 per treatment. In the late 1990's, Malibu psychiatrist William Rader founded a company named Medra to offer similar fetal cell treatments for $30,000.

Source: ProLifeBlogs

Posted by tim at June 7, 2005 1:05 AM

Articles Related to Stem Cells:

Adult stem cells and Spinal Cord Injuries - May 19, 2007
Adult Stem Cell Research to Benefit Diabetics - Mar 28, 2007
Adult Stem Cells Treat Heart Disease - Mar 27, 2007
Adult Stem Cells Treat Autoimmune Disease - Oct 04, 2006
U.S. Senate says Yes to ESC Research - Jul 18, 2006
Stem Cells, Questions and Language - Feb 17, 2006
Adult Stem Cells that Can Regenerate - Jan 06, 2006
Faking the Data and Human Cloning - Dec 21, 2005
Hypocrisy Over Stem Cells - Dec 15, 2005
Senate Passes Cord Blood Donation Bill - Sep 28, 2005

Comments

I work for a company that is now using adult stem cells harvested from less than 1 pint of the patient’s blood to treat heart disease. I would like to point out that, at least in the case of heart disease, fetal stem cells are not needed nor are embryonic stem cells for that matter. We are already demonstrating this fact by successfully treating heart disease patients with their own stem cells. However, we are finding it exceedingly difficult to get the word out, especially in The United States.

Calvin Miller, the patient BusinessWeek Magazine featured this week in its story Biotech, Finally, was actually our first private patient. He neither was a clinical trial patient of Dr. Patel’s nor was he treated with adult stem cells harvested from his own bone marrow.

Calvin was treated in Thailand with adult stem cells that were harvested from his own blood, expanded in our laboratory in Israel and then implanted via catheter into his occluded coronary artery (in Thailand). This is a proprietary process/cellular product named VesCell (TM).

While it is important to fight against the use of fetal and embryonic stem cells, it is also equally important to offer those suffering from debilitating diseases a viable alternative to their use. We are one of those alternatives.

Jay D. Lenner Jr.
TheraVitae, Ltd.

Posted by: jdlenner at June 10, 2005 1:23 AM