LifeSite News Special Report - August 19, 1999

PRICE LISTS FOR ABORTED BABY PARTS
Re-printed with the permission from the Alberta Report 

August 22, 1999

The Wholesalers  

by Celeste McGovern  

A full-colour, glossy brochure invites abortionists to "find out how you can turn your
patient's decision into something wonderful." It's printed by Opening Lines, A Division of
Consultative and Diagnostic Pathology, Inc., a wholesale trafficker in aborted baby parts
from American clinics. Out of an office in West Frankfort, IL, the company's director, Dr.
Miles Jones, profits from an evidently tremendously lucrative trade - his current "Fee for 
Services Schedule" offers eyes and ears for $75 to $999 for a brain.  

Opening Lines was founded in 1989 to "maximize the utilization of fresh fetal tissue we
process." It offer researchers "the highest quality, most affordable, and freshest tissue
prepared to your specifications and delivered in the quantities you need when you need it."  

Sale of human tissue, including fetal tissue, is against federal law, but Opening Lines
advises patients how "simple" it is to get around that. It offers to "lease space from your
facility to perform the harvesting to offset your clinic's overhead." It also offers to
train clinic staff in harvesting and then "based on volume, reimburse part or all of your
employee's salary, thereby reducing your overhead."  

Dr. Jones is obviously adept at getting around inconvenient regulations. "We DO NOT require
a copy of your IRB approval or summary of your research," he advises prospective clientele,
"and you ARE NOT required to site Opening Lines as the source of tissue when you publish
your work (we believe in word of mouth advertising; if you like our service you will tell
your colleagues.")  

Opening Lines is one of two wholesale traffickers, uncovered by Mark Crutcher at Life
Dynamics Inc. a pro-life in Denton Texas. The other is the Anatomic Gift Foundation (AGF).
Founded in 1994 by Jim and Brenda Bardsley, it originally operated out of a double-wide
trailer at the end of a dirt road on the Satilla River in Georgia where the couple also ran
a catfish farm. It has since moved its headquarters to Laurel, MD and now has operations in
Phoenix, AZ and Aurora, CO.  

Life Dynamics' sources inside abortion clinics acquired "fee schedules" for both
organizations. Opening Lines' is the more detailed of the two, listing prices for organs from
fetuses under eight weeks gestation and over. An "intact trunk (with/without limbs)" costs
$500, for example, a liver, $150, ("30% discount if significantly fragmented").  

The prices "in effect until December 31, 1999" may seem low, observes Mr. Crutcher, but add
up all the parts and single aborted baby is worth thousands. "Our daily average case volume
exceeds 1500 and we serve clinics across the United States," says Opening Lines' brochure.  

Mr. Crutcher says that Dr. Jones is an aggressive salesman, eager to offer him reduced rates
for bulk orders. He also said in a recent taped interview that he is actively pursuing fetal
tissue sources in Mexico and in Canada.  

To subscribe to Alberta Report call 1-800-661-5742

LifeSite Daily News is a production of Interim Publishing
Contents may be freely reproduced provided source is noted.
Comments or questions: lsn@lifesite.net

Please help us to continue this service. Mail contributions to:
Interim Publishing, attn LifeSite, Suite 306, 53 Dundas St. E.,
Toronto, ON M5B 1C6




	
		

The harvest of abortion
Fetal-tissue research: Making the best of a bad situation, 

or sliding further down the slippery slope? 

Congress and the Clinton administration's lifting of the 

fetal-tissue research ban has turned human-remains trafficking 

into big business
By Lynn Vincent

Warning: This story contains some graphic detail.


As Monday morning sunshine spills across the high plains of Aurora,Colo., and a new work week begins, 
fresh career challenges await Ms. Ying Bei Wang. On Monday, for example, she might scalpel her way 
through the brain stem of an aborted 24-week pre-born child, pluck the brain from the baby's peach-sized 
head with forceps, and plop it into wet ice for later shipment. On Tuesday, she might carefully 
slice away the delicate tissue that secures a dead child's eyes in its skull, and extract them whole. 

Ms. Ying knows her employer's clients prefer the eyes of dead babies to be whole. One once requested
to receive 4 to 10 per day.  Although she works in Aurora at an abortion clinic called the Mayfair Women's 
Center, Ms. Ying is employed by the Anatomic Gift Foundation (AGF), a Maryland-based nonprofit. 

AGF is one of at least five U.S. organizations that collect, prepare, and distribute to medical researchers 
fetal tissue, organs, and body parts that are the products of voluntary abortions.

When "Kelly," a woman who claimed to have been an AGF "technician" like Ms. Ying, 
approached Life Dynamics in 1997, the pro-life group launched an undercover investigation. The probe 
unearthed grim, hard-copy evidence of the cross-country flow of baby body parts, including detailed 
dissection orders, a brochure touting "the freshest tissue available," and price lists for whole babies
 and parts. 

One 1999 price list from a company called Opening Lines reads like a cannibal's wish list: Skin $100. 
Limbs (at least 2) $150. Spinal cord $325. Brain $999 (30% discount if significantly fragmented).

The evidence confirmed what pro-life bioethicists have long predicted: the nadir-bound plummet of respect
for human life-and the ascendancy of death for profit. 

"It's the inevitable logical progression of a society that, like Darwin, believes we came from 
nothing," notes Gene Rudd, an obstetrician and member of the Christian Medical and Dental Society's 
Bioethics Commission. 

"When we fail to see life as sacred and ordained by God as unique, this is the reasonable conclusion
... taking whatever's available to gratify our own self-interests and taking the weakest of the species
 first ... like jackals. This is the inevitable slide down the slippery slope."

In 1993, President Clinton freshly greased that slope. Following vigorous lobbying by patient advocacy 
groups, Mr. Clinton signed the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Revitalization Act, effectively lifting
the ban on federally funded research involving the transplantation of fetal tissue. 

For medical and biotech investigators, it was as though the high government gate barring them from Research
Shangri-La had finally been thrown open. Potential cures for Parkinson's, AIDS, and cancer suddenly
shimmered in the middle distance. 

The University of Washington in Seattle opened an NIH-funded embryology laboratory that runs a round-the-clock
collection service at abortion clinics. NIH itself advertised (and still advertises) its ability to "supply
tissue from normal or abnormal embryos and fetuses of desired gestational ages between 40 days and term."

But, this being the land of opportunity, fetal-tissue entrepreneurs soon emerged to nip at NIH's well-funded heels.

Anatomic Gift Foundation, Opening Lines, and at least two other companies-competition AGF representatives 
say they know of, but decline to name-joined the pack. Each firm formed relationships with abortion clinics. 
Each also furnished abortionists with literature and consent forms for use by clinic counselors in making 
women aware of the option to donate their babies' bodies to medical science. According to AGF executive 
director Brent Bardsley, aborting mothers are not approached about tissue donation until after they've 
signed a consent to abort.

Ironically, it is the babies themselves that are referred to as "donors," as though they had some
say in the matter. Such semantic red flags-and a phalanx of others-have bioethicists hotly debating the issue
of fetal-tissue research: Does the use of the bodies of aborted children for medical research amount to further
exploitation of those who are already victims? Will the existence of fetal-tissue donation programs persuade
more mothers that abortion is an acceptable, even altruistic, option? 

Since abortion is legal and the human bodies are destined to be discarded anyway, does it all shake out as a
kind of ethical offset, mitigating the abortion holocaust with potential good?

While the ethical debate rages in air-conditioned conference rooms, material obtained by Life Dynamics points
up what goes on in abortion clinic labs: the cutting up and parting out of dead children. 

The fate of these smallest victims is chronicled in more than 50 actual dissection orders or "protocols" 
obtained by the activist group. The protocols detail how requesting researchers want baby parts cut and 
shipped: "Dissect fetal liver and thymus and occasional lymph node from fetal cadaver within 10 (minutes of death)." "

Arms and legs need not be intact." "Intact brains preferred, but large pieces of brain may be usable."

Most researchers want parts harvested from fetuses 18 to 24 weeks in utero, which means the largest babies 
lying in lab pans awaiting a blade would stretch 10 to 12 inches-from your wrist to your elbow. 

Some researchers append a subtle "plus" sign to the "24," indicating that parts from late-term
babies would be acceptable. Many stipulate "no abnormalities," meaning the baby in question should 
have been healthy prior to having her life cut short by "intrauterine cranial compression" (crushing of the skull).

On one protocol dated 1991, August J. Sick of San Diego-based Invitrogen Corporation requested kidneys, hearts,
lungs, livers, spleens, pancreases, skin, smooth muscle, skeletal muscle and brains from unborn babies of 15-22 weeks
gestational age. Mr. Sick wanted "5-10 samples of each per month." WORLD called Mr. Sick to verify that
he had indeed ordered the parts. (He had.) 

When WORLD pointed out that Invitrogen's request of up to 100 samples per month would mean a lot of dead babies, 
Mr. Sick-sounding quite shaken-quickly aborted the interview.

Many of the dissection orders provide details of research projects in which the fetal tissue will be used.
Most, in the abstract, are medically noble, with goals like conquering AIDS or creating "surfactants," 
substances that would enable premature babies to breathe independently.

Other research applications are chilling. For example, R. Paul Johnson from Massachusetts' New England 
Regional Primate Research Center requested second-trimester fetal livers. His 1995 protocol notes that the livers
will be used ultimately for "primate implantation," including the "creation of human-monkey 
chimeras." 

In biology, a chimera is an organism created by the grafting or mutation of two genetically different cell types.

Another protocol is up-front about the researchers' profit motive. Systemix, a California-based firm, wanted
aborting mothers to know that any fetal tissue donated "is for research purposes which may lead to commercial
applications." 

That leads to the money trail.

Life Dynamics' investigation uncovered the financial arrangement between abortionists and fetal-parts providers.

The Uniform Anatomic Gift Act makes it a federal crime to buy or sell fetal tissue. So entities involved in the
collection and transfer of fetal parts operate under a documentary rubric that, while technically lawful, looks
distinctly like a legal end-around: AGF, for example, pays the Mayfair Women's Center for the privilege of
obtaining fetal tissue. Researchers pay AGF for the privilege of receiving fetal tissue. But all parties claim
there is no buying or selling of fetal tissue going on.

Instead, AGF representatives maintain that Mayfair "donates" dead babies to AGF. Researchers then
compensate AGF for the cost of tissue recovery. It's a service fee, explains AGF executive director Brent 
Bardsley: compensation for services like dissection, blood tests, preservation, and shipping.

Money paid by fetal-tissue providers to abortion clinics is termed a "site fee," and does not, Mr. Bardsley
maintains, pay for baby parts harvested. Instead the fee compensates clinics for allowing technicians like 
Ms. Ying to work on-site retrieving and dissecting dead babies-sort of a Frankensteinian sublet.

"It's clearly a fee-for-space arrangement," says Mr. Bardsley. "We occupy a portion of their
laboratory, use their clinic supplies, have a phone line installed. The site fee offsets the use of clinic 
supplies that we use in tissue procurement."

According to Mr. Bardsley, fetal-tissue recovery accounts for only about 10 percent of AGF's business. 
The rest involves the recovery and transfer to researchers of non-transplantable organs and tissue from adult donors. 
But, in spite of the fact that AGF recovers tissue from all 50 states, Mr. Bardsley could not cite for WORLD
an instance in which AGF pays a "site fee" to hospital morgues or funeral homes for the privilege
of camping on-site to retrieve adult tissue.

Mr. Bardsley, a trained surgical technician, seems like a friendly guy. On the phone he sounds reasonable, 
intelligent, and sincere about his contention that AGF isn't involved in the fetal-tissue business for
 the money.

"We have a lot of pride in what we do," he says. "We think we make a difference with research
and researchers' accessibility to human tissue. Every time you go to a drug store, the drugs on the shelf
are there as a result of human tissue donation. You can't perfect drugs to be used in human beings using
animal models."

AGF operates as a nonprofit and employs fewer than 15 people. Mr. Bardsley's brother Jim and Jim's wife
Brenda founded the organization in 1994. The couple had previously owned a tissue-recovery organization called
the International Institute for the Advancement of Medicine (IIAM), which had also specialized in fetal-tissue
redistribution, counting, for example, Mr. Sick among its clients. But when IIAM's board of directors decided
to withdraw from involvement with fetal tissue, the Bardsleys spun off AGF-specifically to continue providing
fetal tissue to researchers.

Significantly, AGF opened in 1994, the year after President Clinton shattered the fetal-tissue research ban.
Since then, the company's revenues have rocketed from $180,000 to $2 million in 1998. 

Did the Bardsleys see a market niche that was too good to pass up? Brenda Bardsley, who is now AGF president,
says no. AGF's economic windfall, she says, is related to the company's expansion into adult donations,
not the transfer of fetal tissue. She says she and her husband felt compelled to continue providing the medical
community with a source of fetal tissue "because of the research that was going on."

"Abortion is legal, but tragic. We see what we're doing as trying to make the best of a bad situation," 

Mrs. Bardsley told WORLD. "We don't encourage abortion, but we see that good can come from fetal-tissue
research. There is so much wonderful research going on-research that can help save the lives of wanted 
children."

Mrs. Bardsley says she teaches her own children that abortion is wrong. A Deep South transplant with a brisk, 
East coast accent, Mrs. Bardsley and her family attend a Southern Baptist church near their home on the Satilla River
in White Oak, Ga. Mrs. Bardsley homeschools her three children using, she says, a Christian curriculum: 

"I've been painted as this monster, but here I am trying to give my kids a Christian education," 
she says, referring to other media coverage of AGF's fetal-parts enterprise. 

Mrs. Bardsley says she's prayed over whether her business is acceptable in God's sight, and has "gotten 
the feeling" that it is. She also, she says, reads the Bible "all the time." And though she 
can't cite a chapter and verse that says it's OK to cut and ferry baby parts, she points out that 
God commands us to love one another. For Mrs. Bardsley, aiding medical research by supplying fetal parts qualifies.

If they were in it for the money rather than for the good of mankind, says Mrs. Bardsley, AGF could charge
much higher prices for fetal tissue than it does, because research demand is so high.  

The issue of demand is one of several points on which the testimonies of Mrs. Bardsley and her brother-in-law 
Brent don't jibe. He says demand for fetal tissue "isn't all that high." She says demand
for fetal tissue is "so high, we could never meet it." He says "only a small percentage" of
aborting moms consent to donate their babies' bodies. She says 75 percent of them consent. He says AGF charges
only for whole bodies, and doesn't see how the body-parts company Opening Lines could justify charging
by the body part. She says AGF charges for individual organs and tissue based on the company's recovery
costs.

Founded by pathologist Miles Jones, Opening Lines was, until recently, based in West Frankfort, Ill. 

According to its brochure, Opening Lines' parent company, Consultative and Diagnostic Pathology, Inc., 
processes an average of 1,500 fetal-tissue cases per day. While AGF requires that researchers submit proof
that the International Research Board (IRB), a research oversight commission, approves their work, Opening Lines
does not burden its customers with such technicalities. In fact, says the Opening Lines brochure, researchers 
need not tell the company why they need baby parts at all-simply state their wishes and let Opening Lines provide
 "the freshest tissue prepared to your specifications and delivered in the quantities you need it."

Opening Lines' brochure cloaks the profit motive in a veil of altruism. The cover tells abortionists
that since fetal-tissue donation benefits medical science, "You can turn your patient's decision into
something wonderful." But in case philanthropy isn't a sufficient motivator, Dr. Jones also makes his
program financially appealing to abortionists. Like AGF, he offers to lease space from clinics so his staff can
dissect children's bodies on-site, but also goes a step further: He offers to train abortion clinic staff to
harvest tissue themselves. He even sweetens the deal for abortionists with a financial incentive: 

"Based on your volume, we will reimburse part or all of your employee's salary, thereby reducing your
overhead."

Again the money trail: more dead babies harvested, less overhead. Less overhead, more profit.

But Dr. Jones' own profits may be taking a beating at present. When Life Dynamics released the results of
its investigation to West Frankfort's newspaper The Daily American, managing editor Shannon Woodworth ran
a front-page story under a 100-point headline: 

"Pro-Lifers: Baby body parts sold out of West Frankfort." 

The little town of 9,000 was scandalized. City officials threatened legal action against Dr. Jones and his
chief of staff Gayla Rose, a lab technician and longtime West Frankfort resident. The story splashed down 
in local TV news coverage, and Illinois right-to-life activists vowed to picket Opening Lines. Within a week,
Gayla Rose had shut down the company's West St. Louis Street location, disconnected the phone, and disappeared.

Area reporters now believe Dr. Jones may be operating somewhere in Missouri. WORLD attempted to track him down, 
but without success.

The demands of researchers for fetal tissue will continue to drive suppliers to supply it. And all parties 
will continue to wrap their grim enterprise in the guise of the greater good. But some bioethicists believe
that even the greater good has a spending cap.

Christopher Hook, a fellow with the Center for Bioethics and Human Dignity in Bannockburn, Ill., calls the 
exploitation of pre-born children "too high a price regardless of the supposed benefit. We can never
feel comfortable with identifying a group of our brothers and sisters who can be exploited for the good of
the whole," 

Dr. Hook says. "Once we have crossed that line, we have betrayed our covenant with one another as a society,
and certainly the covenant of medicine."