How the Deceptive Videos Attacking Planned Parenthood Are Hindering Cures for Deadly Diseases

How the Deceptive Videos Attacking Planned Parenthood Are Hindering Cures for Deadly Diseases

Here's a fun story. I mean, a story like this was inevitable. With the right's unhealthy obsession with attacking Planned Parenthood, it was only a matter of time before something like this happened. But hey let's read on anyways.

Since July, an anti-abortion group's deceptively edited videos targeting Planned Parenthood for allegedly profiting off sales of fetal tissue appear to have prompted at least four arson attacks on Planned Parenthood clinics. And even though the allegations were bogus, the vilification of the women's health organization has done additional damage: Violent threats and a political chill in the wake of the videos have begun to undermine potentially life-saving research on diseases including diabetes, Parkinson's, and Alzheimer's. Fetal-tissue donation programs essential to such research have been shut down, supplies of the tissue to labs have dwindled, and legislation is brewing in multiple states that could hinder cutting-edge scientific studies.

"It's anti-progress," says Gail Robertson, a veteran researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who uses cell lines derived from fetal tissue to study heart disease, including sudden cardiac death, the largest cause of natural death in the United States. "We're in a fight for the future of cures to the diseases that will affect us all."

According to Theresa Naluai-Cecchini, a scientist at Birth Defects Research Lab at the University of Washington in Seattle, the political controversy has hurt the work at her lab, which is funded by the National Institutes of Health and also supplies other scientific researchers with fetal tissue. "We are in the last year of funding, and if we are unable to supply tissue to the research community we would have to close," she says. "We may be able to obtain an extension, but the climate in DC does not look favorable in an election cycle."

Naluai-Cecchini told the Seattle Times that over the past year her lab has distributed 1,109 tissue samples to more than 60 researchers elsewhere who are working on solutions for spinal cord injuries, eye disease, cancer, and HIV. That supply line relies on about two to three samples per day coming into Birth Defects Research Lab, which has long been the lab's norm. But over the past month, Naluai-Cecchini told Mother Jones, only five specimens in total have come in. If that trend continues, she says, "promising research would stop until a commercial alternative is found. The cost of research would increase dramatically, and new findings would take considerably longer."

I wish the people unfairly attacking Planned Parenthood would understand the consequences for their actions. Fetal tissue has gone to research that has saved LIVES! It has probably saved the lives of more than a few pro-lifers as well. I mean I know I'm usually upset about conservatives denying science topics such as evolution or man made CC, but medical research too?

Before the videos were released by anti-abortion activist David Daleiden and his group, the Center for Medical Progress, a total of six Planned Parenthood affiliates in Washington and California had tissue donation programs. Three of the programs have since been shut down, Liz Clark, a spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood Federation of America, told Mother Jones. One clinic discontinued donations to labs after the videos prompted personal threats against some of its employees, according to Clark. Two other programs lost their contracts with biomedical companies due to the controversy.

Ugh... Pro-life indeed...

a reply to: Krazysh0t

A kicking, breathing life is not fetal tissue...it has the right to its life, IMHO. You will say the video of this was altered and, to that I say, b.s..

They are reaping money, blood money, and it is 12 kinds of wrong.

Paint it pretty if it helps you sleep at night, but pretty is as pretty does.

Krazy, you know damned good and well the anti-PP people don't care one bit about the consequences their witch hunt may have. They have tunnel-vision on this issue. For some reason they believe their crusade to stop PP is the moral thing to do, but then we read stories like this that potentially have an even bigger effect on society than abortion itself does.

a reply to: NewzNose

I have no idea what you are saying here. Are you against medical research?

a reply to: introvert

Yeah. That's true. It's so dumb. Planned Parenthood does more to PREVENT abortions than it does helping them happen. Then when they DO happen, PP offers the mother the option to donate the aborted tissue so it can go to research aimed at helping cure deadly diseases. But according to the pro-lifers, abortion = bad, therefore anything connected to it is also bad.

Excellent point. Just like those idiots that denigrate the Nazi regime for killing between 13,000,000 and 21,000,000 people, not realizing that they were actually conducting important medical experiments, as well.

I guess if snuffing out the lives of millions upon millions of the most vunerable of those among us is justifiable in the name of medical and scientific progress, then doing the same to millions upon millions of adults who were at least capable of defending themselves is certainly no worse.

Sieg Heil, eh?

a reply to: incoserv

Godwin's Law aside, these women are ALREADY getting the abortion. Then the women donate the aborted fetus. Planned Parenthood only serves as an intermediary.

What you are doing is the equivalent of getting mad at a hospital for using an organ donor's organs after the organ donor has passed away to save another person's life.

a reply to: Krazysh0t

hahahaha.....I was shaking nervously before clicking the thread and sure enough I was not disappointed. Seriously, tthey are on breakthrough in finding a cure for cancer...wow ....all that important research set back centuries!

a reply to: Krazysh0t

I am if it is killing babies and selling their parts.

Don't get me started on medical research. I have eaten the baloney of "a cure is on the horizon, hang in there".

Big Pharma will cease to profit if a cure is found for cancer, SIDS, m.s., AIDS, autism, etc.

What was the last cure introduced to the general public? A CURE, not a 1 out of 10 people responded favorable with improved health.

When?

originally posted by: Krazysh0t
a reply to: incoserv

Godwin's Law aside, these women are ALREADY getting the abortion. Then the women donate the aborted fetus. Planned Parenthood only serves as an intermediary.

What you are doing is the equivalent of getting mad at a hospital for using an organ donor's organs after the organ donor has passed away to save another person's life.

Exactly. Thank you for making your point so clearly.

And, obviously, those Nazis were going to just kill those Jews and Poles, so why not use their bodies and their impending deaths for the advancement of medical and scientific knowledge, as well. Right?

The logic flows perfectly. Instruct me if it does not.

a reply to: incoserv

So, you are in favor of controlling women's bodies, hmmmm? Instruct me if you are not.

a reply to: Krazysh0t

The organ donor in your scenario got to use those organs and live, correct? Although it is doubtful my organs cannot be of use to anyone, I am a donor. But I got to make that choice.

Are those mothers to be allowing their babies to be parted out aware of the precise procedure of exactly how her childs body parts are pfocessed? Is there a film, a document stating she watched this video, sought mental evaluation prior to the abortion?

Likeky not. But maybe that should be introduced to the PP procedure prior to procurement. Is a woman sees a live baby kicking and then become stilled so its little body can be divided for medical research...maybe, just maybe, the abortion could turn into an adoption for a couple looking for an infant they will never create on their own.

A win-win for all. Except PP of course. and those scientists who are working endlessly to find the cure for MS, which they have been doing for how many years and how many stem cells later?

originally posted by: kaylaluv
a reply to: incoserv

So, you are in favor of controlling women's bodies, hmmmm? Instruct me if you are not.

No, no more than I'd be in favor of controlling an individual's mind and his or her right to hold a particular political view.

However, when that political view becomes a demand for the right to put other human beings in concentration camps, gas them, perform medical experiments upon them, use their skin to make lampshades, then HELL YES I would be in favor of imposing controls on how they exercise their "rights". As my seventh-grade U.S. History teacher used to say, "Your rights end where another's rights begin."

A woman has a right to control her own body. If she does not want a baby, she has the right to either exercise effective birth control or to keep her legs closed. Once she has conceived that baby, another human being's rights come into the equation and her rights end where that new human being's rights begin.

But I am allowing myself to be drawn into a digression. The point of the OP is that abortion is justifiable because some claim that a by-product of it is the acquisition of materials for medical and scientific research and that somehow there is an equation that balances out the killing of these babies (not un-viable masses of tissue, but real living human beings) with that fact. This is what I am countering. Let's keep on topic.

a reply to: TheConstruKctionofLight

Oh dear I just noticed your other posts....you are serious....I'm waiting to see what patents are pending. Cures for the whole world...step right up....

a reply to: incoserv

"We are going to take your life anyway, so we want you to know your death was not in vain; no, no, we are going to use every part of your body for scientific reaearch on how to create WOMDs that in turn kill the enemy in masses, like agent orange. We want victory in all of our wars and you, my friend, will help us achieve!

Aren't you proud to be a chosen one?"

Yeah, awesome conversation.

the fact is that both the republicans and the democrats supported the laws we have now on fetal tissue research and it seems, planned parenthood didn't break any of them! Heck even one of the republican candidates took advantage of this tissue in his research, and now somehow manages to justify is as a hey, it's was there, why not use it logic. The same can be said of the donations coming from the planned parenthood clinics, hey, it's there, why not use it, especially since many of the mothers are finding comfort in that donation. Remember, if you or someone you love ever gets bit by an animal that can't be proven to be rabid free, they used fetal tissue in developing the vaccine that they give you!!!
no one really has issue with the "hey, it's there, why not use it issue" obviously since no one would refuse that rabies shot if they were bitten by a rabid dog, or the other vaccines that use the tissue, or the medical treatments that have been discovered through the research, not even the most loyal right to lifer!
so basically when people are having a problem with is that women are being giving choices in their reproductive care, all of those choices (except abstinance of course) although they center on abortion.

a reply to: kosmicjack

Abortion is a terrible thing. I could not imagine having to be in a position in which one is necessary, but we have to come to grips with the fact that it is never going away. There are cases in which an abortion is going to actually save lives. Whether it be the mother who's life is in danger if she carries the child, or those on that benefit from fetal issue research.

While I understand your correlation with slavery, it is not an apt comparison.

a reply to: incoserv

use their skin to make lampshades

This is false and an old myth.

A woman has a right to control her own body. If she does not want a baby, she has the right to either exercise effective birth control or to keep her legs closed. Once she has conceived that baby, another human being's rights come into the equation and her rights end where that new human being's rights begin.

The Supreme Court ruled on this many years ago and their decision disagrees with you.

PP was found for a second time not guilty of doing anything illegal, but hey lets make up stuff , like there harvesting baby parts, oh and lets not forget to compare them to the nazys.

More made up outrage, must be election time of something.