The Useful Dead, Jr.

Just yesterday I wrote about the apparent Chinese practice of harvesting organs from executed criminals. Now BBC Television is preparing to air a report about a hospital in Ukraine where newborn babies are mysteriously dying. Parents charge that the infants are killed and dismembered in order to harvest stem cells. The cells then go to a private clinic in Barbados to be used in cosmetic and anti-aging procedures.

Suspicious families in the Ukraine succeeding in ordering the exhumation of 30 newborn infants who died in the hospital. Arms and legs had been removed from some of the bodies. Doctors interviewed by BBC suggested this may indicate an attempt to remove stem cells from the bone marrow. A more detailed story is here. Warning: it's very graphic.

This is so disturbing I don't know where to begin. Let's start with the wealthy Americans whose vanity and desire to appear youthful is so overpowering they must fly to Barbados for surgery. Fine; they can spend their money however they want, but I can think of much better uses for it.

When recapturing one's youth requires the death of another youth, we have a problem. Sometimes the stem cells come from aborted babies. Patients who use these cells either don't care, or more likely have convinced themselves that the dead baby is less than human. Deep down, however, I think they know what they are doing. They are simply insulating themselves from a truth they don't want to face.

Suppose you are one of these patients. It doesn't have to be cosmetic; suppose you have some fatal disease. Your doctor shows you a baby in an incubator. You are told that your disease can be cured, but in order to do so this baby must die. What would you do? For many people, this would pose quite an ethical dilemma. Yourself or the child? The answer for any adult with an ounce of decency should be obvious: you don't harm a child, even at the cost of your own life. Period, end of story. That people even have to think twice about this tells you how low our society has fallen.

Wait, you say: these babies are going to die anyway via abortion. Regrettable, but perfectly legal. We might as well make something good come out of it. Not so fast. Yes, abortion is legal. Does that make it right? No. It is still an evil act no matter what status the civil government gives it. Using that evil because you think something good will result is still evil.

Anyway, in the Ukraine case it seems likely that many of these babies were healthy and killed for the express purpose of procuring stem cells:

"I gave birth to a healthy girl," Olena told me. "She was crying and moving her hands and legs. I was shown the baby. After that the girl was taken away. They told me everything was OK and I could see her the next day."

But that never happened. Olena was told the following day that her baby had died. But when she asked what had the death, the answers were inconsistent. "They told me three stories. One, she didn't have enough air to breathe; two, the lungs didn't open; and three, that her heart failed."

This doesn't sound like a mom who wanted her baby used for spare parts. Let's hope BBC and other media follow up on these allegations. It's a horrifying story that ought to exist only as a movie, but it's real. This is the world we live in.