Beauty salons fuel trade in aborted babies

[emad]

Racketeers pay Ukraine women to sell foetuses to quack clinics for £10,000 courses of 'anti-ageing' jabs

Tom Parfitt in Kiev
Sunday April 17, 2005
The Observer

Aborted foetuses from girls and young women are being exported from Ukraine for use in illegal beauty treatments costing thousands of pounds, The Observer can reveal.

The foetuses are cryogenically frozen and sold to clinics offering 'youth injections', claiming to rejuvenate skin and cure a raft of diseases.

It is thought that women in the former Soviet republic are being paid £100 a time to persuade them to have abortions and allow their foetuses to be used in treatments. Most of the foetuses are sold in Russia for up to £5,000 each. Some are paid extra to have abortions late in their pregnancy.

Border guards stopped a train entering Russia from Ukraine last week and arrested a 'mule' carrying 25 frozen foetuses hidden in two vacuum flasks. The man said he had bought them from a medical research centre.

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1461654,00.html

[oneighty]

1. Vampires

Consume the young live forever.

180

[amazona]

2. I doubt it

Doesn't pass the B.S. detector test in my view.

[Warpy]

3. Yeah, it doesn't pass my smell test, either

It's like that "woke up in a bathtub with no kidneys" story.

[NNguyenMD]

4. isn't the guardian a pretty reliable source? I mean we're not talking

Fox news or the 700 club here.

[VegasWolf]

5. Beauty products already use pulverized foreskins of baby penises,

wouldn't surprise me one bit.

[uppityperson]

7. huh?

Snopes search comes up with:
"Claim: A group known as 'The Second Coming Project' is seeking to clone Jesus from the DNA of holy relics.
Status: False. "

Nothing about foreskins and beauty products. What are you talking about please?

[seriousstan]

9. I think he is refering to Skin Medica's TNS (Tissue Nutrient Solution)

It's the newest wrinkle potion, a gel that was originally used to regrow skin on burn victims. It’s now it's turning back the signs of aging. CBS 2’s Dr. Mike Rosen has the story.

The buzz is about Skin Medica's TNS (Tissue Nutrient Solution). It's special ingredient is human growth factor. Preliminary studies, from the company, say it stimulates collage, makes skin thicker, and improves circulation.

“It's a cocktail to the skin of all the things that start to break down as we age,” says Betsy Rubinstone, a skin care specialist.

What makes the gel really unique is where the engineered human tissue comes from: newborn babies. Specifically, from discarded foreskins donated after a boy's circumcision. The foreskin is placed in a solution that enables them to extract the growth factors.
http://cbsnewyork.com/investigates/local_story_1283673407_html/

[uppityperson]

6. Nothing on Snopes

search for "fetus" comes up with question is JaimeLeeCurtis hemaphroditic and the rumor of eating bbq'd babies/fetuses in Taiwan (not true). This topic is sure to pick up some hot feelings from DUers.

Don't think I'd use a fetus for a beauty treatment, whether legal or not, seems rather stupid, like rhino hooves, bear gallbladder, etc, with the extra added "ewwww" factor. They'd be better used for scientific or healthcare (stem cell research) purposes anyway.

[fasttense]

8. I'll believe anything but this story smacks more as rumor than truth.

[seriousstan]

10. More info and links.....

http://wired-vig.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,66904,00.html

This same article is repeated in various places...word for word.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

11. Why this MAY be true

In the former Soviet Union, ordinary birth control was hard to get, but abortions were easy. It was not uncommon to use abortion as a means of birth control. This removed a lot of the social stigma.

The former Soviet Union is still desperately poor. It's pretty sad when countries look delapidated and depressing in their own movies, and I can see why some women might be desperate enough to sell the fetus in an abortion that they were going to have anyway.

[daleo]

12. Would there be that many rich Russian women?

To sustain a market for this? I just have my doubts, even though the Guardian is generally reliable.