ABORTED BABY PARTS BEING USED TO TREAT PARKINSON’S

TORONTO, Dec 8 (LSN)  Last week, Linda McKenzie, a Parkinson’s Disease patient, took part in experimental surgery to relieve her symptoms involving the implantation of tissue from aborted babies.  McKenzie, an Ontario resident, was part of a study looking into the effects of fetal tissue transplants in Parkinson’s patients being conducted by Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital in New York and the University of Colorado in Denver.  In an interview with the National Post last Thursday, Jim Hughes, national president of Campaign Life Coalition warned that the situation could lead to the purposeful conception of babies for the purpose of aborting them to provide tissues for relatives with Parkinson’s – or for profit. There have already been offers to conceive in order to supply tissue for research in the hopes of finding a cure for these types of diseases. A Halifax pro-lifer offered the following comparison: “Just as society sympathizes with childless couples, it does not condone kidnapping to satisfy the desire for parenting. So too,  while society shows concern for those with degenerative diseases, it cannot condone the deliberate sacrifice of an innocent to enhance the life of another or to satisfy medial technology.”  Research results with the fetal tissue transplant procedure are not overly promising. Dr. Iacono, a leading doctor in the field of Parkinson’s research who has used both fetal tissue and other treatments such as stereotactic PVP pallidotomy procedures, which involve no fetal tissue has said that other treatments are better than the fetal graft procedure.  Of note, restrictions in the US on “harvesting” fetal tissues from aborted fetuses have led to US relations with a fetal “brain bank” at Hua Shan Hospital in China (the abortion capital of the world).  Incredibly the Parkinson’s Foundation of Canada supports this gruesome research. In fact, the Nova Scotia Division of the Parkinson’s Foundation of Canada is appalled at the slowness of the Canadian government to fund the fetal transplant procedure. The Nova Scotia Parkinson’s Foundation Newsletter:  Volume 7, Number 2 – March-April, 1995 by Elaine Peers, Moira MacPherson and Peter Kidd chastises the decision of Jake Epp, former Minister of Health, to impose a ban on federal funding which is still in effect.  However this refusal to fund the research in no way constitutes a ban on it. Such fetal tissue transplant experiments have taken place in Canada at the Victoria General Hospital in Halifax. The Nova Scotia division of the Parkinson’s Foundation of Canada made a substantial $50,000 contribution to the study.