Thursday, July 23, 2015
Thursday, July 16, 2015
Abortion body parts: Not just for medical research
As the debate about abortion and stem cell research reignites in the U.S., it may be instructive to note that not all stem cell research is utilized for medical purposes.
Stem cells derived from aborted fetuses are used in the U.S. for food and cosmetic research, with one San Francisco-based beauty company notoriously incorporating cell lines in many of its products, including anti-aging face and eye creams.
Some of those creams received awards in recent months from popular U.S. entertainment magazines Elle and InStyle.
Earlier this week, an anti-abortion activist group released an online video that it claims evidences methods in which Planned Parenthood not only sells fetal organs for a profit – a felony in the U.S. – but even alters standard abortion practices in order to preserve fetal organs.
Planned Parenthood denied the accusations, saying it does not sell the human tissue but instead donates the tissue to scientific research while only being reimbursed for expenses, which the group maintains is legal.
The abortion group’s spokesman, Eric Ferrero, told reporters Planned Parenthood harvested the tissue “with full, appropriate consent from patients and under the highest ethical and legal standards.”
The California anti-abortion group, Center for Medical Progress, which released a nearly 3-hour long undercover video, charged “Planned Parenthood’s criminal conspiracy to make money off of aborted baby parts reaches to the very highest levels of their organization.”
The issue clearly has reinvigorated the debate about abortion and stem cell research using tissue harvested from aborted fetuses.
Artificial flavors
While much of the debate centers around medical research, stem cells are also utilized for lesser-known lifestyle uses.
For example, Senomyx, a company that researches and sells flavor boosting products to major worldwide food conglomerates, utilizes Human Embryonic Kidney cells, or HEK-293 in many of its research patents.
The company does not use the stem cells in actual products but it seems to engineer HEK-293 cells for laboratory testing, using the cell lines to simulate the taste-receptor cells in the human mouth.
HEK-293 cells are also used widely in pharmaceutical research and have been instrumental in the creation of numerous vaccines and drugs.
Senomyx boasts on its website its products “are used by many of the world’s leading food and beverage companies.”
“Like most flavor ingredients, Senomyx’s flavor boosters and flavors are used in miniscule quantities in foods and beverages. Our products are blended with other ingredients to create appealing new flavors.”
Senomyx sells its Complimyx brand flavor ingredients, titled, Sweetmyx, Savorymyx, and Bittermyx, to flavor companies for use in a wide variety of foods and beverages.
Two April 2015 press releases relate Senomyx maintains research partnerships with Nestle, PepsiCo and the Swiss-based Firmenich, the world’s largest privately owned company in the fragrance and flavor business.
It was not immediately clear which research collaboration utilizes the HEK-293.
PepsiCo previously released a statement clarifying its relationship with Senomyx is to “help us reduce sugar in future products.”
“Senomyx does not provide ingredients to PepsiCo, nor does it manufacture PepsiCo products,” continued the statement
PepsiCo stated that “Senomyx is required to abide by our responsible research statement for any work they conduct for PepsiCo.”
The statement includes a clause stating PepsiCo does not “conduct or fund research that utilizes any human tissue or cell lines derived from human embryos.”
Following some negative publicity on the reported use of HEK-293 in Senomxy research products in 2011, the term “HEK-293″ cannot be found on the company’s website or in any promotional material.
However, a WND search of the U.S. Patent Collection database finds Senomyx filed 156 patents and that the majority of those utilized HEK-293 cells in its research, some quite extensively.
In one of over 100 examples, the company’s patent titled, “Compounds that inhibit (block) bitter taste in composition and use thereof” details the research process of using HEK-293 cells to simulate human taste receptors to test products.
The cells were also utilized in research tasting for numerous “Sweet flavor modifier” patents and other patents testing “bitter” flavors.
This does not mean Senomyx requires a constant stream of aborted fetus kidney cells to test its products.
In fact, HEK-293 cell lines used in modern research all were derived from human embryonic kidney cells from one fetus aborted legally under Dutch law and cultured in 1973 in Leiden, The Netherlands. HEK-293 cells used today are drawn from that one cell line.
Senomxy did not respond to a WND request seeking comment about the use of HEK-293 in its research.
In 2011, Gwen Rosenberg, vice president of investor relations and corporate communications for Senomyx, told Laine Doss of the Miami Herald that “We don’t discuss details of our research, but you won’t find anything on our website about HEK-293.”
When asked by the Herald reporter whether Senomyx had a position on stem cell research, Rosenberg replied, “We’ve never been asked that.”
“We don’t have a position on anything. We’re dedicated to finding new flavors to reduce sugars and reduce salt. Our focus is to help consumers with diabetes or high blood pressure have a better quality of life,” Rosenberg said.
U.S. entertainment magazines celebrate ‘fetus’ face cream
Meanwhile, human embryonic stem cells are also utilized in cosmetic research and products.
Neocutis Inc., based in San Francisco, has developed a series of beauty product lines from processed Skin Cell Proteins, or PSP, which, as the company has openly discussed, are derived from a 14-week old aborted male fetus.
The cells were developed at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland after the fetus was donated by the parents for medical research.
The company states on its website “the small skin donation that, ultimately, made the development of our treatment possible originated from a single terminated pregnancy that could not survive to term and was deemed medically necessary by the attending physicians.”
“This voluntary donation to medical research was granted by the parents with their written consent, and was performed in adherence with strict Swiss laws that regulate organ donations and similar procedures.”
The company clarified that “our products do not directly use the originally donated tissue in any way.”
Continued the Neocutis statement: “We only use proteins derived from cultured skin cells (grown from a dedicated cell bank). These were not embryonic stem cells. No other donation will ever be necessary. In fact, this cell bank enables the production of some 900 million biological bandages for patients suffering from severe wounds, burns and other serious skin conditions.”
The cell line is used in Neocutis products such as Bio-Restorative Skin Cream, Bio-Gel Bio-Restorative Hydrogel, Lumiere Bio-Restorative Eye Cream and Bio-Restorative Serum with PSP Intensive Spot Treatment.
In the May 2015 issue of InStyle magazine, WND found, Neocutis received five “Best Beauty Buy” awards for three of their anti-aging products, including LUMIÈRE eye cream, which the company writes is “powered by 30 percent more PSP to help smooth the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles.”
The PSP, or Skin Cell Proteins, were derived from the human cell line.
WND found the company’s BIO CRÈME was featured in the 2015 Elle Beauty Genius Awards Hall of Fame. The cream is openly marketed as “the first and original skincare cream formulated with patented PSP.”
Neocutis President Mark J. Lemko invoked the “laws of God” in an email response to critics, stating, “We feel we are in complete compliance with the laws of God and the laws of man.”
Asked for his comment on the use of stem cells in beauty products, such as face creams, Rabbi Dr. Moshe Tendler, senior biology professor and chair of Jewish Medical Ethics at Yeshiva University, told WND, “There’s a concept of human dignity. Human tissue was given the priorities over all of nature by biblical ethics.
“We would never approve the use of human tissue for the use of face cream,” he said. :Besides the fact is that it is probably a hoax and it doesn’t work any way and it’s nothing more than a sales gimmick.”
“I’m here in Israel and I recommend Dead Sea mud as the cosmetic we have in nature,” he joked.
WND » Faith
Abortion body parts: Not just for medical research
Sunday, July 12, 2015
America"s day of reckoning just 60 days away?
Author and Messianic Rabbi Jonathan Cahn
Two months from now the biblical Shemitah year will have played out and only then will we know whether it has left any significant event in its wake.
In the past, this seven-year cycle has brought collapsing stock markets, tumbling currencies and the shaking of nations and empires.
This period of early autumn was the most crucial time on the biblical calendar for the ancient Israelites, with the end of the seven-year cycle described in Deuteronomy as the Shemitah or Sabbath year. All farmland was to be left in a state of rest and the people were to focus on God and His will for their nation and their lives.
This year on Sept. 13, the Shemitah reaches its peak on the last day on the Hebrew calendar, Elul 29, known as the “day of nullification.” All debt and credit were to be wiped away on this day as described by author Jonathan Cahn in his New York-Times bestseller, “The Mystery of the Shemitah,” published in September 2014.
Are America’s days as world leader numbered?
There is no arguing the fact that the United States of America has been the most powerful “empire” on earth since the end of World War II. Its corporations have been the engine that drives the global economy and its politicians have set the tone for the world order. It’s no coincidence the United Nations is based in New York City, the seat of global financial power.
But even as the nation’s economy flounders and it has gone from the world’s largest creditor to the world’s largest debtor, American culture has also drifted farther and farther from God. Some believe it has drifted beyond the point of return, into full-blown rebellion, with the June 26 landmark Supreme Court decision on marriage being only the latest symptom of a nation that has come unhinged from its foundational belief system. Obergefell v. Hodges was the biggest shock to Judeo-Christian moral sensibilities since Roe v. Wade in 1973. Both decisions came down in Shemitah years.
In the oft-quoted words of American political philosopher F.P. Dunne, “the Supreme Court follows the election returns.” If that’s true, such monumental shifts in the court’s rulings should not be viewed in a bubble. The five justices who decided to radically alter the legal definition of marriage could not have ruled that way unless they felt the majority of Americans were ready to accept their decision, if not totally agree with it. Thus far it does not appear that they miscalculated. The overwhelming majority of county clerks are issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples and those who have refused are being replaced by more obedient bureaucrats.
The 20th century’s greatest Christian thinkers, men like Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Francis Schaeffer, believed that a civilization could not continue indefinitely apart from the will of God. Soviet communism fell, Nazi Germany fell, the British Empire disintegrated. And many scholars see the whole of Western civilization as in decline now that it has rejected the very Christianity that made it great. It has succumbed to the pressures that have warred against it from the beginning.
Shemitah shakes empires
One of the chapters in Cahn’s book “The Rise and Fall of Nations” shows how the ancient Shemitah mystery is linked to massive changes of world history – world wars, the rise and fall of nations and empires.
Global problems in our day seem to be spinning out of control. Lawlessness is on the rise. The current order in the Middle East, in place since the end of World War I, has been turned on its head.
“What we are watching now is a massive destabilization throughout the world – from ISIS, to the war in Syria, to the collapse of Greece, the collapse of the Chinese stock market, the destabilizing of the European Union, the issue of nuclear weapons and Iran, the moral and spiritual transformation of America, the deterioration of relations between America and Israel, and more,” Cahn told WND.
In the financial realm, the markets have been expanding since 2009. Cahn believes the Shemitah, if it follows its pattern of the past two seven-year cycles, will bring a shaking in the financial realm first.
“And just now as we approach the climactic last part of the Shemitah, we see the sudden destabilization of the global financial realm,” said Cahn, who authored “The Harbinger,” which became a New York-Times bestseller in 2009.
“Added to this, the Greek crisis specifically deals with issues of debt and debt relief – the central issue of the Shemitah,” he added. “Whether or not the crisis finds a resolution, the very fact that such sudden destabilization of the global financial realm has taken place, and having to do with the issue of debt and credit and the issue of relief, just as the Shemitah nears its climactic period, warrants our attention. And as the Shemitah deals with the wiping out of financial accounts, we now witness China’s financial (stock market) losing 30 percent of its value in less than a month, is more than striking.”
States falling into line even before court’s edict
But it will not stop with the financial realm.
“The Shemitah also can mean ‘the fall.’ And we are watching the greatest, most rapid moral and spiritual fall in American history,” Cahn said. “In the year of the Shemitah, the number of states that struck down the biblical definition of marriage went from a small minority, in the teens, to the majority, and then at the end of June, came one of the most momentous decisions in American judicial history – and history itself – the striking down of the biblical and historic definition of marriage.
“This is a pivotal event with colossal ramifications, and one that draws America one step closer to judgment.”
When Obergefell v. Hodges was being argued before the Supreme Court in March, Cahn said he saw a woman holding a sign that read “Don’t Cross this Line.” He stopped and prayed with her.
Holy matrimony was the first covenant between God and man in the Garden of Eden, when God gave Eve to Adam and the two, male and female, were to become “one flesh” with God as their witness. In the New Testament, marriage is further revealed as a type, a foreshadow, of the relationship between God and his Church, which is called the “Bride of Christ.”
Now man has taken what is holy before God, the marriage covenant, and redefined it in a way that appears right to man in his humanistic way of thinking devoid of the Holy Spirit’s guidance. A line has been crossed, Cahn said, and so the only prayer left to pray is one for repentance and mercy.
America is heading for judgment. Whether that judgment entails a stock market collapse, a collapse of the dollar, or something further down the road that is even worse, Cahn is also praying that the individual Christians that make up the body of Christ in America will get right with God and repent of their sins.
For judgment always starts “in the house of the Lord.”
WND » World
America"s day of reckoning just 60 days away?