Moral Outcry

Part V - America's Nuremberg

“Some research may, by necessity, involve deception.” This line doesn’t come from the villain’s secret lab in an old movie, rather it comes from the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston’s (UTHSC-H) research handbook. The Committee for the Protection of Human Subjects (CPHS) covers research that involves human participants. Institutions receiving federal funds must have an Internal Review Board (IRB) even for the non-funded research. As UTHSC-H’s link above explains, this review process has its origins in the Holocaust. The Nuremberg trials actually were a catalyst in ensuring that medical research was ethical; hence, the creation of the Nuremberg Code.

This link tells about the origins of the code and how it became a part of our research protocol. In 1972, there was “public disclosure of the 30-year government supported Tuskegee Syphilis Study, in which 300 black rural men were left untreated for diagnosed syphilis after effective antibiotics became available.” This led to a law to protect the rights of human subjects. The 1979 Belmont Report emerged and developed into the current human subjects code, effective since 1991. It established three ethical principles in all research involving human subjects. They are Beneficence, Respect, and Justice.

Now let’s return to the line that started this blog: “Some research may, by necessity, involve deception.” Found in this section of UTHSC-H investigator’s (researcher's) handbook, the manual notes:

When deception is part of the research design, the deception must be absolutely necessary to the research and subjects must be thoroughly debriefed after their participation is complete…. For such protocols we suggest the following language be added to the consent form: "We are going to tell you the overall intent of the research in which you are being asked to be a subject but not all of the details because this might influence the way in which you participate. Once your participation is complete, you have every right to know all of the details and the research physician or staff will inform you of those details." (source)

Protocol for the donation of fetal tissue is spelled out in the investigator’s guide as well:

Any investigator proposing to use fetal tissue must complete an application form for CPHS review and approval. The application must include a copy of the consent form used to obtain consent for donating the tissue. CPHS must be assured that the woman donating tissue has been given an opportunity to understand the procedures…. Regardless of the circumstances of donation, whether by spontaneous miscarriage and subsequent retrieval of any remaining tissue or by elective abortion, the tissue may only be obtained from a dead fetus. (You can read the entire section here)

Did you catch that? “Dead fetus.” Something can only be dead if it’s been alive. Therefore, by UTHSC-H’s own logic, an elective abortion has killed something. The Department of Health and Human Services agrees. Section 1(A) of Public Law 103-43 notes that the “the tissue is human fetal tissue.”

However, if we return to the Nuremberg Code, an impetus for having ethical research laws to prevent a repeat of the Nazi medical experimentation, we see that it stipulates that “This means that the person involved should have legal capacity to give consent; …without the intervention of any element of force, fraud, deceit,… and should have sufficient knowledge and comprehension of the elements of the subject matter involved as to enable him to make an understanding and enlightened decision.”

Now that sounds lovely in writing, except that we have just seen that deceit is allowed. We must also question the ability of most women having an abortion making an “understanding and enlightened decision.” Our society speaks in double talk. For one purpose a fetus is “tissue,” then “human fetal tissue,” then a “cadaver.” It’s a baby if someone murders her mom, but it’s a lump of nothing if she’s aborted. It doesn’t have a soul if it’s “therapeutic cloning,” but he’s a person if it’s “reproductive.” But women make informed decisions? This is why so many women undergo such pain and trauma after abortions. As they later get enlightened to the truth, they realize it was a baby.

The sick irony of this is that the UTHSC-H investigator’s guide and CPHS guide linked me to the Nuremberg Code directly from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. And as I clicked through to details of the Nuremberg Trials, learned many of the “victims included the mentally retarded… and the physically impaired.” A common justification of some for recommending abortion has been mental retardation or physical deformity. To see this information directly linked to the very research guide which also tells in what situations deceit was okay and how to obtain fetal tissue from abortions is stunning.

We cannot directly associate the new Planned Parenthood Supercenter in Houston with this research guide but we can discern some things. First, Planned Parenthood receives federal funds so it’s automatically subject to the same research laws. Second, the Houston website lists on its research opportunities page that it has “PI with 20+ years of clinical trial and NIH experience.” (A PI is Principal Investigator and is mandatory to research projects.) It also says it accepts “donated fetal tissue” (see “Biologic Sample Acquisition” section). I don’t know about you, but if I had a spontaneous miscarriage, I would be running to my ER, not to my local abortion clinic. It is certainly reasonable to conclude that the Houston Planned Parenthood, whose expansion included an ambulatory surgery center, advertises having a PI with National Institute of Health (federal funding) experience, and collects fetal tissue is likely conducting  some of that research in its facility. In fact, they say publicly they do abortions up to 16 weeks in the Houston clinic. While they make $905 per abortion at that stage, it’s not out of the question to ask if they make more money off the research they do in their clinic, since they say this research includes donated fetal tissue.

Lest we think this is limited to the current spotlight on Houston, the NIH publishes this list of its human fetal tissue research funding. Look closely and you might find your local hospital or alma mater. While not all human fetal tissue is obtained through elective abortions, that is a clear, stated and legal source.

It’s a sick sort of paradox we have. On the one hand, our nation condemns the Holocaust by basing its federal research laws off the lessons allegedly learned from the atrocities. On the other hand, these very laws contain loopholes that allow more atrocities.

Resounding in the language of the Nuremberg Code, it says informed consent should “as to enable him to make an understanding and enlightened decision.” It reminds me of one of my favorite prayers:

“That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him, the eyes of your understanding being enlightened; that you may know what is the hope of His calling…” (Ephesians 1:17-18)

The parallels of history are too eerie to dismiss.

Next up: Who really learned from the Holocaust?

***This is the fifth part of this series. Click here to read part I. Click here to read part II. Click here to read part III. Click here to read part IV.***