Any updates on this?
I heard part of the programme late last night. To tell the truth, I had to turn it off because it was a little too distressing just before I was off to bed!
The part I heard involved a Ukranian doctor, now living in Ireland, who had uncovered some rather unsavoury practices. Basically, he was talking about utilising babies as commodities, either harvesting organs for a variety of uses (it wasn’t clear) or taking what he called ‘stem cells’ from them, which apparently go for a high price. The presenter pointed out that actual stem cells are not used in this way, but it appears that Ukranian hospitals are working on the basis that brain and organ cells from babies can be grown inside a host. Again, the scientific thinking was unclear.
They had an interview with a mother who said that her child had been taken from her, and later she was told that it had died. The doctor had investigated and concluded that it had been killed and harvested for the equivalent of £15,000 (c. $30,000).
Myself, I am a little sceptical - but the story linked below (BBC NEWS | Europe | Ukraine babies in stem cell probe) certainly matches what little detail I could bear to listen to.
Unplausible for two reasons:
-
If they are extracting “embyronic stem cells” from the baby, which is impossible in the first place, wouldn’t they just extract whatever cells they are after, and return the corpse (assuming such an extraction is fatal) to avoid suspicion? Whatever marks remain from the extraction could be explained away by trying to save the baby. Seems much more plausible than, “Hey, you can’t see the dead baby because we said so.”
-
If they are just selling snake oil stem cells, why bother with the real babies at all? Why not just sell regular old fibroblasts from a living donor and tell people that it’s stem cells?
How often does the BBC get suckered?