Cosmetics firm using remains of executed Chinese

A Chinese cosmetics company has been using skin taken from the bodies of executed convicts to develop beauty products for sale in Europe, a London newspaper reported.

An agent for the company informed customers it is developing collagen for lip and wrinkle treatments from skin taken from prisoners after they had been shot.

The agent said some of the company‘s products have been exported to Britain, and that the use of skin from condemned convicts was “traditional" and nothing to “make such a big fuss about,“ the Guardian reported In addition to ethical concerns, there is the potential risk of infection from the harvested skin products.

The company was not identified by name for legal reasons and it is unclear whether collagen made from the skin of prisoners was in the research stage or in actual production.

“A lot of the research is still carried out in the traditional manner using skin from the executed prisoners and aborted fetus," the agent was quoted as saying. The material, he said, was being bought from “biotech" companies based in Heilongjiang Province and was being developed elsewhere in China.

He suggested that the use of skin and other tissues harvested from executed prisoners was not uncommon. “In China it is considered very normal and I was very shocked that Western countries can make such a big fuss about this," he said.

In the past, human rights groups have charged that China was using organs harvested from executed prisoners for medical transplants both domestically and internationally. China executed about 3,400 prisoners last year, according to Amnesty International.

You might be too young to remember

Abortion in America

On January 22, 1973, the United States Supreme Court decided that a pre-born baby was not a person. Between that date to 1990 more than 20 million "legal" abortions were performed. Today, fetuses are being literally torn apart in the womb while they are still alive. This is being done under the guise of using their body parts for medical research.

According to Federal and State courts, abortions are permitted anytime up to full term, but not after the birth of a child. It is interesting that a mother who kills a newborn baby is charged with murder or manslaughter, however a mother who kills a baby even up to just prior to the babies birth is considered a person who has just exercised her free choice and is fully protected under the law. What a miraculous difference passage through the birth canal makes in the law.

Abortion is the number one killer over cardio-vascular disease, which takes second place. This makes a mother's womb statistically the most dangerous place for a child to be. Another way to put it is that a child is more likely to be murdered in the womb than anywhere else. This puts a damper on the old adage "safe in a mother's womb." We can only ask ourselves why this has come to be the case. This article hopes to show that it is merely an attitude of our society and the courts.

Greedy Business

It is well known that abortion is a major business in the United States. There were about 5500 abortuaries in the United States by 1990. These abortuaries take in more than half a billion dollars a year. Additional money is taken in from the sale of aborted fetal tissue used for cosmetics and some medical experiments. Planned Parenthood, whose clinics perform over 80,000 abortions annually, receives about 30 million dollars a year from Title X appropriations that come directly from tax money that was meant to be used for "preventative family planning services." This, in effect, is America's own holocaust. For the sake of human greed, there are three babies aborted for every one baby born in the District of Columbia and one baby aborted for each baby born in New York City.

Inhumane Religion

Michael R. Gilstrap was quoted in The Phineas Report to say "abortion is an act of religious faith…it affirms a belief in man as ultimate rather than as created in the image of God. It is a commitment to an alien faith that rivals Christianity at the most fundamental levels." We see that he is on to something true by looking at how abortion has been called "a woman's right," and a "part of freedom of choice." Many high schools and even elementary schools have taught their students that abortion is "just one method of contraception." Abortion has even been cited as "in the mainstream of the nation's religious tradition" by Federal Judge John F. Dooling, Jr. He also listed a statement in his decision from American Baptists, United Methodists, United Presbyterians, Episcopals, and Evangelical Lutherans that "continuance of pregnancy is not a moral necessity."

Self-indulgence

Many abortions in the United States are performed to cover up pre- or extra-marital sex. Less than three percent of all abortions are performed for medical reasons or following rape or incest; 97 percent are strictly a matter of convenience. 25 Percent of abortions are repeats - they had one or more prior abortions and are generally young and unmarried.

Economic Convenience

The 1984 vice-presidential nominee, Geraldine Ferraro, was quoted to say, "[Abortion] is a simple matter of economics. Unwanted children so often end up in the criminal justice systems…it is very expensive to take care of them." In addition to this abhorrent thinking, pro-abortion advocates' arguments include "abortion is a method of easing poverty levels," "abortion is a remedy for sexual promiscuity," and "abortion is a way of building a 'planned' and 'perfect' society."

Hippocratic Denial

The Hippocratic Oath, to which physicians once subscribed states, "I will not give a woman a pessary (contraceptive) to produce abortion." However, comments in the Journal for American Academy of Pediatrics include: "Handicapped children may have less (social) value than dogs or pigs with 'superior capacities'," and "Once the religious mumbo-jumbo surrounding the term 'human' has been stripped away…we will not regard as sacrosanct the life of each and every member of our species."

Population Control

The New York Times hailed Red China's policy, to abort any child per family over one, as "most effective in implementing birth control and population planning." In communist-dominated Poland, 700,000 children were born while 800,000 children were aborted.

The Sad Truth

The society and world in which we live has been lulled into believing that the pre-born baby is simply "fetal tissue" and not a living entity until delivery (or, at the earliest, the third trimester). Abortion is compared, by abortion advocates, as no different than having a tooth pulled or getting a haircut.

What they don't want you to know is that the pre-born baby is a living human being who dies a painful death when aborted. By the seventh week, the child has its own (measurable) brain waves. The presence of brain waves is one of the legal criteria for determining whether an individual is alive or dead. Twenty-six doctors sent President Reagan a letter emphasizing that scientific methods make it clear that pre-born babies feel pain during abortion. They pointed out that "nerves are in place by six to eight weeks after conception, chemicals to transmit sensations from nerves through the spinal cord to the brain exist by twelve weeks, the fetus reacts the same way a full-grown individual would when exposed to something painful, by squirming, thrashing, accelerated heart-beat and higher blood pressure." In addition, it is known that at six weeks, the kidneys, stomach, and liver begin to function; at seven weeks, the baby has its outer and inner organs; at ten weeks, the baby has everything found in a newborn baby; and, at twelve weeks, the fingerprints are completely formed.

Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor warned "the Roe [v. Wade] framework…is clearly on a collision course with itself…it has no justification in law or logic."

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