Free Republic

Did you know your lipstick might be made from beetles? Or that some cat food may soon be made from flies? People farm insects for all sorts of reasons: Farmers rear bees to pollinate billions of dollars of crops, textile companies raise silkworms for their cocoons, and cosmetic companies use cochineal beetles for dyes. Researchers also put insects to work in labs: Fruit flies have revolutionized genetics, cockroaches provide insights into neurobiology, and ants inspire AI-driven robots.On top of that, medical companies raise blowfly larvae to clean wounds, desert locusts for compounds that might help reduce the risk of heart...

The nation’s biggest abortion business has been shown once again to be selling the body parts of aborted babies. The latest expose’ of the Planned Parenthood abortion giant comes via never- before-seen documents released under a California public records request. They show Planned Parenthood selling 23-week-old aborted babies to a university for dubious research, Newly revealed documents show Planned Parenthood supplying UC San Diego with aborted babies parts from unborn babies killed in elective abortions , including viable babies up to 23 weeks. The agreements suggest the use of fetal material for research projects in exchange for potential intellectual property...

“Of all the passions, the passion for the Inner Ring is most skillful in making a man who is not yet a very bad man do very bad things.” -CS Lewis Like all demons, he was obsessed with children. Shedding their blood was preferable. Failing that, he could always cut them up, scalp them, sexualize them, incite them to a sexual frenzy, or castrate them. The possibilities were endless, and exciting. Demonic appetite never ceases, and Mephistopheles was hungry. To satisfy his lust, he would need a megalomaniac with a Promethean drive; someone appointed in high places and thus able...

In chilling testimony last week, an abortion whistleblower involved in revealing how Planned Parenthood affiliates had sold aborted baby body parts revealed one of the horrifying research purposes of body parts buyers: they were "scalping the babies." In 2015, David Daleiden shocked America's conscience by releasing a slew of videos showing abortionists at Planned Parenthood affiliates admitting that they sold the body parts of aborted babies, often to medical research establishments. Planned Parenthood and its allies have dragged Daleiden and his organization, the Center for Medical Progress (CMP), through the courts. California Attorney General Xavier Becerra (following the lead of...

Zheng Qiaozhi — we will call him George — still has nightmares. He was interning at China’s Shenyang Army General Hospital when he was drafted to be part of an organ-harvesting team. The prisoner was brought in, tied hand and foot, but very much alive. The army doctor in charge sliced him open from chest to belly button and exposed his two kidneys. “Cut the veins and arteries,” he told his shocked intern. George did as he was told. Blood spurted everywhere. The kidneys were placed in an organ-transplant container. Then the doctor ordered George to remove the man’s eyeballs....

The end to animal experimentation seems to be nearer than we could previously imagine. In 2008 three US federal government agencies, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and the National Toxicology Program (NTP), signed a "Memorandum of Understanding" with the aim of ending animal testing of drugs and chemicals for human use. The realization of this ambitious plan will take years, but it's a start of historic importance, especially considering that the three agencies involved have been among animal testing's biggest funding bodies.This momentous agreement followed a 2007 report released by the world's most prestigious...

After more than 60 years of silence, World War II's most enduring and horrible secret is being nudged into the light of day. One by one the participants, white-haired and mildmannered, line up to tell their dreadful stories before they die. Akira Makino is a frail widower living near Osaka in Japan. His only unusual habit is to regularly visit an obscure little town in the southern Philippines, where he gives clothes to poor children and has set up war memorials. Mr Makino was stationed there during the war. What he never told anybody, including his wife, was that during...

For 62 years, Akira Makino spoke not a word of what he’d done, but to those who knew him well it must have been obvious that he was a man with a tortured conscience. Why else would he have returned so often to the obscure, mosquito-blown town in the southern Philippines where he had experience such misery during the Second World War?He set up war memorials, gave clothes to poor children and bought an entire set of uniforms for a local baseball team. Last year, at the age of 83, he embarked on a grueling pilgrimage to 88 Buddhist temples...

SEATTLE — This is about Ashley's dignity. Everybody examining her case seems to agree at least about that. Ashley is a 9-year-old girl who has static encephalopathy, a severe brain impairment. She cannot walk or talk. She cannot keep her head up, roll over or sit up by herself. She is fed with a tube. Her parents call her "Pillow Angel" because she stays right where they place her, usually on a pillow. Her parents say they feared that their angel would become too big one day — too big to lift, too big to move, too big to take...

National organizers of a militant animal-rights group yesterday lauded the tactics that landed two Hub members in jail as their local cohorts were slapped with grand jury subpoenas. Authorities say Lisa Lotts, 23, and Ryan Kleinert, 17, were behind a four-month terror campaign on a Back Bay man and at least two other employees of an insurance firm the group claims has ties to a lab that does animal testing. ``Our goal is to shut down Huntingdon Life Sciences. We won't stop until we do,'' said Kevin Jonas, a leader of Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty, a group dedicated to shutting...

TOKYO - A self-confessed Japanese war criminal called on the government to apologise for testing biological weapons on thousands of Chinese prisoners yesterday in advance of a legal ruling on the activities of a germ warfare unit during the second world war Yoshio Shinozuka, a veteran of the top-secret Unit 731, told reporters he had done what no man should do in developing bubonic plague viruses and conducting vivisections on captives near Harbin in China. "These human beings were called logs. We said we have chopped one log, two logs," the frail and bespectacled 78-year-old said. "This unit cruelly murdered...