Pepsi used aborted fetus in flavor-enhancing research

Just to clarify for anybody who doesn't already understand, the HEK-293 cells come from a cell LINE. It was derived in the 1970's in the same fashion that HeLa cells are a cell line. Yes, the original cells came from an aborted foetus. Just making that clarification because qrrgprgua seems to be under the impression that the company is regularly harvesting foetuses which is not the case.

gimmebroadband wrote: »

It doesn't make it any less disgusting!

Don't see what is "disgusting" about it TBH?

Improbable wrote: »

Just to clarify for anybody who doesn't already understand, the HEK-293 cells come from a cell LINE. It was derived in the 1970's in the same fashion that HeLa cells are a cell line. Yes, the original cells came from an aborted foetus. Just making that clarification because qrrgprgua seems to be under the impression that the company is regularly harvesting foetuses which is not the case.

I am not sure it will help, but perhaps it might be useful to explain what a cell line is, how it comes about and what the relation to the cells being used today are to the original cells...
MrP

Worst Pepsi ad ever.

Yup. Culturing cell lines is not in itself ethically objectionable.

Nor is culturing human cell lines. I’m no expert, but so far as I know culturing human cells is a common technique in diagnostic procedures - they take a tiny amount of tissue from the patient, isolate the cells they want, then culture them to grow a cell sample large enough to be tested to see whether you have this disease or that disease. The time taken to culture the cells is the reason why you sometimes have to wait for your diagnostic test results. No ethical problem there.

No, the ethical issue here is not the creation of the cell line; it’s the original derivation of the cell from which the line is cultured. It comes from a human foetus, aborted some time in the mid-1970s.

Improbable says above that we don’t actually know whether it was an induced abortion, or a spontaneous abortion/miscarriage. Let’s assume - because it sharpens the ethical issue - that it was an induced abortion. But it seems very unlikely that the abortion was induced specifically in order to harvest stem cells from which a cell line could be culture; the abortion was probably induced for other reasons, and then the opportunity was taken to harvest stem cells, and to culture this line.

Finally, let’s also assume that the induction of the abortion was gravely morally wrong. (If you take the view that it was morally A-OK then I don’t see that there can be any great ethical issue about the harvesting of the stem cells, the culturing of the cell line, or the subsequent use of cells cultured in that line.)

Right. Does the morally impermissible abortion “taint” everything that follows, so that it is wrong to harvest the stem cells, wrong to culture the harvested cells, and wrong take any advantage of any kind from the use of the cell line?

If an adult with a rare disease is murdered, is it wrong to take tissue samples - necessarily, without his consent - and use them for research into or treatment of the disease that he suffered from? Is the answer different if he died in a traffic accident?

A related issue arises, in theory, in relation to medical research carried out by Nazi scientists on concentration camp inmates and people with mental deficiencies. The research was, of course, profoundly unethical. Most of it, as it happens, was completely bogus; nothing of value was learnt or was ever likely to be. But suppose something did turn up which proved very valuable in, say, treating a hitherto incurable disease. Would it be unethical to take advantage of what was learned in highly immoral research in order to treat people with that disease?

And does it make any difference whether we are exploiting an abstract thing (information) that was gained unethically, or a material thing (a tissue culture) that was obtained unethically?

Does it make any difference whether we are exploiting the information/the tissue culture (a) to improve the profitability of our fizzy drink concern, or (b) to treat human disease and alleviate suffering? In other words, can our good intention in using whatever it is “cure” the evil intention or act of those who produced it in the first place?

These are weighty ethical questions, but it doesn’t seem to me that they have simple, obvious answers.

I can mostly avoid the dilemma. Since little of value emerged from Nazi medical research, the question of whether we should exploit what was learned doesn’t come up very often. Since Pepsi-cola tastes the way it does, the question of whether I should decline to drink it for ethical reasons doesn‘t present itself as a practical issue

But the underlying principle is important, and it comes up quite often in less dramatic circumstances. If I intentionally eavesdrop on a private conversation, can I make use of the information I learn? Ever? In any circumstances? If I don’t eavesdrop, but learn of information which somebody else got by eavesdropping, when - if ever - can I make use of it? If it’s sometimes permissible and sometimes not, what are the principles at work?

qrrgprgua wrote: »

Lets get it straight.... They used cells from aborted babies to grow more cells that were used in Flavour research for Pepsi and other companies and you don't see a problem with this?

The Human person is not a by product that should be used for testing.. Each human person is unique and must be respected from conception to death. (unless they give their body willingly to medical research after their natural death)

I realise this is the Christianity forum, so I will just say I completely disagree with your timeframe here.

What we have here is totally crazy!!. Borderline Nazi experimentation. That any child had to die to may a soft drink taste better beggers belief. Its a sad reflection on humanity that its not able to see the objective reality of humanity that needs to be respected always.

Now, you're getting a bit over the top and you're not doing your argument any favours, neither is Mr.Godwin!

A child did not die to make a soft drink taste better. That's a silly statement!

qrrgprgua wrote: »

Lets get it straight.... They used cells from aborted babies to grow more cells that were used in Flavour research for Pepsi and other companies and you don't see a problem with this?

The Human person is not a by product that should be used for testing.. Each human person is unique and must be respected from conception to death. (unless they give their body willingly to medical research after their natural death)

What we have here is totally crazy!!. Borderline Nazi experimentation. That any child had to die to may a soft drink taste better beggers belief. Its a sad reflection on humanity that its not able to see the objective reality of humanity that needs to be respected always.

What we have today is widespread degeneration of social conscience. Not only do people not see that a child is being killed in during abortion but that its ok to experiment on the aborted child.

Firstly, the cells were not grown for the purposes of flavour research. They were grown for research purposes in general. The fact that a company in the business of food and drink products chose to use them is neither here nor there. I think the issue has to focus on the more general argument about whether you think the use of the cells is immoral or not, not what the subject of the research is.

The statement that "Each human person is unique and must be respected from conception to death." has no play here. The abortion had already taken place. Once again, I stress that there is no knowledge as to whether it was a natural abortion or an induced one, which I suspect has a lot to do with your outrage as you seem to focus a fair bit on the morality of induced abortions, which you cannot simply assume that it was, simply because it suits your argument to do so.

If you really think that this is even remotely comparable to the experiments performed by the likes of Mengele and/or Unit 731, I must inform you that you are severely mistaken. For one, the foetus here was already dead. The experiments by Mengele were on living people and caused them untold suffering and killed a lot of people, purely in the interest of scientific experimentation. He reputedly ordered 750 people to be killed because they had been infested by lice, among other things. To compare the creation of the HEK cell line to the experiments by Mengele does a disservice to the people who died in Auschwitz and unfairly demonises the scientists who created the HEK cell line and those who use it.

You are once again confusing the issue. There was no experimentation done on the aborted foetus. This was not some machiavellian plot. The only procedure that was performed on the ALREADY aborted foetus was a small extraction of a clump of cells.

qrrgprgua wrote: »

I also used cells from mouth in Biology.. But using cells from a people would is willing to donate them to using cells from a Child that was killed during abortion is worlds apart. Had the used a miscarried child..Maybe, But it was aborted Children that were used. It sick and immoral.

Have you not paid attention at all? I have twice now stated that it is unknown whether it was a natural abortion or an induced one, i.e. a miscarriage or what you would call an abortion in common vernacular. Others have said it as well. You cannot just keep claiming that the child was the product of an induced abortion because it fits more neatly into your argument. Though I fail to see how using cells from a foetus that was aborted is any different morally from using cells from a foetus that was miscarried.

qrrgprgua wrote: »

The cells are used to create research they new drinks..

Ok, so what? I highly doubt that Pepsi ordered the abortion or were possibly even aware of where the cell batch came from. I use human cells cultures from anon donors in my lab all the time. I don't get a script on the donors life unless it's needed for what I'm doing with them.