The Unnamed Aborted Children

I had no idea of this.

The cell lines taken from aborted babies are given numbers and designations, and not names. It is easier this way to forget these were children, boys or girls, of a certain age, of a certain parentage, city, country. The extraction of living tissue means the harvesting of these children is undertaken close to or prior to death:
They would puncture the sac of a pregnant woman at 14 to 16 weeks, put a clamp on the head of the baby, pull the head down into the neck of the womb, drill a hole
into the baby’s head and attach a suction machine to remove the brain cells… At 16 to 21 weeks, they would do prostaglandin abortions where a chemical is injected
into the womb causing the woman to go into mini-labour and pass the baby. Fifty percent of the time, the baby would be born alive, but that didn’t stop them. They
would simply open up the abdomen of the baby with no anaesthesia, and take out the liver and kidneys, etc. (Dr Peter McCullagh, The Foetus As Transplant Donor:
Scientific, Social and Ethical Perspectives. John Wiley and Sons, 1987).

A) WI-38 (Girl) – Wistar Institute, cell strain 38
Developed from the lung tissue of a Swedish baby girl, 3 months gestation, “therapeutically” aborted in July 1962 by her parents who felt they already had too many children. She was delivered in Stockholm, about 20cm long, wrapped in a sterile green cloth, and handed over to the dissector. The baby’s tiny organs were extracted without the mother’s knowledge or permission, packed on ice and flown to the Wistar Institute in Philadelphia, where they were further dissected. This child was chosen because her parents had no family history of illnesses or cancer.

B) WI-26 (Boy) – Wistar Institute, cell strain 26
Developed from the lung tissue of an aborted Caucasian baby boy, 3 months gestation, around 1963.

C) WI-44 (Girl) – Wistar Institute, cell strain 44
Developed from the lung tissue of an aborted Swedish baby girl, 3 months gestation, around 1964.

D) MRC-5 (Boy) – Medical Research Council, cell culture 5
Developed by the Medical Research Council from the lung tissue of a Caucasian baby boy, 14 weeks gestation, aborted in the UK in or before September 1966. His mother was a physically healthy, genetically normal 27 year old woman. She had him aborted for “psychiatric reasons”; it was explained that she, his mother, did not want him. At abortion, the boy himself had no signs of congenital abnormalities or cancer.

E) MRC-9 (Girl) – Medical Research Council, cell culture 9
These cells were taken from the lungs of a baby girl in 1974, about 15 weeks gestation. She was of normal development and was delivered from a 14 year old mother; the abortion happened because the mother was unmarried. The mother and her family had no abnormal medical history. The baby girl was dissected immediately following her delivery.

F) IMR-90 (Girl) – Institute for Medical Research, cell strain 90
Developed by the Institute for Medical Research from the lung tissue of a baby girl, 4 months gestation, from a “therapeutic” abortion performed on July 7, 1975, on a 38 year old Caucasian mother of six other children. Her cells were intended to replace WI-38.

G) IMR-91 (Boy) – Institute for Medical Research, cell strain 91
Developed by the Institute for Medical Research from the lung and skin tissue of an aborted Caucasian baby boy, 3 months gestation, in 1983. His cells were intended to replace MRC-5.

H) Lambda.hE1 (Boy) – Liver, human Embryonic, culture 1
From the liver cells of a baby boy, second trimester (13-28 weeks gestation). He was aborted in 1980 for “psychosocial indications”, that is, an unwanted pregnancy. His cells are used in the manufacture of a number of medical drugs.

I) HEK-293 (Girl) – Human Embryonic Kidney cells, attempt 293
Developed from kidney cells (deliberately sought because they are better in transformation studies) from a Dutch baby girl of unknown gestational age aborted in 1972. One of the cell line developers later said he could not remember whether the tissue came from an abortion or miscarriage. But the baby girl was described as “completely normal” by someone present to receive her post-extraction, which strongly suggests she was in fact aborted.

J) PER.C6 (Boy) – Primary human Embryonic Retinal cells, Clone 6
Developed from an isolated retina (because recent studies showed they could more readily be transformed) of a baby boy about 18 weeks gestation, aborted in 1985 in the
Netherlands. The boy’s father was listed as “unknown” and this is why his mother wanted to get rid of him. He was described as a “healthy foetus”.

K) RA 27/3 (unrecorded sex) – Rubella, Abortus, 27th fetus, 3rd tissue culture explant An 8-9 week gestation baby whose sex was never noted. This child was one of over 80
unborn babies killed in a study on isolating the rubella virus. The child’s 25 year old mother had been exposed to the rubella virus, and 17 days later the child was surgically aborted and dissected immediately. Samples were taken from organs and several were successfully grown (lung, skin, kidney). This particular child was 27th in the series of abortions during the 1964 rubella epidemic, and it was the 3rd tissue culture which was chosen arbitrarily for further study. These virus-laden cells were then used to infect the foetal cells of WI-38.

L) WALVAX 2 (Girl) – Walvax Biotech Inc. (Chinese company)
Developed from the lung tissue of a baby girl in China, 3 months gestation, who was ultimately selected from among 9 aborted babies in 2009. The reason given for the abortion was a uterine scar from a previous caesarean birth by the girl’s 27 year old healthy mother. The harvesters specifically used a method called a “water bag” abortion (illegal in the USA) to shorten the delivery time and to ensure the baby was born alive, so that her organs could be harvested while she was still alive, without any anaesthetic, since that would have compromised the tissue samples. Her cells were sought deliberately to replace depleting
stocks of WI-38 and MRC-5.