The babies who are murdered to order
By MATTHEW HILL
Last updated at 08:53 18 December 2006
The plastic bag looks as if it contains meat. But then a right leg is taken from it and placed surgically on the morgue table, followed by the left one. Then the torso. The head follows, a gaping cavity where the brain used to be.
But it is only when the gloved hand of the pathologist examines the tiny fingers of a baby aged about 30 weeks that the full horror of what I am witnessing sinks in.
This shocking scene was captured on video at post-mortem examinations carried out on behalf of Ukrainian mothers who claim their babies were stolen from them at birth.
The film was shown to me by an incredibly brave charity worker called Tatyana Zhakarova, who represents up to 300 families who believe their healthy babies were deliberately targeted at a maternity hospital in the Ukraine's most easterly city of Kharkiv.
The babies, believes Tatyana, were taken at birth to have their organs and stem cells harvested as part of a sickening but highly lucrative international trade.
Certainly, the Ukraine has become the main supplier of the global stem cell trade.
Officially, the cells are taken from aborted foetuses with the mothers' consent, but according to Tatyana, there could also be hundreds of babies stolen to order, to feed demand for stem cells from around the world.
Can she be right? Alarmed by her claims, I decided to launch my own investigations for a special BBC report, to be broadcast tomorrow.
My inquiries took me around the world, from a private clinic in the Caribbean to the desolate back streets of the Ukraine. What I uncovered is a disturbing tale involving claims of murder, conspiracy . . . and a sickening new beauty treatment.
The first hint I had of these allegations arose months ago during a conversation with one of the UK's foremost experts on stem cell research.
Dr Stephen Minger, from Kings College, London, is a distinguished medical researcher who believes stem cells hold the key to finding a cure for some of our major diseases.
These tiny cells, which first divide within an embryo, have the ability to transform themselves into any type of tissue. But it's their potential as a future treatment for conditions such as muscular dystrophy and Parkinson's disease that really excites Dr Minger.
He is one of many reputable experts who fear their research into this field is being given a bad name by companies making a fast buck out of untested stem cell therapies.
Dr Minger told me he found out about the trade in stem cells from aborted Ukrainian foetuses two years ago, when he was invited to meet doctors from a controversial clinic in Barbados.
called the Institute For Regenerative Medicine (IRM), the firm wanted Dr Minger to lend his endorsement to its therapies.
The firm's website boasts IRM is "dedicated to excellence in stem cell therapy for the remediation of diseases resulting from tissue damage and/or the effects of aging". But its claims are treated with scepticism by experts.
The clinic's method of treatment involves injecting patients with stem cells taken from babies aborted between seven and ten weeks old.
It is a technique, says Dr Minger, that has no credible research to back it up, and that raises disturbing questions about how the cells have been 'harvested'.
"The problem is, I am not sure how the cells are prepared," he says. "A six-week-old embryo can be just 1cm from head to foot, so it's difficult to dissect tissue from it. They may just homogenise the whole embryo." That's a polite way of saying that the aborted babies could have been liquidised.
Dr Minger was especially troubled that as well as offering unproven therapy to patients with degenerative diseases - at up to £10,000 a time - the clinic was running a lucrative sideline in offering stem cell treatments to reverse the effects of ageing.
The firm boasts that such treatment can lead to everything from improved fitness and a better sex life to greater mental capacity and enhanced sleep patterns.
"I find it very distasteful that they are used for beauty treatments," says Dr Minger. "As far as I can tell from what's been published, a lot of people go to this clinic in Barbados feeling a bit run down, or that their skin has just lost some elasticity, and they are getting 'smoothies' or perk-me-ups."
The stem cells used in these techniques are bought by IRM from the Ukraine. They are said to be taken from aborted foetuses, with the mothers' consent. But could there be a link with the Ukrainian mothers who believe their babies were deliberately taken from them?
I travelled to Barbados to speak to one of IRM's senior doctors, Shami Ramesh.
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