(Today's discussion will get rather technical; I will try and simplify things as much as possible, and I apologize for its length.)
Our body is made of many different kinds of cells, all interconnected with each other and grouped into structures like bone, skin, and organs. Our cells grow and divide, and eventually age, die and must be replaced. To survive, our cells must receive nourishment and oxygen, which they do from our circulating blood. If you remove cells from the body, they die.
Likewise, we age and die as well. However, in certain circumstances, cells can be grown in a culture, like bacteria. There is no circulating blood with oxygen, but the cells are supplied oxygen and nutrition in their culture media. In fact, with a little genetic rearranging, you can keep cells alive forever. The scientists call this "immortalizing."
The scientists do all kinds of tests on these cells, running all manner of experiments. They can test drugs and vaccines, and they can even transform these cells by infecting them with viruses, a process called transfection. Then these immortal cell lines, artificially kept alive as cultures, can then begin producing all sorts of new proteins. The possibilities are endless, and some of these new proteins can then also be used to do experiments. These cell lines have names, and some of these names are just letters and numbers. One of the most common cell lines in use is named HEK-293. This cell line comes from kidney cells obtained by a Dr. Alex van der Eb in 1972, and it was transformed by infecting it with an adenovirus by Dr. Frank L. Graham in his 293rd experiment. This cell line has proven to be durable and easy to manage; you can buy a batch for less than $500.00 on-line.
When those of us in the medical profession wish to look up journal articles, we commonly use PubMed. A search of PubMed shows about 5,000 articles describing experiments using HEK 293 cells. I imagine that there is not a single medical school that isn't using them for medical research. HEK 293 and other cell lines are routinely used to test and develop vaccines. Now, industry has begun using them in product development research. They are everywhere. Of course, the original HEK 293 cells died decades ago; these are their descendants. Like Abraham's descendants promised to him in Genesis 22:17, "as the stars of the heaven and as the sand which is on the seashore."
The "K" in HEK, of course, stands for "kidney." The "H" stands for "human" and the "E" stands for "embryonic." You see, the original cells for this immortal cell line came from an abortion performed in Holland in 1972.
In the Old Testament, yeast or leaven was often symbolic for sin. And in Galatians 5:6, Paul asks, "Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump?" A small amount of sin can diffuse and permeate throughout a church or a society. That sin of abortion forty years ago has now resulted in cells that are used throughout our research facilities here and around the world. Currently, there are outcries against Pepsi and calls for boycotts, because they have contracted with a company (Senomyx) that uses the HEK cell line to manufacture a taste receptor protein that can be used to test flavor additives. When you drink a Pepsi, you are not drinking any proteins that were made by those cells, but perhaps some of the flavor ingredients were tested against proteins made by those cells.
I guess a boycott of Pepsi could in theory serve a couple of purposes. One logical chain would go something like this: If you boycotted Pepsi, then they would stop doing business with Senomyx, who then would stop using HEK 293 cells, and somehow this would discourage everybody from using them, and then there would be no demand for HEK cells so perhaps that would pressure researchers into not obtaining cells from aborted fetuses and that would decrease abortions. Although I am opposed to embryonic stem cell research (these come from embryos that were created for in vitro fertiliztion and then destroyed), it seems to me there are too many links in that chain between Pepsi and the pregnant woman who decides to abort her baby for a boycott to have much effect. It may be, however, that a person who does decide to boycott Pepsi may simply be making a statement of conscience: "I don't want to use a product that has been tested on cells that came from an abortion."
But the leaven has leavened the whole lump.
So far, we have just been talking about one cell line, HEK 293. But there are many more in use. If you have been vaccinated for measles/mumps/rubella, chickenpox, hepatitis A, smallpox, or the shingles, your vaccine used a cell line from an aborted fetus in its development. Likewise for any of your children who have yet to be vaccinated. Millions are likely alive today because of research done using cells from babies that were killed in the womb.
And aborted fetus cell lines are being used in the development of cosmetics, for things such as wrinkle creams and treatments for age spots. It is going to be hard to find out in each and every food, medication, vaccine, or cosmetic if one of these cell lines was used at some point in its development. Kraft and Nestle use Senomyx; Campell's Soup used to, but quit. So if you eat any of their soup, you can be comforted by knowing they don't work with Senomyx anymore, but the taste of your soup was developed using aborted fetal cell technology. And many more products and medicines are in the works.
I guess I am mostly off the hook. I don't drink Pepsi, for I am a Diet Coke addict. My vaccines were fifty years ago, before the HEK 293 baby was aborted. And I don't wear make-up. But the leaven has spread far and wide.
About five years ago, I developed an overwhelming infection due to pneumonia. I was rushed to the hospital barely conscious and with no measurable blood pressure. I was rescuscitated in the emergency room and sent to the ICU with three different medications to support my blood pressure. I also received a fourth medication designed to fight the shock that comes from the toxins released by the bacteria that were causing the infection. Within a few hours, my condition stabilized, and with those medicines and antibiotics, the pneumonia was controlled. I remained on the fourth medication, drotrecogin, for four days, which continued to reverse the shock and circulatory collapse. Without it, I would likely not have survived. I would not have imagined leaven was involved.
Drotrecogin was made from HEK 293.
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