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The Straight Story

(48,121 posts)
Sun Jan 15, 2012, 12:16 PM Jan 2012

Examining claims that cells from aborted fetuses are used to make flavor enhancers/vaccines/drugs

Are Aborted Fetus Cells Helping to Make Your Diet Pepsi Sweeter?

Though Rosenberg states there is nothing on the company website linking Senomyx with HEK293, a little Googling turned up a patent issued in 2008 for "Recombinant Methods for Expressing a Functional Sweet Taste Receptor," in which a line item mentions HEK293.

So what exactly is HEK293? It's a cell line that started in the 1970s from human embryonic kidney cells. The line was cultured by scientist Alex Van der Eb in the early 1970s at his lab at the University of Leiden, Holland. Since then, the cell line has been cultured and grown in laboratories (you can buy some here). It's primary use is as a protein or a protein vessel -- sort of a natural test tube. It's also pretty common and seems to be available at most laboratory supply companies and used by many R&D facilities. In short, maybe not such a big deal.

So what does all of this mean? Is this "action alert" yet another rant by the right wing to draw attention to itself and delay scientific progress? In my opinion, yes. Children of God for Life has also issued news releases warning parents that childhood vaccines are made with aborted fetus cells. The cells they're talking about have "technically" originated from aborted fetus cells, but it's not like scientists are putting fetus body parts into blenders while laughing. Think of the fetus cells as sort of "ancient ancestors" to the new cells that are readily used today as "building blocks" and receptors in many commonplace scientific experiments in universities, hospitals, and commercial labs.

I would rather see cells being cultivated and grown in labs for use in experiments than the heinous wholesale torture and experimentation on laboratory animals. True, some of the experimentation is frivolous (who gives a rat's ass about finding out if something is sweeter than sugar -- use sugar sparingly and let's call it a day), but evil? I think not. This seems like just another way the religious right wants to set science and progress back to the "good old days" -- when people died from the common cold and the only way you could sweeten your iced tea was with sugar.

http://blogs.miaminewtimes.com/shortorder/2011/03/are_aborted_fetus_cells_helpin.php

From the science side:

Taste Detection Thresholds.
Detection threshold values were determined following the methods of Schiffman et al. (14) and averaged over three trials for four subjects.

T1R Functional Expression.
HEK-293T and a HEK-293 derivative that stably expresses Gα15 (Aurora Biosciences, San Diego; ref. 15) were grown and maintained at 37°C in DMEM supplemented with 10% FBS and MEM nonessential amino acids (GIBCO/BRL); the medium for Gα15 cells also contained 3 μg⋅ml−1 blasticidin (GIBCO/BRL). For calcium-imaging experiments, cells first were seeded onto 24-well tissue-culture plates (≈100,000 cells per well) and transfected by using Mirus TransIt-293 (Panvera, Madison, WI). Transfection efficiencies, which were estimated by cotransfection with a red fluorescent protein expression vector, were typically ≈70%.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC123709/


HEK cell

Human Embryonic Kidney 293 cells, also often referred to as HEK 293, 293 cells, or less precisely as HEK cells are a specific cell line originally derived from human embryonic kidney cells grown in tissue culture. HEK 293 cells are very easy to grow and transfect very readily and have been widely-used in cell biology research for many years. They are also used by the biotechnology industry to produce therapeutic proteins and viruses for gene therapy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HEK_293

Christian anti-abortion group says aborted fetuses are used in food taste-enhancement tests
January 14, 2012 By God Discussion Reporter 2 Comments

Last April, the anti-abortion site, LifeSite News, reported that aborted fetuses are finding their way into the commercial food industry's research.

They were taking issue with Senomyx "isolated taste receptors" program, which a group called "Children of God for Life" claims come from "human embryonic kidney cells taken from an electively aborted baby to produce those receptors." Last spring, Children of God for Life issued an action alert calling for the boycott of Pepsico, Kraft Foods, Campbell Soup, Solae and Nestlé, which the anti-abortion group alleges hire Senomyx for flavor enhancement.

http://www.goddiscussion.com/88742/christian-anti-abortion-group-says-aborted-fetuses-are-used-in-food-taste-enhancement-tests/

They are used in vaccines:
http://www.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca/eng/licensing/bri/mammalian-cell-platform.html

More on the origin of the cells:
HEK 293 cells were generated in the early 70s by transformation of cultures of normal human embryonic kidney cells with sheared adenovirus 5 DNA in Alex Van der Eb's laboratory in Leiden, The Netherlands. The human embryonic kidney cells were obtained from a healthy aborted fetus and originally cultured by Van der Eb himself, and the transformation by adenovirus was performed by Frank Graham who published his findings in the late 1970s after he left Leiden for McMaster University in Canada.[1] They are called HEK for human embryonic kidney, while the number 293 comes from Graham's habit of numbering his experiments; the original HEK 293 cell clone was simply the product of his 293rd experiment.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HEK_293

If you haven't seen anything about this, chances are you will (facebook, email, etc), especially given this being an election year.

There is already a FB group:
http://www.facebook.com/hek293cells

Most articles you will see won't have a lick of information in them. According to one link:

After three letters, Nestlé finally admitted the truth about their relationship with Senomyx, noting the cell line was “well established in scientific research”.

Pepsico wrote: “We hope you are reassured to learn that our collaboration with Senomyx is strictly limited to creating lower-calorie, great-tasting beverages for consumers. This will help us achieve our commitment to reduce added sugar per serving by 25% in key brands in key markets over the next decade and ultimately help people live healthier lives.”


http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/biotech-company-using-cell-lines-from-aborted-babies-in-food-enhancement-te

Most recently (from FB)
New Depression Drug Likely Made With Cells From Abortions | LifeNews.com

The links above should give someone a good start at replying to posts/emails.



9 replies = new reply since forum marked as read
Highlight: NoneDon't highlight anything 5 newestHighlight 5 most recent replies
Examining claims that cells from aborted fetuses are used to make flavor enhancers/vaccines/drugs (Original Post) The Straight Story Jan 2012 OP
So HEK293 is the new Soylent Green? Generic Brad Jan 2012 #1
Well, the way they make it out to be: The Straight Story Jan 2012 #2
well, according to Mountain Dew's defense lawyers, the fetuses would be rendered into a gelatinous MisterP Jan 2012 #5
LOL The Straight Story Jan 2012 #8
Well, if you listen to the fundies' own line of thinking, those aren't fetal cells now. kestrel91316 Jan 2012 #3
tastes like chicken ... zbdent Jan 2012 #4
Wow. If there are fetus cells in Diet Pepsi, I wonder what they put in Mountain Dew? gkhouston Jan 2012 #6
Not a fan of animal OR embryo experimentation. But I also don't believe these bozos. Zalatix Jan 2012 #7
These people are insane proud2BlibKansan Jan 2012 #9

The Straight Story

(48,121 posts)
2. Well, the way they make it out to be:
Sun Jan 15, 2012, 12:48 PM
Jan 2012

They make it look like aborted babies are being shipped off to pepsi/nestle/etc to make better mountain dew. Which is not the case.

There are many interesting discussions to be had on the whole topic, but it is nothing much more than fear mongering.

MisterP

(23,730 posts)
5. well, according to Mountain Dew's defense lawyers, the fetuses would be rendered into a gelatinous
Sun Jan 15, 2012, 04:31 PM
Jan 2012

layer at the bottom

 

kestrel91316

(51,666 posts)
3. Well, if you listen to the fundies' own line of thinking, those aren't fetal cells now.
Sun Jan 15, 2012, 01:33 PM
Jan 2012

They are 50-something-old person cells. And they are still alive, so nobody is being killed.

gkhouston

(21,642 posts)
6. Wow. If there are fetus cells in Diet Pepsi, I wonder what they put in Mountain Dew?
Sun Jan 15, 2012, 04:38 PM
Jan 2012

Apart from mouse solvent.

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