Exclusive: Federal agents found fetuses in body broker's warehouse (Warning: Graphic images)
Federal agents discovered four preserved fetuses in the Detroit warehouse of a man who sold human body parts, confidential photographs reviewed by Reuters show. The fetuses were found during a December 2013 raid of businessman Arthur Rathburn's warehouse. The fetuses, which appear to have been in their second trimester, were submerged in a liquid that included human brain tissue. Rathburn, a former body broker, is accused of defrauding customers by sending them diseased body parts. He has pleaded not guilty and his trial is set for January.
How Rathburn acquired the fetuses and what he intended to do with them is unclear. Rathburn's lawyers did not respond to requests for comment, and neither the indictment nor other documents made public in his case mention the fetuses.
"This needs to be reviewed," said U.S. Representative Marsha Blackburn, a Republican from Tennessee who recently chaired a special U.S. House committee on the use of fetal tissue. Blackburn recoiled when a Reuters reporter showed her some of the photographs, taken by government officials involved in the raid.
Reuters: The Body Trade
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 28 2017, @07:24PM (12 children)
Federal Agents Found Preserved Babies During 2013 Raid of a Detroit Body Broker's Warehouse,
and someone should hang for murder
Call them what they are!
(Score: 2, Touché) by Freeman on Thursday December 28 2017, @07:35PM (2 children)
It depends on how the babies were acquired. You're automatically jumping to a "routine abortion", when it could have been an abortion due to medical issues, or some other thing, like the mother died. Since Abortion also, isn't against the law in many places, there would be no murder charges. We don't live in a country where we apply laws retroactively, thankfully.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 28 2017, @08:50PM
Yeah let's go with the 0.1% probability answer and stick our heads back in the sand.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Thursday December 28 2017, @10:27PM
But if he doesn't whine and moan about abortion AND birth control, how's he going to whine about poor people having babies and liberals actually trying to implement the policies suggested by the Bible?
(Score: 3, Informative) by takyon on Thursday December 28 2017, @07:52PM (2 children)
Fetuses is more specific.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 28 2017, @08:21PM (1 child)
A fetus need not be homo sapiens. It could be Bos indicus, Bos taurus, Heterocephalus glaber, Giraffa camelopardalis...
The usage of "fetus" is purely to dehumanize the baby. You aren't supposed to feel emotion for the abused children, so their humanity must be swept away.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday December 28 2017, @08:36PM
Could mean an antelope, or pig, or an ape [enchantedlearning.com].
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(Score: 3, Insightful) by LVDOVICVS on Thursday December 28 2017, @07:52PM (1 child)
And you've lept to your conclusions and eliminated the possibility that these were stillborn, or dead fetuses from deceased pregnant women how? Or perhaps they're not from humans at all and have yet to be properly identified?
(Score: 3, Funny) by Sulla on Thursday December 28 2017, @08:06PM
ALIENS
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 5, Informative) by urza9814 on Thursday December 28 2017, @08:08PM (2 children)
And what evidence do you have of that?
The guy is legally selling parts of human corpses that were donated to science/medicine. Seems reasonable that occasionally they might get a corpse that contains a fetus. He can't legally sell those, so...he ought to be destroying them probably, but having one or two still in storage doesn't even seem particularly strange given the circumstances. Definitely sounds like he may be violating some regulations involving proper storage/handling of human remains (assuming such regulations exist...sounds like they're pretty lax), but I see no direct evidence of any other crimes here.
But this is what to expect when you do *anything* on an industrial scale. Companies will cut any corners they can to save money, and if there's little regulation or it isn't sufficiently enforced, they won't stop at just finding loopholes, they're going to break the laws outright. Maybe it doesn't need much regulation -- they're corpses after all, so who really cares how they're treated? But it might screw up your experiments or transplant, so probably it should be regulated from that side at least. And maybe from OSHA to ensure the corpses aren't spreading diseases to the employees...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 28 2017, @09:10PM
re: lax enforcement: the "authorities" don't enforce anything that has to do with actual violation of rights. they're too busy getting in on the action for that.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 28 2017, @09:24PM
...and the fetuses are intact.
If they were the result of a surgical abortion, they'd be in pieces.
What occurred to me first is miscarriage (underdeveloped and stillborn).
N.B. Miscarriage is generally accepted as being the woman's body recognizing that the fetus is not viable and expelling it.
Now, that still leaves the possibility of the woman (by choice or by chance) ingesting a substance that induced a spontaneous abortion.
Outside of the places where the (male) Uterus Nazis have gotten their way, that's still a legal choice.
...and to our very own Uterus Nazis:
"If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament." --Florynce Kennedy
(Often erroneously attributed to Gloria Steinem)
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 29 2017, @04:56AM
Who was murdered?
A fetus isn't a "who", it's a "what".
(Score: 5, Informative) by nobu_the_bard on Thursday December 28 2017, @07:36PM (1 child)
This story is part of a multi-week series Reuters has been doing about the body parts trade. Most of the series is fascinating as an outsider, but I suspect they are hoping to make it into a big social deal or elicit clickbait-like behavior with it. A lot of the articles focus on "shocking" details and blow things out of proportion.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday December 28 2017, @07:53PM
Link added, thanks.
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(Score: 5, Insightful) by NewNic on Thursday December 28 2017, @07:45PM (6 children)
This isn't the type of writing one should expect from a professional reporter. This is aimed at creating an emotional reaction, provoking a biased response.
It's not aimed at news reporting: instead, it is aimed at news creation.
lib·er·tar·i·an·ism ˌlibərˈterēənizəm/ noun: Magical thinking that useful idiots mistake for serious political theory
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday December 28 2017, @07:51PM (4 children)
Appeal to emotion? They already got that covered when they threw the slightly pixellated photographs in there.
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(Score: 2, Touché) by Sulla on Thursday December 28 2017, @08:10PM (3 children)
Wow Takyon just wow, you dare imply that the normal reaction to seeing a CLUMP OF CELLS pickled in a jar of brain juice is to recoil from it?
Soylent should put on a series of diversity classes for the editors
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 3, Funny) by takyon on Thursday December 28 2017, @08:13PM (2 children)
We demand the uncensored photographs!!!
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(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 28 2017, @08:30PM (1 child)
like that weird Japanese porn pixellation - really annoying to see some guy's schlong going in and out of some monster from 8-bit Theatre.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday December 28 2017, @09:19PM
You can blame the Americans of the just-after-WWII era for that little bit of idiocy.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 28 2017, @08:56PM
Hahah, that's funny. We're talking about Reuters the Propaganda Company, not Journalism.
(Score: 1) by JustNiz on Friday December 29 2017, @04:35PM
THis article totally sounds like a sci-fi plotline.