Are dead babies in my cola?

Dear Rev. Know-it-all,  

                        

Is it true that they are making Pepsi Cola out of aborted fetuses? I got an E mail today to that effect. Can you tell me if this is so?

A Worried Reader

Dear Worried,

I have researched this in depth for at least fifteen minutes and you can relax. They are not using aborted fetuses to make soft drinks...sort of. And anyway if there is any involvement of aborted fetuses in the food industry it is probably just one little Dutch baby who was aborted in the 1970s, and what’s one baby? No big deal. Let me explain.

There is a company called Senomyx and it is thought that they use something called HEK 293 to test and develop food additives that enhance flavor. I refer you for more to the article here. All they may or may not be doing is using taste receptors grafted into HEK 293 to test food additives to make food yummier. HEK 293 is a line of stem cells developed from a murdered Dutch baby. HEK stand for Human Embryonic Kidney and Senomyx uses this line of cells derived from an aborted fetus in 70 of its 77 patents, so it’s probably used to test a lot of yummy food additives. 

They aren’t actually putting murdered babies into food or soft drink. They are just using one murdered Dutch baby from the 70s to test things and Holland has a lot of babies. The Muslims in Holland are popping them out like tulips in spring. So I am sure that you will relax knowing that there are most probably no actual babies in your food. It is simply that there are just a lot of little microscopic Frankenstein monsters made from the chopped up parts of a murdered Dutch child, and those little Frankenstein monster are making sure that your soft drinks and other treats are both tasty and safe.  In the 60's we hippies used to joke about better living through chemistry. In the advanced 21^st century we can say , “Better living through grave robbing.....” 

HAVE WE LOST OUR MINDS?????

Apparently we have. We just voted to keep the commercial use of dead babies legal as well as a host of other progressive ideas. Never fear if you believe that one day Human Embryonic Stem cells, murdered babies that is, will bring us wonderful new medicines. The necessary human carcasses for experimentation will continue to pile up. I haven’t heard of any great breakthrough in medicine from dead babies, but at least we have tastier diet drinks and desserts. The wonderful new medicines that have yet to materialize will help us postpone the day of our death and the sure judgment that will follow. I don’t know if there are any trials of medicines currently underway in which the cells of murdered children are actually consumed by people, but certainly if these new wonder drugs ever materialize, I imagine they will be taken either in pill form or by injection, then we will become what we currently aspire to be: cannibals, the eaters of babies. Oh Brave New World that has such people in it!

“Father, how can you talk like this. It’s beyond the bounds of good taste!” 

To which I respond in the words of the great American philosopher, Joan Rivers, “Oh grow up!” The babies were dead anyway, why not eat them? They would just go to waste. We aren’t like zombies who feast on the flesh of the living. We are merely vultures, or perhaps reptiles who are famous for eating their own offspring. Cannibalism and the eating of children are a long and honorable tradition revered in both literature and history. Perhaps you have seen Soylent Green, a movie classic in which the overpopulation problem is solved by processing human carcasses into food. 

Who has not heard of “A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People From Being a Burden on Their Parents or Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Publick” (1729) This is an essay more simply called “A Modest Proposal” In it, Jonathan Swift suggests that the Irish might ease their economic troubles by selling their children as food for the rich. Most people think that Swift was writing satire, but we Americans have taken his sage advice as a good idea, albeit still on a small scale. If, however, it is moral to use dead babies for medicine and product testing, why not use them as chicken feed or dog food. Some of us are more solicitous for the well being of our pets than our children. Just compare the pet aisle in most stores to the baby food aisle. At the rate we are making moral progress in this land of the free and the home of the freebie, I am sure that we will soon see reason and stop wasting all those protein rich babies who now just go into dumpsters and land fills.

From the earliest days human beings have made good use of unwanted children. They were thrown into the fires to feed Moloch a god of the Canaanite, they were employed as slaves and still are in many places. They were sacrificed to insure good harvests to the rain god Tlaloc by Aztec priests who then ritually ate their corpses.  Why all the sentimentality about not eating them? No one wants them.  Though there is very little actual eating of babies as of this current writing, I have every confidence that, with time, that will change. 

Already the killing of children provides a handsome living, and I imagine a fine table at the best restaurants for many doctors, pharmacists and health care workers. We don’t want too many children. A minimum of offspring will give us the economic freedom and the time to drive our gas guzzlers to Starbucks and to the fast food bistros and north shore eateries, saving us the drudgery of having to put gruel on the table for 7 or 8 ungrateful brats. Even brave and progressive nuns like Sr. Margaret McBride of the Sisters of Mercy and Sr. Donna Quinn of the Dominicans, are helping the poor and the sick to be rid of unwanted babies. I imagine that with the progressive insights of such women there will be very little resistance to the take over of Catholic hospitals. Catholics will soon be obliged to pay for the killing of babies and many more people will be able to make their livings and eat well on the proceeds of the baby killing. I suppose in a certain sense this too is the devouring of babies.

So let us be honest and brave and stop referring to abortion and abortion rights and abortion clinics. Let us call it what it is: Baby Eating. Those who participate in it are Baby Eaters. People need to say quite boldly and clearly that by their vote and their tolerance they admit that people have the right to eat to eat their own babies, or the babies of those who throw their children in dumpsters. Baby Eaters. Get used to the term. We are a society that devours its young.

A postscript: It is an irony that Christians were accused of cannibalism by the Romans who also practiced abortion. The Christians spoke of eating the flesh of God born as a baby and this was one more charge heaped on the Christians who forbade abortion from the first days. The Bible says, “Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil goes about like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.” (1Peter5:8) 

He has convinced much of the modern world to join him in the feast. Can you hear him laughing?