unwelcome inquiries

By Diogenes ( articles ) | Dec 19, 2006

Christ, from heav'n descending low,
Comes on earth a stranger;
Ox and ass their owner know,
Becradled in the manger,
Becradled in the manger.

This did Herod sore affray,
And grievously bewilder,
So he gave the word to slay,
And slew the little childer,
And slew the little childer.
--15th century Latin hymn, trans. G.R. Woodward

When people in white lab coats insist that Christian morality must be trangressed for the sake of scientific progress, they can have only the noblest motives, right? British journalist Matthew Hill reports on the altruism business in the Ukraine. You'll want to send this article to your "personally-opposed, but" friends. They'll thank you for the invitation to dialogue.

It was a grim scene. As I waited for hours at Maternity Hospital Number Six, heavily pregnant women in maternity smocks wandered past me in its dark corridors, along with the occasional elderly midwife.

Paint was peeling off the walls and there was a strong smell of antiseptic. Eventually, I was granted five minutes with the chief doctor, Larysa Nazarenko.

She was visibly uncomfortable as I set up my camera -- her eyelids blinking rapidly as she stood behind her desk. "The children are not lost," she told me. "They are not stolen - that's just somebody else's illusion."

Who, she asked, had put these ideas in this young mother's head?

"It's about money," I said, "about stem cells. About Westerners paying a lot of money for stem cells from babies. And claims that cells from their brains are taken for treatment by various organisations."

"There is no such therapy," she said. "No work in this hospital is connected with the use of cells. This is the wrong address. I deny everything." Then I was ordered to leave.

Don't skip the opening paragraphs in Hill's piece. Herodian.