Human waste

248 human embryos in four 50-liter barrels were discovered in a forest near Yekaterinburg. The fetuses were treated with formaldehyde, and tags were attached to them indicating their names and numbers—possibly the numbers of the wards in which the women were lying; the tags retained the names of at least four medical institutions. It is assumed that the embryos will be disposed of after a pathological examination at the Nevyansk morgue.

The police are investigating the causes of the incident, and employees of the regional Ministry of Health have been involved. The commission may also include experts from Rospotrebnadzor, which controls the disposal of hazardous waste. Medical institutions in Yekaterinburg with gynecological and maternity departments were required to provide reports on waste disposal over the past few years. The main version is considered to be the dishonesty of the contractor responsible for disposal.

PublicPost has been knowledgeable about human material disposal.

According to SanPiN standards, pathological waste and organic operational waste (organs and tissues) belong to the group of infected and potentially infected waste “class B”. “This type of waste goes for incineration,” Waste Management specialist Elena Usacheva explained to PublicPost. “We ourselves, like organizations like us, provide only collection services (pathological material is packaged in yellow plastic bags) and transportation of such waste. Crematoria are directly involved in disposal , where we transport containers." The Yekaterinburg crematorium confirmed the availability of the service for “thermal neutralization of biological material” and assured that everything is strictly documented.

“Medical institutions do not dispose of abortion materials themselves, but resort to the services of intermediaries,” PublicPost was told at one of the medical centers in Yekaterinburg, specializing in early pregnancy termination. “For disposal, you need a license, which is available from contractors.”

A number of media outlets have suggested that the embryos in the Yekaterinburg forest could be residual material from some scientific experiments.

“Embryonic material is a source for various biological products due to the large number of biologically active substances,” Yuri Shmukler, head of the laboratory of embryophysiology at the Institute of Developmental Biology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, told PublicPost. “But, of course, embryos are primarily of interest as a material for isolating stem cells.”

However, in therapeutic practice and scientific research, it is much more common not to use embryonic stem cells, but so-called mesenchymal stem cells, which are obtained from the bone marrow of an adult donor. “Of course, embryonic stem cells are attractive because any type of tissue can be grown from them,” says Anchor-bio biotechnologist Boris Klimovich, “but mesenchymal stem cells are still much more promising, on the one hand, from ethical considerations, on the other hand, from safety reasons. Stem cells are needed for treatment, and it is safer to take the cells of a sick person and force them to differentiate in the desired direction, then the risk of tissue rejection is automatically avoided, rather than implanting foreign genetic material, which is also very active, which, for example, can into a tumor. mutate". According to the specialist, unlike cloning, on which there has been a moratorium in Russia since 2005, experiments with embryos are not yet regulated by Russian legislation: “Only now a law is being developed that will somehow regulate experiments with embryos obtained from abortive material and by in vitro fertilization (artificial fertilization of an egg with a sperm in a test tube - PublicPost)."

“The scientific uses of embryos are extremely wide,” a histology specialist who asked not to be named told PublicPost. “You can study the processes of development of the body, you can use it to collect various substances, you can obtain a cell culture and use it to test pharmaceuticals, or, on the contrary, , viruses. You won’t experiment on people? But all this if the material is fresh, if, as stated, the embryos were in formaldehyde or some kind of fixing material, and it itself is expensive (it’s cheaper to burn it than to pour it in) , it can be assumed that they were going to smuggle it abroad and sell it there for the production of histological preparations for teaching students: a whole fruit in a jar, cut into sections, divided into organs. Cartilage in a fixed state can also be used for transplantation, although freshly prepared material is preferable. ". The histologist also did not rule out late-term criminal abortion: “They could have secretly terminated the pregnancy, describing that there was a miscarriage, but why then hang up the tags?”