Ben Carson Defends Medical Research Using Fetal Tissue: ‘You Have To Look At The Intent’

Dr. Ben Carson is reacting to a report that he did medical research in 1992 using the fetal tissue of aborted babies.

According to medical blogger Dr. Jen Gunter, research Carson contributed to was done on human choroid plexus ependyma, and nasal mucosa obtained from two aborted babies.

The report details the research, noting that one baby was aborted at nine weeks and one was aborted at seventeen weeks.

In an interview with the Washington Post, Carson defended his medical research on aborted babies. It was “different,” he said, as long as the destruction of unborn baby was not specifically for the purpose of acquiring their parts for research.

“You have to look at the intent,” Carson told the Post. “To willfully ignore evidence that you have for some ideological reason is wrong. If you’re killing babies and taking the tissue, that’s a very different thing than taking a dead specimen and keeping a record of it.”

Carson said that research using fetal tissue wasn’t immoral and doesn’t need to be banned.

“My primary responsibility in that research was when I operated on people and obtained the tissue. This has everything to do with how it’s acquired,” he said to the Post. “If you’re killing babies and taking the tissue, that’s a very different thing than taking a dead specimen and keeping a record of it.”

But Carson’s medical research was specifically done using tissue from aborted babies, according to the report, a practice he has criticized as he is now running for president.

“There’s nothing that can’t be done without fetal tissue,” Carson said on Fox News when speaking about the Planned Parenthood scandal videos. “[I]t’s been over-promised what the benefits of fetal research would be. And very much under-delivered.”