The Biden-Harris administration’s Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced it is reversing the Trump administration’s decision to end taxpayer funding for experimental research that uses fetal tissue derived from aborted babies.
The National Institutes of Health (NIH), an agency under the authority of HHS, announced Friday an “Update on Changes to NIH Requirements Regarding Proposed Human Fetal Tissue Research”:
On June 5, 2019, HHS announced that NIH intramural research that requires new acquisition of human fetal tissue from elective abortions will not be conducted. Simultaneously, HHS announced new requirements for documentation and review by an Ethics Advisory Board of extramural research applications for NIH grants, cooperative agreements, and R&D contracts proposing the use of human fetal tissue obtained from elective abortions.
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This notice informs the extramural research community that HHS is reversing its 2019 decision that all research applications for NIH grants and contracts proposing the use of human fetal tissue from elective abortions will be reviewed by an Ethics Advisory Board. Accordingly, HHS/NIH will not convene another NIH Human Fetal Tissue Research Ethics Advisory Board.
The announcement refers to the fact that, in addition to ending internal research with fetal tissue from elective abortions, the Trump administration applied a rigorous ethics review protocol in considering funding for research outside of its department – both of which the Biden-Harris HHS is overturning.
According to the Hill, on Thursday Planned Parenthood ally Xavier Becerra, HHS secretary, indicated during a House Appropriations subcommittee hearing the announcement of the reversal of the Trump administration policy would be forthcoming.
“We believe that we have to do the research that it takes to make sure that we’re incorporating innovation and getting all of those types of treatments and therapies out there to the American people,” Becerra said.
The announcement comes on the heels of a letter this week from abortion industry allies and Democrat lawmakers Reps. Suzan DelBene (WA), Jan Schakowsky (IL), and Mark Pocan (WI), who urged Becerra to “immediately revoke the Trump Administration’s policies restricting fetal tissue use in biomedical research.”
“Fetal tissue is an irreplaceable resource for research that has led to numerous scientific and medical advances and contributed to the development of new therapies for many devastating diseases, including COVID-19,” the pro-abortion members of Congress wrote, adding the Trump administration’s bans on taxpayer-funded research using the body parts of aborted babies “continue to threaten scientific and medical advances.”
“The Trump Administration’s policy was politically motivated and unnecessary,” the lawmakers said, claiming as well that tissue from aborted babies is required to create treatments for “Zika, HIV, and COVID-19,” as well as “Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), spinal cord injury, and Parkinson’s disease.”
As AFP reported, in March 2020, Becerra, the former attorney general of California, organized a coalition of attorneys general from 14 other states to lift the Trump administration’s ban on taxpayer-funded fetal tissue research under the guise tissue from aborted babies would be required to develop vaccines for the coronavirus.
National pro-life researchers and leaders have long warned of the co-dependent relationship between abortion industry leaders such as Planned Parenthood and Democrat politicians.
Dr. Tara Sander Lee, senior fellow and director of life sciences at the pro-life Charlotte Lozier Institute, said in a statement the Biden-Harris administration’s “decision to resume experiments using the body parts of aborted children defies both the best ethics and most promising science.”
Lee asserted the claims of Democrats that tissue from the bodies of aborted babies is essential to develop essential drugs are false:
Exploiting the bodies of these young human beings is unnecessary and grotesque. Fetal tissue was not, and has never been, used for polio or any other vaccine, nor to produce or manufacture any pharmaceutical. There are superior and ethical alternatives available such as adult stem cell models being used by countless scientists worldwide to develop and produce advanced medicines treating patients now, without exploitation of any innocent life. All scientists should reject the administration’s attempts to prey on fears related to the pandemic to advance the practice of harvesting fetal tissue.
Susan B. Anthony List President Marjorie Dannenfelser also said in the statement that Biden and Harris are “working hand-in-glove with radical appointees like Xavier Becerra” and are “moving rapidly to pay back their abortion industry allies and wipe out pro-life progress made under the Trump-Pence administration.” Dannenfelser added:
From day one they have sought to expand abortion on demand, funded by taxpayers, against the will of the strong majority of Americans. Now they would force Americans to be complicit in barbaric experiments using body parts harvested from innocent children killed in abortions, with no limits of any kind.
Last week, legal watchdog organization Judicial Watch provided a nearly 600-page report that included uncovered emails of conversations between Food and Drug Administration (FDA) employees and the California-based biomedical company Advanced Bioscience Resources (ABR). The emails revealed the U.S. government had been buying and trafficking “fresh” aborted baby body parts.
According to the report, the FDA purchased the body parts, which were derived from babies aborted at up to 24-weeks’ gestation, in order to engineer humanized mice and perform experimental drug research.
The Federalist reported on the Judicial Watch revelation:
Emails between FDA officials and ABR employees reveal disturbing conversations as they collaborate to buy and sell aborted fetuses. Records indicate ABR was paid $12,000 upfront per baby, some survivable out of the womb, between the gestational age of 16-24 weeks. Most purchases are for intact thymuses and livers shipped “Fresh; on wet ice.”
With the callousness of picking a cut of meat from a butcher shop, an FDA doctor requests tissue samples be procured from a baby boy, as they claim “It is strongly preferred to have a male fetus if at all possible … [but] undetermined sex or female is better than no tissue.”
In August 2018, a report at CNSNews.com noted FDA signed a contract with ABR a month earlier and paid the company $15,900 for the fetal tissue from abortions, according to a General Services Administration contract.
The report followed several years of congressional investigation into the abortion industry’s alleged complicit relationship with biomedical companies, such as ABR, that purchase the body parts of aborted babies.
The U.S. Department of Justice was supposed to have launched an investigation into Planned Parenthood’s practices with regard to the sale of fetal body parts last December 2017, but further information about the investigation never materialized.
In December 2016, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley wrote in a letter to Obama-era Attorney General Loretta Lynch and former FBI director James Comey, informing them he was referring “the paid fetal tissue practices of the following organizations…to the FBI and the Department of Justice for investigation and potential prosecution.”
ABR was among the organizations named:
- StemExpress, LLC;
- Advanced Bioscience Resources, Inc.
- Novogenix Laboratories, LLC
- Planned Parenthood Mar Monte
- Planned Parenthood Los Angeles
- Planned Parenthood Northern California
- Planned Parenthood of the Pacific Southwest
Grassley said in a statement at the time.:
I don’t take lightly making a criminal referral. But, the seeming disregard for the law by these entities has been fueled by decades of utter failure by the Justice Department to enforce it. And, unless there is a renewed commitment by everyone involved against commercializing the trade in aborted fetal body parts for profit, then the problem is likely to continue.
The Center for Medical Progress (CMP), with project lead David Daleiden, conducted an undercover investigation exposing the alleged illegal practices of Planned Parenthood and its partners in the fetal tissue procurement industry.
“This type of experimental research is a gross violation of human dignity and is not where the majority of Americans want their tax dollars being spent,” said Tom McClusky, president of March for Life Action. “The government has no business creating a marketplace for aborted baby body parts.”
Family Research Council President Tony Perkins also said:
As expected, HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra, a fanatical advocate for abortion, announced the Biden administration will now force American taxpayers to pay for barbaric experiments using the body parts of aborted babies. Instead of using ethical and effective alternatives, Biden is choosing to reinstate a policy that traffics in the grizzly remains of what would have been our next generation.
“The fact is that the remains of aborted babies have not been used to create the cure of a single disease,” Perkins added. “It’s clear that the NIH under President Biden means to do the opposite of ‘follow the science.’”
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