Trump nominee pledges to prohibit use of aborted fetal tissue in National Institutes of Health-funded research

President Donald Trump’s nominee for Director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) promised during a March 5 Senate committee hearing that he would prohibit the use of aborted fetal tissue in NIH-funded grants.

Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., asked nominee Jay Bhattacharya during the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions hearing if he backed Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s intention to reinstate a policy from Trump’s first term that severely limited the use of tissue from aborted children in NIH-funded research. 

The 2019 policy did not outright ban the use of aborted fetal tissue, but it did prohibit acquiring any “new” aborted fetal tissue for NIH-funded research, according to the NIH grants website. It also required that grant applicants who wanted to experiment on aborted fetal tissue be subject to an Ethics Advisory Board review. In August 2020, the ethics board recommended rejecting 13 of 14 such research applications. Under the Biden administration, the HHS reversed the requirement for an Ethics Advisory Board review in April 2021. 

In the March 5 hearing, Hawley asked, “Do you support that policy, will you prohibit the use of aborted fetal tissue in NIH-funded research?” 

In his response, Bhattacharya, who is a Christian and a professor at Stanford University’s medical school, said he will “absolutely follow the lead” of both Kennedy and Trump in this area.

He emphasized that there are available ethical alternatives to aborted fetal tissue for research. 

Read More…