BETHESDA, Maryland (LifeSiteNews) — The National Institutes of Health (NIH) said on Thursday that it is ending the use of tissue from aborted babies in NIH-supported research, a win for ethical, pro-life health policy.
The NIH stated that advances in biotechnologies, including organoids and tissue chips, have “created robust alternatives that can drive discovery while reducing ethical concerns.” NIH-funded research using aborted babies’ tissue has also declined since 2019, with only 77 such projects in Fiscal Year 2024, the agency noted.
“Under President Trump’s leadership, taxpayer-funded research must reflect the best science of today and the values of the American people,” said NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya.
Former Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services for Public Affairs Charmaine Yoest celebrated the move as a “huge step forward for ethical and most effective scientific research.”
The policy prohibits research using babies’ tissue from “elective abortions” in the NIH Intramural Research Program as well as in NIH-supported extramural research, “including grants, cooperative agreements, other transaction awards, and research and development contracts.”
In 2020, before the end of Trump’s first term, former HHS Secretary Alex Azar established an advisory board to review NIH research proposals involving unborn babies’ tissue. At the time, 11 of the 15 members of the Human Fetal Tissue Research Ethics Advisory Board were known to oppose the use of aborted baby body parts in research. The board was discontinued under President Joe Biden.
The review of aborted babies’ tissue proposals fulfilled a promise the Trump administration made after a 2018 scandal in which a Food & Drug Administration (FDA) notice surfaced detailing a contract to the fetal tissue procurement firm Advanced Bioscience Resources, Inc. (ABR) to acquire “Tissue for Humanized Mice.” Specifically, the experiments entailed implanting human thymus and liver tissue and stem cells from a human liver of an unborn baby into a mouse to give it a more human-like immune system for the purpose of testing drugs.
In April of 2020, more than 130 members of Congress urged Trump to maintain the “current fetal tissue research policy and to redirect funds toward ethical, successful alternatives to combat COVID-19” and thanked the president for his “decisive actions to protect human life and human dignity.”
