WIKIMEDIA, DILIFFHouse Republicans on a special panel have renewed calls to defund the health care organization Planned Parenthood, and are now recommending that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) cut funding for some forms of fetal tissue research, Nature reported last week (January 3).
The panel—established in 2015 after videos surfaced of Planned Parenthood officials discussing how fetal tissue is gathered and purchased—recommended that the NIH commission studies to determine whether fetal tissue obtained from stillborn and preterm infants alone could meet the needs of the scientific community and, if so, that the agency phase out funding for tissue obtained from induced abortions.
“Scientific societies and universities have made misleading claims about fetal tissue research,” according to the report. “The Select Panel has received letters from 21 institutions. . . . In reality, not a single responding institution provided substantive evidence for the value of fetal tissue research.”
But experts maintain that fetal tissue obtained from abortions is vital to scientific research. Scientists note that fetal tissue has helped ...
