Health and Human Services say that we must review the use of fetal tissue for research purposes

Updated at 3:45 PM ET

The Department of Health and Human Services states that it reviews all medical research involving human fetal tissue.

HHS said this week it would conduct an audit of "all acquisitions involving human fetal tissue" as well as "all research involving fetal tissue to ensure consistency with the laws and regulations governing this research and to ensure relevance procedures in light of the serious regulatory, ethical and ethical considerations involved. "

In addition, HHS announced that it had canceled a $ 15,000 contract for a California-based company called Advanced Bioscience Resources to provide the US Food and Drug Administration with human fetal tissue to develop test protocols. The contract was terminated, HHS said, because the department "was not sufficiently assured that the contract included the appropriate protections for fetal tissue research or met all other requirements for procurement".

Scientists use fetal tissue in medical research because they develop rapidly and are highly versatile and durable.

"This allows us to answer specific questions that the adult fabric can not answer, which is much more specialized"

Carrie Wolinetz, NIH's Deputy Director for Science Policy, told Rob Stein in 2015. "The fetal tissue may contain information – about the structural features or the architecture of the organs – that cells of a dish can not provide alone. our understanding of the disease. "

The fetal tissue used in scientific research often comes from aborted fetuses. In an email to NPR, Alta Charo, professor of law and bioethics at the University of Wisconsin, explains why.

"Miscarriages are not often an available source because they do not occur in a controlled environment and may be due to genetic or other abnormalities that would make cadaveric tissue useless," she says. "Therefore, the tissue usually comes from an aborted fetus."

Despite the small size of the FDA's canceled contract, some observers said the greatest political symbolism was evident.

"My instinct is that this is motivated by politics and is part of the overall effort to stigmatize and ultimately criminalize abortion, as well as as part of a broader campaign to reduce sexual and reproductive rights, "said Charo.

However, David Prentice, vice president and research director of the Charlotte Lozier Institute, a conservative anti-abortion think tank, says the HHS announcement does not go far enough.

"The cancellation of a small contract with the FDA … seems to have the purpose of reassuring some congressmen and groups who have been outraged by the continued funding of fetal tissue research with the FDA." 39, taxpayer money, "writes Prentice in an email to NPR. "But what is needed is a comprehensive reform of the entire HHS." The use of fetal tissue is a research [HHS Secretary Alex] Azar should redirect these funds to modern science and better alternatives, including adult stem cells. "

Science notes that earlier this month, 45 groups opposed to abortion sent a letter to Azar calling the FDA's contract for "shocking" and "unacceptable" fetal tissue. A few days later, 85 members of Congress sent a letter to the FDA commissioner, urging the agency to cancel the contract.

The National Institutes of Health, which is also part of the HHS, spent $ 98 million over the last fiscal year on human fetal tissue research. The NIH has stated that "it is important that it be important for research on human fetal tissue to comply with the laws and regulations governing such research and that it is important to have adequate procedures for surveillance. "

The use of fetal tissue in research has been controversial for some time, Science the magazine reported on Tuesday:

In 2016, Republican members of the House of Representatives, led by Representative Marsha Blackburn (TN), released a report urging the federal government to obtain fetal tissue from miscarriages and stillbirths. funding for research using tissue from aborted fetuses – most recently at the beginning of the month, when terms prohibiting such funding were removed from a SHH spending bill of 2019. "

Ross McKinney, Scientific Director of the Association of American Medical Colleges, explains that fetal tissue has played a key role in the development of major medical breakthroughs such as vaccines against polio, rubella, measles, chicken pox, rheumatoid arthritis, cystic fibrosis and hemophilia.

"The unique features of this tissue are essential to the study of fetal diseases, such as those caused by the Zika virus, and promising to advance biomedical research in other areas, bringing hope to patients with diseases such as multiple sclerosis, "he writes in an email to NPR.

"Fetal tissue continues to be an important resource for biomedical research, and the Association of American Medical Colleges fully supports its availability as one of the scientific methods that could save and improve lives."

At a hubbub in 2015, the then HHS Obama sent a letter to two Republican senators calling for the use of fetal tissue in medical research "an essential component of our attempts to understand, treat and cure a number of American diseases, "noting that American scientists have been working with fetal tissue since the 1930s.

NPR Scientific Correspondent Rob Stein contributed to this report.

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