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Amy Goldstein
Reporter covering health policy and other social policy issues
The Trump administration has launched a review of all federally funded research that uses fetal tissue and has canceled a contract for this type of material, beginning a decades-old controversy that ended the war ideological versus abortion.
The federal health authorities on Monday sent a letter ending a contract with a non-profit group based in California and targeted by social conservatives in Congress and a coalition of anti-abortion and denominational groups. In July, the Food and Drug Administration agreed to donate nearly $ 16,000 to the organization Advanced Bioscience Resources for fetal tissue to be implanted in mice for research on immune responses to drugs.
The relatively small contract cancellation was followed hours later by an announcement from the Department of Health and Human Services with far broader implications. The department said it had begun auditing "all acquisitions involving human fetal tissue" to make sure they were complying with laws and regulations. Monday night's statement also indicated that HHS had initiated "a full review" of all fetal tissue research "in light of the serious regulatory, ethical and ethical considerations involved".
The prospect that the administration could restrict – or eliminate – government support for research on fetal tissue immediately alarmed biomedical scientists, who say such tissue is essential for testing new vaccines, exploring treatments for the disease Parkinson's disease and understand the transmission of HIV.
Both proponents of this research and its opponents suspected that the unprecedented revision of HHS was largely conceived as a bold symbolic move to appease the administration's conservative allies or to abolish federal funding of fetal tissue. 1930s
An HHS spokesman declined Tuesday to say how many government contracts or research projects the department plans to review, how long the investigation is scheduled for or whether the perceived default of the contract canceled, which did not been identified, is current. A funding list from the National Institutes of Health shows that last year, $ 98 million was spent on fetal tissue research, mostly in grants to dozens of university researchers.
Asked if these grants were part of the review, spokeswoman Caitlin Oakley said, "We are not commenting on ongoing reviews and audits.
HHS is taking action in coordination with House Republicans, the latest in a series of measures taken by the ministry since President Trump came to power, in keeping with the long-standing agenda of social conservatives.
Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.), Speaker of the House of Representatives [HHS Secretary Alex] Azar "to solve the immediate problem" involving the ABR contract, according to a Ryan spokesman, AshLee Strong, who said that he "will continue to work with HHS to ensure that this problem is resolved at l & # 39; future. "
House Republicans have attempted, for the second year in a row, to include a ban on fetal tissue research in legislation funding the HHS, but it's not in the final version that the Senate voted.
Last week, 85 Republicans signed a letter to FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb, stating that they were "deeply concerned" by the ABR contract. The letter stated that the non-profit group had participated in two congressional investigations over the past two years on fetal tissue and that House investigators had "discovered that ABR had violated" federal and state laws. state prohibiting the purchase and sale. human fetal tissue.
The non-profit group did not respond to requests for comment.
The decision to review contracts and research on fetal tissue comes several months after the HHS, in another decision of the Social Conservatives, created an office, the Conscience and Religious Liberty Division, to handle complaints from health workers reluctant to participate in abortion, assisted death or any other medical procedure, they say, violates their religious or moral beliefs.
Last year, the department rewrote the rules of the Affordable Care Act to allow employers or insurers to invoke religious or moral beliefs to prevent the law from requiring oral contraceptives and other contraceptives to be part of the law. free preventive care. And in May, the administration proposed to prevent clinics from receiving federal family planning funds if they performed abortions or referred patients to facilities that do so.
Two weeks ago, leaders of nearly four dozen anti-abortion and denominational groups, including Susan B. Anthony List and the Family Research Council, sent a letter to Azar complaining about the ABR contract. potentially illegal "and calling on the government to" find ethical alternatives as soon as possible ".
HHS said in its announcement that it will "ensure that efforts to develop such alternatives" to the use of fetal tissue for research are "funded and accelerated".
The debate on the ethic of fetal tissue utilization in research has intensified after the Supreme Court legalized abortion in 1973 and as abortion opponents have long urged the government to ban such research. In the late 1980s, after examining the issue of fetal tissue transplant research, a federal advisory group concluded that it was acceptable, but a moratorium was imposed until it was lifted in 1993 by the president. Bill Clinton. The question has grown since then.
Critics of fetal tissue research have argued that more modern alternatives – such as the use of adult cell lines, "laboratory-grown organoids" or computer models – can be used instead. But many scientists argue that this is not true for all branches of research and that it is difficult to replicate the flexibility and adaptability of fetal tissue.
When the House was considering banning such research, more than five dozen medical and research organizations protested. Groups, including the American Pediatric Society, the International Society for Stem Cell Research, and academic institutions such as Yale and New York Universities, have written to congressional officials that these research trials are ongoing with fetal tissue cells as a treatment for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and spinal cord injury.
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