Fetal Tissue Ethics Board Recommends Rejecting Majority of Research Proposals

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) Human Fetal Tissue Research Ethics Advisory Board, which was appointed by Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Alex Azar in February 2020, has recommended that the Secretary withhold funding for most of the applications submitted to NIH to conduct medical research using human fetal tissue. The Trump Administration first announced that it will restrict federal funding for medical research that uses human fetal tissue in June 2019. The new policy prohibits all intramural research, or research conducted within NIH, involving the use of human fetal tissue from elective abortions. Extramural research projects, including research funded by NIH grants at universities, involving aborted fetal tissue are now required to go through an additional review process convened by an ethics advisory board after it has cleared the regular scientific review process. After reviewing 14 research proposals last month, the Ethics Board has recommended in a report sent to the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee and the House Energy and Commerce Committee that the Secretary only fund one of the proposals and withhold funding for the remaining 13. All 14 proposals had already been recommended for funding by scientific reviewers. The reason provided most commonly in the report for recommending against funding a proposal was the argument that sufficient ethical justification for using human fetal tissue was not provided. The only proposal ...
Source: Public Policy Reports - Category: Biology Authors: Source Type: news