Scientists can do better than test with tissue from aborted babies: Trump NIH nominee

Testing on the tissue of and cell lines from aborted babies might once again become a thing of the past, if Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, President Donald Trump’s nominee to head the National Institutes of Health, has his way.

During his testimony before the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee last week, Bhattacharya, a physician and professor of medicine at Stanford University, claimed to be “absolutely committed” to finding alternatives to fetal cell lines and tissue in research and development.

Father Tad Pacholczyk … claimed no president in history has done as much ‘to restrict the use of fetal cells derived from direct abortions in research.’

“In public health, we need to make sure the products of the science are ethically acceptable to everybody,” Bhattacharya said in response to a question from Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri. “And so having alternatives that are not ethically conflicted to a fetal stem cell lines is not just an ethical issue, but it’s a public health issue.”

Bhattacharya explained that the issue came to the forefront several years ago with the COVID shots. Many Americans, especially observant Catholics, refused to take the shots because they were developed from stem cell lines of aborted babies.

“During the pandemic, I would often be on Catholic radio and people had asked me whether the mRNA vaccines were made or developed with aborted — with fetal stem cells,” Bhattacharya continued. “I had to say yes. … A lot of the folks who were calling in had ethical objections.”

Cell lines are cells that have replicated from cells taken from aborted babies. Though the Catholic Church considers abortion to be a grave mortal sin, U.S. bishops and the Vatican claimed at the time that taking the COVID shots could be morally justified if no other research and development means were available.

Trump has a history of severely restricting the use of aborted fetal tissue for scientific research. The Catholic News Agency said he “effectively banned” all federally funded research conducted on aborted fetal tissue during his first term, an act that President Joe Biden, a Catholic, quickly reversed. Trump also established the NIH Fetal Tissue Research Ethics Advisory Board in 2020.

Father Tad Pacholczyk — a Catholic priest, neuroscientist, and senior ethicist at the National Catholic Bioethics Center who was appointed to the board — claimed no president in history has done as much “to restrict the use of fetal cells derived from direct abortions in research.”

“These important efforts to eliminate their use in research need to continue, and it is my hope that the returning administration will strengthen these efforts,” Fr. Pacholczyk added.

Sen. Hawley appears to ready to hold the Trump administration accountable for restoring ethical research practices at the NIH and the Department of Health and Human Services once again. During the confirmation hearing of HHS Sec. Robert Kennedy Jr., Hawley demanded a similar pledge to end research on aborted fetal tissue, he recalled during Bhattacharya’s hearing.

“I asked now-Secretary Kennedy directly if he would reinstate President Trump’s policy that prohibits aborted fetal tissue research in NIH-funded grants,” Hawley told Bhattacharya. “He said that he would.”

Hawley claimed the issue is a matter of “moral principle” as well as public health and indicated that continuing unethical research practices will reinforce the concerns of many Americans who are already distrustful of federal scientific agencies, especially after the tyrannical response to COVID.

“We think about millions and millions of Americans who are understandably very concerned about the components, if you will, of many of these palliatives and vaccines, and we want them to be able to access this on the same basis as others,” Hawley said.

Bhattacharya’s nomination has already cleared the HELP committee and is now headed for the Senate floor for a full vote. Since Republican senators enjoy a 53-seat majority, he is expected to be confirmed.

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