Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, President Donald Trump's nominee to run the National Institutes of Health, on Wednesday told senators during his confirmation hearing that he is "absolutely committed" to avoiding using aborted fetal products in research.
"In public health, we need to make sure the products of science are ethically acceptable to everybody," Bhattacharya said. "And so having alternatives that are not ethically conflicted with fetal cell lines is not just an ethical issue, but it's a public health issue."
Trump's administration in 2019 moved to eliminate some federally funded research that relies on fetal tissue from elective abortions, though the Biden administration reversed those in 2021.
Critics argue that modern science has alternatives to replace fetal tissue in the laboratory, such as using tissue from infants who undergo heart surgery or stem cells that grow into organ-like clumps in lab dishes.
But leading scientific groups say there still are conditions where fetal tissue is the best, or even the only, option to get clear answers to some devastating disorders — because those substitutes don't act the same as tissue from the exact developmental stage that needs to be studied.
Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.
Solange Reyner ✉
Solange Reyner is a writer and editor for Newsmax. She has more than 15 years in the journalism industry reporting and covering news, sports and politics.
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