The National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced it will no longer fund research involving human fetal tissue from elective abortions. “NIH is pushing American biomedical science into the 21st century,” agency Director Jayanta “Jay” Bhattacharya said in a statement announcing the change. “This decision is about advancing science by investing in breakthrough technologies more capable of modeling human health and disease.”

The new ban is “clearly a political decision” rather than a scientific one, says Lawrence Goldstein, a neuroscientist at the University of California (UC) San Diego and outspoken advocate of the research. The International Society for Stem Cell Research also objected to the new policy, which it calls “highly disruptive,” writing in a statement that human fetal tissue “remains a necessary tool for addressing certain research questions that cannot yet be adequately answered by organoids, tissue chips, and other emerging technologies.”

Source https://www.science.org/content/article/trump-imposes-new-nih-funding-ban-human-fetal-tissue-research

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