Sullivan Won’t Rule on Fetal Tissue Research Ban

Health and Human Services Secretary Louis W. Sullivan has declined to rule on whether to extend the government’s controversial ban on fetal-tissue research, an unexpected action that places responsibility for the decision with a lower official known to favor continuing the ban, health officials said Tuesday.

Federal scientists have been prohibited from using fetal tissue in research for more than a year, since Ronald Reagan Administration officials rejected use of tissue transplanted from aborted fetuses as inappropriate for medical research.

Since the initial ban, the issue--emotionally intertwined with attitudes about abortion itself--has become one of the most politically divisive in modern medicine.

Scientists say fetal-tissue research holds great promise for treating several now-incurable diseases. Because fetal tissue grows so quickly and adapts to new environments much more easily than adult tissue, researchers see potential for it in research on AIDS, Parkinson’s disease and several other areas.

Scientists employed by the National Institutes of Health are now prohibited from using the tissue in their research, one of the few examples in modern times of a political prohibition on scientific research that most experts consider important.

Last year, after intense debate, a special advisory committee to the NIH concluded that “without taking a position on the morality of abortion in general,” using tissue from aborted fetuses was “acceptable” and recommended that it be allowed to resume.

“With the safeguards the NIH panel recommended to us, there was no reason not to permit the tissue to be used in research,” said Robert E. Windom, former assistant secretary for health, who imposed the moratorium in 1988 and established the special panel that recommended lifting it. “We realized nobody was going to get pregnant for the purpose of selling their tissue or giving it away.”

Sullivan’s long-awaited decision was imminent. While many researchers expected him to continue the ban, virtually all assumed he would make the ruling himself.

Responsibility for enforcing the moratorium now rests with James O. Mason, assistant secretary for health. An opponent of abortion, he had recommended to Sullivan that the ban continue, Administration officials have said.

Mason declined to comment Tuesday on the decision, and Sullivan was not available, press spokesmen for the Public Health Service said.

“It’s terribly sad,” said Kenneth Ryan, chairman of the obstetrics and gynecology department at Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, who was on the panel appointed by Windom last year. “If I or some other scientist cries out about it, people say we are just being self-serving. But it is clearly the direction they wanted to go.”

“It appears that the agency has become paralyzed by fear of the abortion issue,” said Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Los Angeles), chairman of the House subcommittee on health and the environment, which has jurisdiction over the Public Health Service. “By doing nothing at all, Dr. Sullivan is trying to offend no one. But he has offended everyone with his hesitancy and lack of dedication.”