Stand by Key Official Signals Extension of Ban on Funds for Fetal Tissue Research
A high-ranking federal health official said Wednesday that he will push for an indefinite extension of a 19-month ban on the use of federal funds for fetal tissue research because government support could be interpreted as an endorsement of abortions.
Assistant Secretary of Health James O. Mason said he would refer his recommendation to the National Institutes of Health within 10 days, after consultation with Health and Human Services Secretary Louis W. Sullivan.
Barring the unlikely disapproval by Sullivan, who is expected to concur with Mason’s decision, the action will prevent federally funded scientists from participating in most fetal tissue research for the foreseeable future.
Mason’s announcement was a victory for anti-abortion activists, who view funding of fetal tissue research as tantamount to a federal endorsement of abortion. But it was a setback for researchers, who believe that the experiments could lead to breakthroughs in treatment of such ailments as juvenile-onset diabetes, leukemia and Parkinson’s disease.
“It’s a matter to me not just of the heart but of the mind as well,” said Mason, an abortion opponent. “This is a moral issue. I’m concerned that in the United States government sponsoring fetal tissue transplantation research . . . there will be the clear perception on the part of many that their government is encouraging or promoting abortion.”
Mason rejected the findings of a federally appointed panel, which advised more than a year ago that research involving human fetal tissue obtained from legal abortions is acceptable and urged the government to support such experiments.
Mason’s decision does not rule out all fetal tissue research. Privately funded research into fetal tissue obtained from elective abortions could continue without federal support. And federal funds can still be used to finance research into tissue from stillbirths and spontaneous, or non-induced abortions.
The decision on fetal tissue research appears consistent with President Bush’s recent vetoes of bills that would have funded abortions for rape and incest victims. Bush has opposed any federal funding of abortions except to protect the life of the mother.
Mason said that the primary rationale for extending the ban is the fear that sanctioning and funding fetal tissue research would signify government support for abortion generally.
“Should (fetal tissue research) be useful in treating diabetes or Parkinson’s disease or any other condition, that success would create a demand for aborted fetuses and we’d have more abortions,” Mason told a group of reporters.
“For anyone who believes that a fetus has some rights, then I just find that this is unacceptable public policy,” he said. “You would create a situation where you’re trading off the important lives of people who are suffering from diabetes, Parkinson’s or other disease for this unborn baby with his or her rights as well.”
The funding ban was imposed by Mason’s predecessor at HHS, Robert E. Windom, in March, 1988, after James Wyngaarden, then director of the National Institutes of Health, proposed federal support of the new and potentially promising area of tissue research.
Windom, who has since left the government, said at the time that federal funding should not be approved until a panel of scientists appointed by the National Institutes of Health had reviewed the competing ethical and medical issues involved.
The funding ban was extended by then President Ronald Reagan in September, 1988, even as the scientists’ panel was preparing its report.
The panel, while acknowledging that fetal tissue research involved “deep moral issues,” declined to take a position on the “morality of abortion in general or the various and diverse circumstances under which it occurs.”
Accordingly, it concluded that the funding ban should be lifted, provided steps were taken to avoid encouraging pregnant women to have abortions expressly for the purpose of donating fetal tissue. Donors were to have been prohibited from receiving any financial encouragement to have abortions for that purpose.
By the time the panel made its formal recommendation, however, Bush was President-elect and it was decided that the funding ban should remain in effect until the new Administration could consider the question.
