Crackpots Keep the Lid on Fetal-Tissue Research : Medicine: Experiments that promise beneficial effects on diseased human organs are stymied by abortion foes.

With the extension of an irrational ban started by the Reagan Administration, the crackpots have won again on forbidding federal money for promising research on Parkinson’s and other serious diseases. The triumph extends an ideological rampage that has dismayed the medical research establishment and caused several distinguished scientists to reject invitations to take senior government posts.

After a deliberation--for which the outcome was never in doubt--the Bush Administration recently announced that it would retain the prohibition against the use of federal funds for research involving the transplantation of fetal tissue from induced abortions. Never mind that early experiments indicate that transplanted fetal tissue has beneficial effects on diseased organs, and may be useful against a variety of dreadful maladies. Or that two panels of specialists appointed by the federal government concluded that the research should proceed.

For abortion foes, who fill the upper ranks of the health bureaucracy in the Bush Administration, there’s the far- fetched fear that hesitant women might be swayed toward abortion by the prospect of helping the sick. Therefore, it’s impermissible, because, as Asst. Secretary of Health James O. Mason, an abortion foe, told the New York Times, the ban was “a matter of heart and mind as well.”

No doubt, but the scientists who studied the controversy for the federal government concluded that safeguards could easily be devised to guard against exploitation of women contemplating abortion. A simple one, for example, would prohibit payment for aborted fetuses. The experimental results obtained so far with fetal tissue--which is fast-growing and resistant to rejection--have actually been mixed. But some have been so favorable that medical researchers believe that further research could lead to effective treatments for several dreadful maladies. Besides Parkinson’s disease, these include Alzheimer’s disease and childhood diabetes. The research may proceed with private funds, and some is in progress. But Washington is the great bankroll and influence in health research, and the Bush Administration’s endorsement of the ban will continue a dampening effect on this line of research.

The ban demonstrates anew the grip of the anti-abortion movement on the Department of Health and Human Services, the giant federal agency for medical service and research, and the ideological straitjacket that the right-to-life gang has made the uniform of the day for federal service.