Nominee Backs Ban on Fetal Tissue Research

Apparently reversing her stance, the nominee to lead the National Institutes of Health on Thursday backed a controversial ban on federal funding for research using tissue from aborted fetuses.

At her Senate confirmation hearing, Dr. Bernadine Healy said she was prepared to support the indefinite moratorium on fetal tissue research even though she twice voted in favor of government financing for such experiments when she was a member of NIH advisory panels.

“I firmly believe that much of the success of science in this country is that it has largely been nonpolitical and nonpartisan. It has been allowed to thrive by the objective pursuit of truth. That must continue,” Healy said.

But she added that when moral and ethical concerns of society appear to collide with the pursuit of science a “time-out” is sometimes needed, citing the fetal tissue research issue as an example.

Health and Human Services Secretary Louis W. Sullivan overruled the recommendation of NIH advisers in 1989 and extended the funding ban imposed on fetal tissue research by the Ronald Reagan Administration.