Oh-So-Sudden Change of View : National Institutes of Health nominee caves on fetal-tissue issue

After a long wait, expectations were high for President Bush’s nominee to direct the prestigious National Institutes of Health. But Dr. Bernadine Healy made a disappointing first impression in her appearance last week before the Senate Labor and Human Relations Committee.

The committee and the full Senate are expected to confirm her nomination. But we hope the Senate rejects it--unless she returns to the unequivocal fetal-tissue position she held before she was nominated.

Dr. Healy, 46, is certainly qualified. She has a dynamite resume. She got her MD from Harvard, taught at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and chairs the Cleveland Clinic Foundation’s Research Institute. Healy also sat on federal research and policy groups; one was an NIH panel that in 1988 recommended ending a Reagan Administration ban on research with human fetal tissue from abortions.

Dr. Healy has admirable goals for the NIH. If confirmed, she will be the first female director of that agency. She hopes to direct research toward areas of scientific neglect such as women’s health.

The NIH certainly needs a director. The agency funds the lion’s share of biomedical research conducted in the United States, but the director’s post has been vacant since July, 1989. The Administration bungled the appointment; some candidates were angered by questions about their views on abortion. The White House insists it has dropped this so-called litmus test. Perhaps.

Or perhaps Healy’s nomination prompted some second thoughts on fetal tissue research.

Surgical grafts with human fetal tissue have shown great promise in treating Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease and a host of other problems. But as the issue of abortion has become more divisive, the federal government cut off funds for fetal research.

In her testimony last week, Dr. Healy reversed her previous stance and endorsed the current moratorium on fetal tissue research. Ironically, Healy said, she believes “much of the success of science in this country is that it has largely been nonpolitical and nonpartisan.” But, citing fetal tissue research, she said when moral and ethical concerns of society may collide with pursuit of science, a “time out” is sometimes needed.

We don’t agree. The NIH, the nation’s researchers and all Americans would be poorly served by a director who appears politically malleable.