WASHINGTON — A special House committee
empaneled to investigate fetal tissue research is preparing to issue 17
subpoenas to medical supply companies and laboratories, seeking the names of
researchers, graduate students, laboratory technicians and administrative
personnel — and prompting charges of intimidation.
Abortion rights advocates and some
university officials say the House investigation into how some of the nation’s
most prestigious universities acquire fetal tissue threatens to endanger the
lives of scientists, doctors and their staff members. The new subpoenas will
only escalate a battle that some researchers fear could shut down studies
seeking cures for Parkinson’s disease, the Zika virus and
other illnesses.
Representative Marsha Blackburn, Republican of
Tennessee, who opposes most fetal tissue research because of its association
with abortion, intends to issue the subpoenas on behalf of the Republicans on
the House Select Investigative Panel on Infant Lives. The panel was created to
investigate fetal tissue research after the release ofsurreptitiously recorded
videos purporting to show Planned Parenthoodofficials trying to profit
illegally from the sale of such tissue.
Twenty states have cleared Planned Parenthood or decided not to
investigate; few affiliates nationwide were engaged in fetal tissue transfers.
The videographers were indicted in Texas. On Thursday, a federal suit by Planned
Parenthood and its California affiliates alleging fraud, illegal recording,
trespassing and invasion of privacy was broadened, joined by affiliates in
Colorado, Texas and Louisiana that were implicated in the videos.
But the House investigation spurred by the
videos continues.
“We are going to review the business practices
of these procurement organizations and do some investigating of how they have
constructed a for-profit business model from selling baby body parts,” Ms.
Blackburn said in an interview.
Federal law forbids profiting from the sale of
human organs or tissue.
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Many of
the universities and organizations blacked out names and other identifying
information before submitting hundreds of pages of research documents in
response to the committee’s earlier requests for information. “U.C.S.D. has
redacted individually identifying information from the enclosed documents,” the
University of California, San Diego, stated in its cover letter, citing secuity
concerns.
But those redactions frustrated committee
investigators and prompted the subpoenas.
Democrats on the House panel called the effort
blatant intimidation. “It’s one step further than McCarthyism, because McCarthy
just threatened people’s jobs,” said Representative Jerrold Nadler, Democrat of
New York. “They’re threatening people’s lives.”
NARAL, the abortion rights lobby, went
further.
“If heaven forbid an act of violence does
occur as a result of this list being compiled, the chair of this committee and
her G.O.P. colleagues will be complicit in that violence,” the group’s
president, Ilyse Hogue, said in a statement Thursday.
House Republicans have tried and failed to cut off all federal fundingfor
Planned Parenthood, but their investigation is having an impact. Some medical
studies have been delayed or canceled because researchers can no longer acquire
fetal tissue samples from their usual suppliers, who have grown concerned about
the investigation, researchers said.
Larry Goldstein, scientific director of the
Sanford Consortium for Regenerative Medicine in La Jolla, Calif., told the
committee at its first hearing on March 2 that a project to cure multiple sclerosis had been halted
because it had “basically seen supply of fetal material dry up completely.”
Colorado State University suspended its
acquisition of fetal tissue from “vendors implicated in the
Planned Parenthood investigation pending the outcome of the congressional
inquiry,” the university said in a letter to Congress in July.
Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, a
teaching hospital for Harvard Medical School, no longer accepts applications
from researchers seeking fetal tissue from abortions performed there. Hospital
officials took a week to explain the halt, which they eventually said was
unrelated to the House investigation. But, citing past violence, Brigham and
Women’s officials asked when The New York Times would publish this article so
they could put additional security in place.
Democrats charge that the Planned Parenthood
investigation is part of a broader pattern. Late last year, climate scientists accusedRepresentative
Lamar Smith of Texas, chairman of the House Science, Space and Technology
Committee, of “bullying tactics” after he issued a subpoena for internal
deliberations on climate
change at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Ms. Blackburn said intimidation was not
intended.
“We all are concerned for individual safety,”
Ms. Blackburn said. “It’s important to note that we have to have the names of
some of the individuals who are carrying out these practices in order to
investigate the practice.”
Tissue and organ harvesting can seem a
gruesome business to laymen, and some of the documents and emails unearthed by
the committee paint a chilling portrait of its humdrum nature.
In an email exchange between a researcher and
an abortion clinic technician, the researcher placed an order for a fetus with
an intact skull. The technician replied that an abortion then underway could
suffice.
“The calvarium is mostly intact, with a tear
up the back suture line, but all pieces look to be there,” the technician wrote
in an email dated Jan. 22, 2015. “The limbs, one upper and one lower, are
totally intact, with one upper broken at the humerus, and one lower broken
right above the knee. Please let me know if these are acceptable. I have set
them aside and will await your reply.”
“That sounds great,” the researcher replied.
Committee investigators say they have
uncovered evidence of possible illegal profiteering, questionable consent forms
and inappropriate collusion between scientists seeking fetal tissue and
abortion providers.
Medical school officials described the investigation
as a “witch hunt” that could halt research on a host of illnesses.
“We’ve been trying to educate policy makers
about why this research is needed and why it can’t be replicated in other
ways,” said David Moore, senior director of government relations at the
Association of American Medical Colleges, which sent a letter citing “grave
concerns” about laws restricting fetal tissue research, signed by more than 50 medical schoolsand societies.
The American Academy of Pediatrics sent a
letter to Ms. Blackburn noting that vaccines for chickenpox, hepatitis A, polio, rabies andrubella are all grown in cells derived
from fetal tissue.
Research involving early human tissue is
generally divided between embryonic cells, which develop in the first month of
gestation, and fetal tissue, which develops later. Fetal tissue can be acquired
frommiscarriages, ectopic pregnancies and
abortions. The House committee has so far avoided discussion of embryonic
cells, which are largely acquired from embryos discarded as a result of in
vitro fertilization. Republicans have argued that research involving tissue
from aborted fetuses is unnecessary and unethical.
In the March 2 hearing, Ms. Blackburn cited
Nazi medical experiments, the killing of Chinese prisoners for organs and the Tuskegee syphilis
experiment as presenting similar ethical issues.
Republicans have proposed several bills to ban
or severely restrict fetal tissue research.
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