Health Agency Chief Will Abide by Ban on Fetal Tissue Research
The new director of the National Institutes of Health said Thursday that while she continues to believe that it is acceptable to use fetal tissue for biomedical research, she will abide by the ban on federal funding for such work “without hesitation.”
Dr. Bernadine P. Healy, in her first press conference since taking over the NIH post, said she has been very disturbed by “misinformation” about the ban, which she said has led patients with certain diseases, such as diabetes and Parkinson’s, to feel they have been robbed “of any hope of cure.”
In 1988, Healy--when she was still director of the research institute of the Cleveland Clinic Foundation--served as a member of an outside federal advisory panel studying the ban. She supported the majority opinion of the committee, which said it was “morally acceptable” to use fetal tissue for research and recommended that the ban be lifted.
The ban, established by the Ronald Reagan Administration and continued by the Bush Administration, is “razor sharp” and prohibits only the use of tissue from induced abortions for transplantation into humans, she said.
The ban does not apply to use of such tissue from miscarriages or from a pregnancy that could not continue without endangering the mother’s life, she said.
Moreover, she added, the narrowness of the ban still allows the use of all fetal tissue for other kinds of NIH-funded research, such as developing new cell lines--where cells are kept alive and perpetuated in the laboratory. Such lines are very important in many areas of science, such as research to develop new vaccines and diagnostic tests.
“It is very important for the patients who are suffering from these horrible illnesses not to feel they have been abandoned,” she said.
In addressing other issues, Healy acknowledged that her agency was laboring under tight budget constraints that were affecting NIH’s ability to fund worthy scientific research. One of the agency’s major functions is to evaluate and support scientific research that is conducted by investigators in academic settings and other institutions outside NIH.
But the opportunities to support valuable scientific projects currently “outstrip the federal resources available to fund them,” she said.
She said she has established a new procedure that will award $30 million--almost half from the NIH director’s discretionary fund--to research that is deemed worthy.
