The US anti-abortion lobby is coming after scientists involved in fetal tissue research. The offensive is putting the safety of investigators at risk and has already shut down studies that use fetal tissue derived from abortions. Research projects aimed at treating infectious and neurodegenerative diseases have been jeopardized or terminated, plans for clinical trials have been derailed, and scientists are losing access to a 'gold standard' cell source that in many cases is irreplaceable by other cell types. If more is not done to defend this vital area of biomedical science, a minority group of anti-abortion extremists may well succeed in extinguishing it in the United States.

Species differences between human and animal cells, and developmental differences between fetal and postnatal cells, mean that human fetal cells are often superior to other cell types in such research areas as vaccines, maternal and infant health, human development, and cell transplantation approaches for tissue regeneration. Research with fetal cells has led to vaccines that have saved millions of lives, and has a long history in the United States. As bioethicist Alta Charo told the US House Select Investigative Panel on Infant Lives, chaired by Representative Marsha Blackburn, at its first hearing on March 2, “Fetal tissue has been used in research in this country since the 1920s, and NIH-funded since the 1950s. It has been deemed ethical by federal review bodies going back a half a century and has been specifically authorized for funding by Congress for a quarter-century [...].”

Controversy around this research first emerged during the 1980s when the Reagan administration sided with anti-abortion forces in banning federal funding for fetal tissue transplantation, which was being explored to treat diabetes and Parkinson's disease. The ban was lifted in 1993. Last July, fetal tissue research was again thrust into the media spotlight when an anti-abortion group, the Center for Medical Progress (CMP) in Irvine, CA, began releasing videos purportedly showing that Planned Parenthood illegally profits from the sale of fetal tissue. The following month, a corporate intelligence firm determined that some of the videos had been deceptively edited. Investigations sparked by the videos in 12 states have concluded that the allegations against Planned Parenthood are baseless.

This inconvenient truth has done little to quell the furor unleashed by the videos, which has spread beyond efforts to restrict abortion and defund Planned Parenthood into the arena of biomedical science. An increasing number of US states have passed or are considering legislation to prohibit fetal tissue donation or research. In the House, the Republican-led Blackburn panel, created in response to the videos to “get the facts about medical practices of abortion service providers and the business practices of the procurement organizations who sell baby body parts,” is targeting not only abortion providers and tissue-supply companies but also those who use fetal tissue to advance medicine (News Analysis, p. 447). Once again, this research has become ensnared in what Charo has called the “proxy wars” of anti-abortion activists.

The Blackburn panel has sent broad and burdensome requests for documents to more than 40 individuals and groups, including universities and biotechs, and is aggressively enforcing the requests through subpoena power. Blackburn's insistence that the groups reveal the names of healthcare and research personnel is particularly troubling as a leak of this information could put the individuals in harm's way. The partisan, inflammatory tenor of the investigation, which Blackburn framed by invoking Nazi experiments, forced abortion and organ donation, and the Tuskegee syphilis study, has given anyone who works with fetal cells reason to feel less safe.

The threat is real. The National Abortion Federation reports 7,214 acts of violence against abortion providers from 1977 to 2015. Their statistics show that release of the CMP videos was followed by a “a dramatic escalation in hate speech, threats, and violence,” including the murder of three people at a Colorado Planned Parenthood clinic last November.

Several courageous scientists have spoken publicly about the value of fetal tissue research at hearings or in the media, and last year 41 scientists published an open letter to Congress on the issue in the Washington Post. The Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) has criticized proposed legislation to restrict fetal tissue research in a statement signed by more than 60 universities, professional societies, and healthcare groups. The AAMC, together with the Association of American Universities and the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities, have expressed concerns to the Blackburn panel. The International Society for Stem Cell Research has condemned the attacks on fetal tissue research and endorsed this work as “essential” to medicine.

Overall, though, pushback by the biomedical community has been muted and ineffectual. In the climate of intimidation fostered by the Blackburn panel, many scientists are understandably too scared to speak out on a subject that has become radioactive. The National Institutes of Health, in particular, has been conspicuously quiet. But the reticence of scientists in talking about fetal tissue research goes back many decades, at least to the 1980s debates around transplantation. A longstanding failure to explain why this work is necessary has helped bring us to the present juncture where the very existence of fetal tissue research is under challenge.

For all these reasons, leaders from across the biomedical community—in academia, medical centers, professional societies, government agencies, and industry—must come forward and state loudly and clearly the importance of fetal tissue research, which is being used to produce vaccines, to understand human organ development, to study fetal congenital and infectious diseases, to generate mouse models of disease, and to search for therapies in such areas as Parkinson's, multiple sclerosis, Huntington's, Alzheimer's, heart disease, stroke, organ failure, spinal cord injuries, and macular degeneration. And they should do this by talking openly and frequently with journalists and in public forums so that their arguments can be widely communicated and understood.

It is time to stand up to the smears on science and inform the public of what is at stake.