Updated Expose: Medical Research & Fetal Tissue

An assessment published in 1995 in The Journal of the American Medical Association concluded that fetuses obtained from miscarriages and ectopic pregnancies were a “quite limited” source for fetal tissue, while another study published in Clinical Orthopaedics and Related Research in 2001, the authors noted that out of 37 donated fetuses they used for their research, 33 had come from elective abortions. According to other journal articles, very little tissue comes from fetuses dying natural deaths.

. . . Jennifer Boulanger of the Allentown Women’s Center in Allentown, Pa., said her clinic supplies tissue to the University of Washington. She said her clinic is not paid for the donations, but the university provides her staff with the supplies needed to collect and ship the specimens.

. . . To ensure tissue freshness, “the specimens are FedExed overnight” to Seattle, she said. Boulanger didn’t have at hand the number of specimens her clinic provides annually, but she estimated, “I don’t think it’s any more than 10 a week.”

The recipient, named misleadingly the Birth Defects Research Laboratory at the University of Washington in Seattle, has been sponsored by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for over four decades. It’s known within the research community as a top government distributor of fetal tissue. Last year the Puget Sound Business Journal stated the lab “in 2009 filled more than 4,400 requests for fetal tissue and cell lines.”

. . . Fetal remains also are in demand in Britain, where, similar to the United States, no formal stats on donations are kept. In a survey published three years ago, Julie Kent, a professor from the University of the West of England, found some surprising practices: At least one abortion clinic altered its termination method in order to preserve specimens, extracting the fetus with a syringe instead of a vacuum to avoid macerating the tissue. Crosswalk

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