Scientists Blast Fetal Tissue Rules: ‘We Have Allowed Patients’ Interests To Become Collateral Damage In The Abortion Wars’

The Associated Press: Scientists Feel Chill Of Crackdown On Fetal Tissue Research
To save babies from brain-damaging birth defects, University of Pittsburgh scientist Carolyn Coyne studies placentas from fetuses that otherwise would be discarded — and she's worried this kind of research is headed for the chopping block. The Trump administration is cracking down on fetal tissue research , with new hurdles for government-funded scientists around the country who call the special cells vital for fighting a range of health threats. (Neergaard, Ritter and Alonso-Zaldivar, 6/8)

The Washington Post: With 2020 In Mind, Trump Overruled Top Health Official On Fetal Tissue
The agenda for the Oval Office meeting was heavy with political and scientific significance: whether to curtail the government’s decades-long support for medical research that relies on fetal tissue from elective abortions. The president’s top health and science aides had been arguing that ending the funding could disrupt valuable research, trigger lawsuits and place the values of abortion opponents above those of scientists. Over the opposition of Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, who was in the room, the president chose the course advocated by his political advisers and Vice President Pence: to end the work of government researchers and impose restrictions on funding for universities and other outside labs. (Goldstein and Dawsey, 6/7)

Kaiser Health News: FAQ: How Does New Trump Fetal Tissue Policy Impact Medical Research?
The announcement this week that the federal government is changing its policy on the use of human fetal tissue in medical research is designed to please anti-abortion groups that have strongly supported President Donald Trump. But it could jeopardize promising medical research and set back attempts to make inroads in devastating diseases such as HIV, Parkinson’s and diabetes, U.S. scientists said. Under the new policy, employees at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) will no longer conduct research with human fetal tissue obtained from elective abortions, after using up any material they have on hand. Officials also immediately stopped funding a multiyear contract at the University of California-San Francisco using human fetal tissue in mice to research HIV therapies. (Andrews, 6/7)

Kaiser Health News: KHN’s ‘What The Health?’: Fetal Tissue Research Is Latest Flashpoint In Abortion Debate
The Trump administration this week announced efforts to restrict research using fetal tissue from elective abortions. The new policy bars such research by government scientists and creates hurdles for outside scientists that get funding from the National Institutes of Health. The move displaces a policy passed with bipartisan support in Congress more than 25 years ago. (6/6)

In other administration news —

Politico: Trump’s Bid To Wipe Out AIDS Will Take More Than A Pill
Public health now has the tools to eradicate HIV — medicines to protect people from getting the virus, to prevent those who have it from infecting others, and to prolong lives by decades. But it takes a lot more than a pill to reach the “hard to reach” populations, people who 40 years into the epidemic are still most at risk of contracting and spreading HIV/AIDS. These are the stigmatized, the marginalized, the poor, the homeless, the afraid, the addicted and the mentally ill, in rural communities and urban cores. Unlike the 1980s, the faces of the AIDS crisis in 2019 are not found so much in San Francisco’s Castro district or New York’s Greenwich Village. They are disproportionately black men, and increasingly black women. Some are gay or bisexual and closeted in hostile communities. Many are at risk because of drug addiction and mental illness, in small rural southern towns or in troubled inner cities like Baltimore. (Karlin-Smith, 6/8)