NIH Scientists Temporarily Banned from Acquiring Human Fetal Tissue for Experiments

In September 2018, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) canceled a contract with Advanced Bioscience Resources (ABR), a provider of human fetal tissue to federal scientists. ABR provides federal researchers with human fetal tissue collected from elective abortion procedures.

Three months after the contract was canceled, in December 2018, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) asked agency scientists to “pause procurements of fetal tissue” pending the outcome of a review by Health and Human Services (HHS) of all federally funded research involving the tissue. Three labs at the NIH–the National Eye Institute (NEI), the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), and the National Cancer Institute (NCI)--were forced to suspend ongoing research projects due to the procurement pause. 

The suspension applied only to intramural NIH researchers. Assistant Secretary for Health, Brett Giroir, reportedly told researchers that projects using “research with tissue already on hand could proceed” and asked to be notified by intramural investigators if new procurement would be necessary. Thomas Packard, a postdoctoral student at the ​​Gladstone Center for HIV Cure Research in San Francisco, CA, called the constraints imposed by HHS “a travesty for the outlook of HIV research.”

Update:

On June 5, 2019, after a nine month review, HHS announced that it would no longer allow scientists at the NIH to conduct research using human fetal tissue. According to the announcement, currently funded projects will not be impacted, but new projects would not be permitted. Additionally, university scientists applying for new funding from NIH to conduct research using human fetal tissue would have to have their proposals examined by an ethics advisory board. No more than half the members of this board can be scientists and its membership must include at least one theologian, one ethicist, one physician, and one attorney. Alta Charo, a lawyer and bioethicist at the University of Wisconsin Madison said the decision will “wrap the research in red tape so that it's impossible or at least unlikely to be feasible for many researchers to embark on this.”

Biden Administration Response: 

This ban on NIH researchers using human fetal tissue was reversed on April 16, 2021 via a notice published by the Biden Administration’s NIH. The reversal came after 26 Democratic House members called for an end to the restrictions, and the Biden Administration’s decision was praised as “an integral step towards protecting the advancements of our scientific community.”