{"id":327543,"date":"2025-03-10T10:44:28","date_gmt":"2025-03-10T15:44:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.liveaction.org\/news\/?p=327543"},"modified":"2025-03-10T00:05:48","modified_gmt":"2025-03-10T05:05:48","slug":"trump-nih-nominee-aborted-babies-research","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/trump-nih-nominee-aborted-babies-research\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump NIH nominee says he will not allow the use of aborted babies for research"},"content":{"rendered":"
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President Trump’s nominee to lead the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, said<\/a> on Wednesday that the NIH will not use the body parts and tissue of aborted babies in research. His statement came during his hearing in front of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee following a question from U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.).<\/p>\n

Hawley asked, “Will you prohibit the use of aborted fetal tissue in NIH research \u2014 in NIH-funded research?”<\/p>\n

“Sir, I will absolutely follow the lead of Secretary [Robert] Kennedy [Jr.] and President Trump on this,” replied Bhattacharya, adding:<\/p>\n

Just very quickly, may I say why it’s so important that we have alternatives? Because during the pandemic, I would often be on Catholic radio, and people would ask me whether the MRNA vaccines were made or developed with aborted fetal cell lines. I had to say, ‘Yes.’ A lot of the folks calling in had ethical objections. In public health, we need to make sure the products of science are ethically acceptable to everybody. <\/em><\/p>\n

And so having alternatives that are not ethically conflicted with fetal cell lines is not just an ethical issue, but it’s a public health issue. We need to make sure that everyone is willing to take the kinds of progress we make, and so I’m absolutely committed to that.<\/em><\/p>\n