Trump NIH nominee says he will not allow the use of aborted babies for research

President Trump’s nominee to lead the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, said 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.).

Hawley asked, “Will you prohibit the use of aborted fetal tissue in NIH research — in NIH-funded research?”

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

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.

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.

Hawley Asks Dr. Bhattacharya: Will You Ban Use Of Aborted Fetal Tissue In Research Funded By NIH?

Bhattacharya’s statement follows that of Kennedy, Secretary of Health and Human Services, who said during his confirmation hearings that he would prohibit the use of aborted body parts and tissue for research.

READ: BOMBSHELL: Planned Parenthood officials admit under oath to selling aborted body parts

One of the studies at the heart of the matter is out of the University of Pittsburgh (UPitt). In 2021, Live Action research fellow Carole Novielli reported that UPitt was allegedly stitching the scalps of aborted children onto mice. Novielli reported on a press release from the Center for Medical Progress, which stated:

Publicly available information demonstrates that Pitt hosts some of the most barbaric experiments carried out on aborted human infants, including scalping 5-month-old aborted fetuses to stitch onto lab rats, exporting fetal kidneys across the country, and killing infants delivered alive for liver harvesting – funded by U.S. taxpayers via the National Institutes of Health, and in particular Dr. Anthony Fauci’s NIAID [National Institute of Allergey and Infectious Disease] office.

NIAID is funded by the NIH, an agency of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Government-Sponsored Fetal Experimentation at the University of Pittsburgh and Planned Parenthood

It was later revealed that the scalps (with skin and hair) of babies aborted at the gestational age of 18 to 20 weeks were, according to a Nature study, used to make “human Skin and Immune System (hSIS)-humanized’ mouse and rat models to study the immune system when the skin is infected with a staph infection.”

In 2019, NIH Director Francis Collins, a self-described Christian, defended the use of human fetal body parts as scientifically and ethically justified. He said while the NIH would fund alternatives, the use of fetal tissue from aborted children “will continue to be the mainstay.”