Controversial videos of Planned Parenthood officials have set up a furor-and a political battle-over the use of tissue from aborted fetuses for medical research. Fetal tissue is still needed in many areas of research, but this publicity storm comes at a time when alternatives to fetal tissue are being created.
For some studies, fetal tissue remains essential to the research. Anything like a ban on the use of fetal tissue could set back research on birth defects, spinal cord injuries, Parkinson's disease, and eye diseases, as well as vaccines and treatments for HIV/AIDS. Fetal cells are used because they are stem cells, which have the ability to change into some other types of cells. Unlike embryonic stem cells, which come from human embryos in the first days of development and which can turn into any kind of human cell, fetal stem cells already have some specialization.
Medical research has begun working with skin cells from adults that have been "reprogrammed" into becoming specific types of stem cells. These advances have made fetal tissue less important to certain areas of research.
Scientists say that newly developed stem cell techniques that use adult human cells have not yet been fully studied and may not be a good replacement for using fetal cells in all cases. Researchers often must run tests with fetal cells to ensure the quality of their findings.
Medical researchers started using human fetal tissue-both from medical abortions and spontaneous abortions (miscarriages)-in the 1930s; fetal kidney cells were used to first grow vaccines. In the 1990s, fetal cell research started working with newer cells to find treatments for Alzheimer's and Parkinson's.
Researchers at Harvard have reported that fetal nerve stem cells transplanted into the brains of Parkinson's disease patients have helped them remain healthy and functional for as long as 14 years. Other researchers have had success using fetal cells to treat spinal cord injuries.
Last year, the National Institutes of Health spent about 0.2% on projects that can be called human fetal tissue research, which translates to $76 million.