Doctors dispute claims that Trump's coronavirus treatment was developed with human fetal tissue
Doctors on Friday disputed reports that the treatment President Trump underwent after testing positive for the coronavirus was developed using tissue from an aborted fetus in contradiction of Trump's anti-fetal tissue research policy. Led by David Prentice, research director of the Charlotte Lozier Institute, an anti-abortion think tank, the doctors told reporters that the antibody cocktail Trump received last week was "not manufactured in any way using human fetal or embryonic cells." However, Prentice did note that the treatment was "tested" using a fetal cell line from the 1970s, prior to being administered to Trump. "The drug is still tainted by the stem cell or aborted fetal tissue cell line," he said. "But it's just not tainted in any of the ways that people claim it is." The Trump administration on Thursday drew criticism after a report in the New York Times stated that Regeneron, the company responsible for developing Trump's treatment, used aborted fetal cell lines in the production of the drug cocktail. Regeneron said in a statement that fetal cell lines were used in "testing" but that they "weren’t used in any other way, and fetal tissue was not used in the research."
Trump, who touted the drug cocktail as a "cure," signed an order last year all but halting federal funding to research involving aborted fetal material. The order stated that no new fetal tissue may be used in government-funded research after the signing of the order. Prentice defended Trump's treatment by pointing to this section of the order, saying that the use of fetal material in testing, while not ideal for anti-abortion activists, was not an instance of testing with "fresh, aborted fetal tissue or any new cells." "The Trump administration has actually continued a long-standing policy regarding these fetal cell lines," he said of the lines used in Regeneron's testing. "Fetal cell lines and fetal cell line research, with those particular cells, has never been curtailed."
Research involving fetal cell lines and embryonic stem cells has, for the past several decades, been a point of contention for anti-abortion activists, many of whom say it poses ethical dilemmas regarding the dignity of human life. Trump's 2019 order addressed these concerns, saying that "promoting the dignity of human life from conception to natural death is one of the very top priorities" of the president's administration. The coronavirus pandemic brought the issue back to the fore. In July, the International Society for Stem Cell Research sent a letter to the National Institutes of Health, citing the "valuable properties" of fetal material in vaccine development. The NIH has rejected all but one of the proposals this year for research involving aborted fetuses.
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/doctors-dispute-claims-that-trumps-coronavirus-treatment-was-developed-with-human-fetal-tissue
Letter to NIH Human Fetal Tissue Research Ethics Advisory Board-FY2020
https://www.isscr.org/docs/default-source/policy-documents/coalition-letter-to-nih-human-fetal-tissue-ethics-advisory-board-july-2020.pdf?sfvrsn=b0a243b1_2
Report of the Human Fetal Tissue Research
Ethics Advisory Board- FY2020
https://osp.od.nih.gov/wp-content/uploads/HFT_EAB_FY2020_Report_08182020.pdf