The alleged illegal harvesting of body parts from late-term aborted babies at the University of Pittsburgh (UP) is at the center of a two-year-old investigation by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Service’s Office of Inspector General (OIG), recently obtained emails confirm.
OIG investigators are said to be focusing on lab experiments conducted from 2016 to 2021 by the UP’s Genitourinary Development Molecular Anatomy Project, allegedly with funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), The Daily Wire reported, on December 14.
Emails confirming the investigation were obtained through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request by Judicial Watch and the Center for Medical Progress (CMP).
“The University of Pittsburgh has been a center for some of the most barbaric experiments, government-funded experiments, on the body parts of late-term aborted babies,” CMP President David Daleiden told The Daily Wire. “We now have the first confirmation with these FOIA documents that this is all subject to a federal law enforcement investigation of the OIG.”
Fetal Tissue Use in Research
According to UP, or Pitt, researchers obtain aborted baby tissue “from repositories called tissue banks,” at the UP Medical Center.
“The Pitt Biospecimen Core, which provides central support for Pitt research programs, receives all fetal tissue from UPMC Magee-Women’s Hospital,” states the university’s website.
Pitt hired an outside law firm to issue a report on the fetal tissue experiment program, which concluded the activities in question follow state and federal laws, according to a UP statement issued shortly after the OIG investigation is reported to have begun.
“As we have stated in the past: Fetal tissue research plays a critical role in advancing life-saving discoveries. We remain committed to maintaining robust internal controls and to extending our record of compliance at the state and federal levels, and we take these responsibilities seriously,” a UP spokesman stated.
Investigation Called ‘A Whitewash’
The status of the HHS investigation is unclear, and U.S. Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ) told Fox News in December the HHS effort is “a whitewash.”
“A truly transparent and comprehensive assessment would not have evaded the questions raised by public records, especially and including whether [Pitt] used the body parts of babies who were born alive and died from having their organs harvested, as well as if individuals procuring the baby body parts for the university altered abortion procedures to suit their gruesome research,” said Smith. “It is long past time for the federal HHS Office of Inspector General to conduct a full audit to determine whether infanticide or other misconduct is occurring.”
Changing Policy
Genevieve Marnon, legislative director at Right to Life of Michigan, says the issue of fetal tissue research and gruesome experimentation using baby body parts is not new and has been the subject of national debate and congressional investigations for decades.
“Sadly, while the various administrations tightened or loosened requirements surrounding the use of fetal tissue in experiments, it has never been banned or outlawed in practice, and the government has often funded it with taxpayer dollars,” said Marnon.
“The other problem is that while the women who abort their babies are not allowed to be compensated for ‘donating’ their baby’s body parts, the procurement companies can and do charge for processing, packaging, and shipping those parts,” said Marnon. “So, until the practice of harvesting aborted fetal body parts and using them for research is outlawed, there will continue to be exploitation of the tiny human bodies.”
There is also concern that aborted babies are kept alive to procure organs and that the removal of tissues and organs caused their death. Documentation revealed researchers were scalping five-month-old fetuses and stitching the scalps onto the back skin of lab rats.
Ethical Concerns
Heidi Klessig, M.D., a retired anesthesiologist and author of The Brain Death Fallacy, told Health Care News that while Pitt contends to comply with state and federal law, its actions don’t exempt it from wrongdoing.
“I think most people would say that scalping unborn babies and transplanting their skin onto the backs of lab rats absolutely qualifies as wrongdoing, regardless of whether legal codes were followed,” said Klessig.
“And because these children are able to feel pain and do not receive anesthesia, a death by organ harvesting would be accompanied by terrible suffering,” said Klessig. “This is a cruel and unusual punishment for an infant whose only crime is being unwanted by his parents. If this is indeed what is occurring at Pitt, one 22-week-old infant may be receiving life-saving neonatal ICU care at the same time a less fortunate infant of the same age is being dissected to death for body parts. These are serious concerns, and it appears that the Office of Inspector General is taking them seriously by launching this investigation.”
Marmon said the Michigan Legislature attempted to ban fetal tissue research in 2022, but Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) vetoed the bill. In 2023, a law requiring the humane disposal of fetal remains was repealed.
“I fear the practice of fetal tissue research will proliferate in our state,” said Marnon. “Michigan’s law banning fetal tissue trafficking was passed in 2016 and remains in place, which means no money can be paid for the body parts, but it doesn’t prevent tissue procurement companies and pharmaceutical companies from profiting from these tiny broken bodies, nor does it prevent universities and researchers from conducting experiments on tissue and organs from aborted babies.”
Bonner Russell Cohen, Ph. D. (bcohen@nationalcenter.org) is a senior fellow at the National Center for Public Policy Research.
For related articles on live organ transplantation, click here.