Government investigations of Planned Parenthood in response to a
series of deceptive videos produced by anti-abortion activists continue
to lead to nothing.
released by Washington state's Attorney General Bob Ferguson stated
that his team's investigation into allegations about Planned Parenthood
profiting from sales of fetal tissue "found no indication that
procedures performed by Planned Parenthood are anything other than
performance of a legally authorized medical procedure."
After undercover videos filmed by David Daleiden and his
anti-abortion group, Center for Medical Progress, went viral,
legislators across the country called for probes of Planned Parenthood
operations. So far, none of these investigations have turned up any
wrongdoing.
What that have done, however, is have a chilling effect on important
research into cures for diseases including diabetes, Parkinson's, and
Alzheimer's, as
.
That Planned Parenthood was cleared of any misconduct in Washington is
particularly notable because Washington is one of only two states that
allows patients to donate tissue to scientific research. (California is
the other.)
Despite the lack of evidence from these state investigations,
Republicans in the US Senate continue their attempts to defund Planned
Parenthood; they are currently working to pass a
that aims to dismantle key components of Obamacare and rescind Planned Parenthood funding.
Since July, an anti-abortion group's
deceptively edited videos targeting Planned Parenthood for allegedly profiting off sales of fetal tissue appear to have prompted at least
four arson attacks on Planned Parenthood clinics. And
even though the allegations were bogus,
the vilification of the women's health organization has done additional
damage: Violent threats and a political chill in the wake of the videos
have begun to undermine potentially life-saving research on diseases
including diabetes, Parkinson's, and Alzheimer's. Fetal-tissue donation
programs essential to such research have been shut down, supplies of the
tissue to labs have dwindled, and legislation is brewing in multiple
states that could hinder cutting-edge scientific studies.
"It's anti-progress," says Gail Robertson, a veteran researcher at
the University of Wisconsin-Madison who uses cell lines derived from
fetal tissue to study heart disease, including sudden cardiac death, the
largest cause of natural death in the United States. "We're in a fight for the future of cures to the diseases that will affect us all."
Since the 1990s, Robertson and her colleagues have developed
pharmaceutical technology using cells from embryonic tissue known as the
HEK line—research credited with saving lives from fatal heart disease.
"If lawmakers were to say, 'You can't use HEK cells because they come
from fetal tissue,' it would be impossible to continue my work in my
lab," Robertson says. "It’s something we use every single day."
"The CEO of StemExpress should be hung by
the neck using piano wire and propped up on the lawn in front of the
building," one person threatened.
According to Theresa Naluai-Cecchini, a scientist at Birth Defects
Research Lab at the University of Washington in Seattle, the political
controversy has hurt the work at her lab, which is funded by the
National Institutes of Health and also supplies other scientific
researchers with fetal tissue. "We are in the last year of funding, and
if we are unable to supply tissue to the research community we would
have to close," she says. "We may be able to obtain an extension, but
the climate in DC does not look favorable in an election cycle."
Naluai-Cecchini told
the Seattle Times
that over the past year her lab has distributed 1,109 tissue samples to
more than 60 researchers elsewhere who are working on solutions for
spinal cord injuries, eye disease, cancer, and HIV. That supply line
relies on about two to three samples per day coming into Birth Defects
Research Lab, which has long been the lab's norm. But over the past
month, Naluai-Cecchini told
Mother Jones, only five specimens
in total have come in. If that trend continues, she says, "promising
research would stop until a commercial alternative is found. The cost of
research would increase dramatically, and new findings would take
considerably longer."
Before the videos were released by anti-abortion activist
David Daleiden and his group,
the Center for Medical Progress,
a total of six Planned Parenthood affiliates in Washington state and
California had tissue donation programs. Three of the programs have
since been shut down, Liz Clark, a spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood
Federation of America, told
Mother Jones. One clinic
discontinued donations to labs after the videos prompted personal
threats against some of its employees, according to Clark. Two other
programs lost their contracts with biomedical companies due to the
controversy.
"My immediate reaction was, 'Oh, I'm going
to have to move the lab'," said one researcher, regarding a Wisconsin
law that would ban her work.
One of those companies, StemExpress, a tissue provider in Placerville, California, cut ties in August following the
congressional inquiry into Planned Parenthood—and after personal threats against the company's CEO, Cate Dyer. According to a
complaint
filed in a Northern California district court by the National Abortion
Federation, an anonymous commenter threatened Dyer, calling her a
"death-profiteer" and offering a $10,000 bounty on her head. "The CEO of
StemExpress should be hung by the neck using piano wire and propped up
on the lawn in front of the building with a note attached," the
commenter said, also posting Dyer's home address. The threats
were posted on Fox Nation by someone using the handle "Joseywhales," according to the
Huffington Post.
The legal complaint was filed on July 31; on August 15, StemExpress released a
statement:
"We value our various partnerships but, due to the increased questions
that have arisen over the past few weeks, we feel it prudent to
terminate activities with Planned Parenthood."
The legal complaint (
read it here) states that Planned Parenthood's medical director, Deborah Nucatola
, who appeared in the first of 10 videos released by the anti-abortion group, received similar death threats.
Mother Jones contacted
additional researchers who work with fetal tissue, but they declined to
speak on the record about threats, fearing for their safety.
Daleiden and the Center for Medical Progress did not respond to inquiries from
Mother Jones about the fallout from their videos.
In Wisconsin, where scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the 1990s pioneered research with
human embryonic stem cells‚ lawmakers are now considering a
ban on the use of fetal tissue that could hinder today's cutting-edge research.
That includes ongoing efforts at the university
to find new antibiotics as existing ones
grow ineffective.
The
bill's lead sponsor, Republican Rep. Andre Jacque, originally proposed
legislation that would make it a felony to sell, donate, or experiment
with fetal tissue in any capacity.
"My immediate reaction was, 'Oh, I'm going to have to move the lab',"
says Laura Kiessling, one of the researchers in Madison. "Because you
can't stop—you really want to do the research."
Jacque has since revised the bill to allow for the use of cell lines
that were obtained before January 1 this year. But the latest version
would still outlaw the scientific use of fetal tissue obtained after
that date, potentially halting progress on treatments for spinal
injuries and Parkinson's disease, according to Kiessling. "I think
what's upsetting is that the logic of the legislation is not clear," she
says.
"I would ask the public to reflect on family members—people you care about who have been saved by this technology."
Robertson adds that the legislation doesn't allow for scientific
advancement down the road. "The HEK line was so critical," she says,
"but we don't know what [new lines] will be critical in the future."
Thirty-eight states explicitly permit fetal-tissue donation for
research, while six states currently ban such research, including Ohio,
which is now also moving to make reimbursement for fetal-tissue samples
illegal.
In mid-October, Planned Parenthood announced that it would no longer
accept reimbursements for its fetal-tissue donations in order to "remove
beyond the shadow of a doubt the ludicrous idea that Planned Parenthood
has any financial interest in fetal tissue donation."
Now, lawmakers in nine states are
proposing
bans similar to the one on the table in Wisconsin, and more are likely
to follow, says Elizabeth Nash, a state policy expert at the Guttmacher
Institute, which studies sexual and reproductive health. Americans
United for Life, a prominent anti-abortion group, has included
a fetal-tissue ban
in its model legislation for 2016, and Nash anticipates that AUL's
language will surface in a wave of legislation proposed in 2016 in light
of the group's past collaborations with conservative lawmakers. (In
2010, for example, AUL's
Federal Abortion Mandate Opt-Out Act was used as a model in Tennessee and Louisiana for opting out of
insurance coverage for abortion in any circumstance.)
At the federal level, Republican Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin has sponsored
a bill expected to be taken up at the beginning of next year that would outlaw fetal-tissue research nationwide.
"I would ask the public to reflect on family members—people you care
about who have been saved by this technology," Robertson says. "Think
about the unanticipated implications of supporting these kinds of
legislation."
