Trump NIH director nominee calls for ethical alternatives to aborted fetal tissue research
Jay Bhattacharya testifies during a US Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions hearing on his nomination to be Director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, on March 5, 2025. / Credit: Photo by JIM WATSON/AFP via Getty Images CNA Staff, Mar 12, 2025 / 18:20 pm (CNA).
President Donald Trump’s nominee for director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) said in his confirmation hearing last week that he was “absolutely committed” to finding alternatives to vaccines developed using aborted fetal cell lines.
When asked whether he would prohibit the use of aborted fetal tissue in NIH-funded research, Stanford University medical school professor and health economist Dr. Jay Bhattacharya said he would follow the lead of President Trump and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on the issue.
Bhattacharya then said he would seek ethical alternatives to using medical research based on cell lines taken from fetal tissue harvested from aborted babies decades ago, earning him praise from Catholic bioethicists.
Trump’s pick for NIH director said the issue came up during the development of the COVID-19 vaccines when many pro-life advocates were concerned that abortion-derived cell lines were being used in developing the vaccines.
“In public health, we need to make sure the products of science are ethically acceptable to everybody,” Bhattacharya said. “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 absolutelycommitted to that.”
Many research labs use pre-established cell lines that were made from aborted fetal tissue. The original cell lines were designed to replicate themselves, meaning that cell lines are no longer made up of fetal tissue. Because aborted fetal tissue was used to create them, bioethicists and Catholic leaders have voiced ethical concerns about fetal cell lines.
COVID-19 vaccines were made using these pre-established cell lines. While scientists didn’t directly use aborted fetal tissue, they used a cell line created from it.
The U.S. bishops and the Vatican at the time encouraged alternatives that were not related to abortion where possible,while noting that if no other options were available, it could be morally justified to receive a vaccine made by the pre-established fetal cell lines.
The first Trump administration: a mixed record
In 2019, the Trump-Pence administration effectively banned federally-funded research conducted on aborted fetal tissue — a move that the Biden administration quickly undid.
The first Trump administration also established an NIH Fetal Tissue Research Ethics Advisory Board which was lauded by the U.S. bishops in 2020 after the board recommended against federal funding of 13 research proposals using fetal tissue.
Father Tad Pacholczyk, a Catholic priest, neuroscientist, and senior ethicist at the National Catholic Bioethics Center, shared his hopes that the current Trump administration would resume and strengthen its previous efforts to eliminate the use of aborted fetal tissue.
Pacholczyk, who served on the NIH’s Fetal Tissue Research Ethics Advisory Board during the first Trump administration in 2020, recalled that members of the board offered “almost unanimous recommendations to decline funding for research proposals that relied on cell lines and tissues derived from abortions.”
“Most of the grant proposals that sought to use fetal tissues from abortions were not approved by the committee,” Pacholczyk noted, largely because of ethical concerns, informed consent procedures, and the availability of ethical alternatives.
“As far as I am aware, no prior administration has ever taken such intentional steps to restrict the use of fetal cells derived from direct abortions in research,” Pacholczyk said. “These important efforts to eliminate their use in research need to continue, and it is my hope that the returning administration will strengthen these efforts.”
However, Pacholczyk also expressed his concern about the Trump administration’s handling of COVID-19, noting that taxpayer dollars went into the development of COVID-19 vaccines “that relied upon abortion-derived cells for their production or testing, without employing its own ethics advisory board.”
The use of fetal cell lines was controversial, with the U.S. bishops clarifying that it could be morally acceptable to use a vaccine with a connection to aborted fetal tissue if there were no alternatives.
“Clearly, the tax dollars of American citizens should not be used to encourage unethical biomedical research because this can result in a form of coercion of the taxpayer whereby they unwittingly become cooperators in evil,” Pacholczyk said.
Bioethicist David Prentice — a stem cell research expert and former vice president and research director for the Charlotte Lozier Institute — welcomed Bhattacharya’s comments.
“I’m heartened by Dr. Bhattacharya’s pledge to halt fetal tissue and abortion-derived fetal cell use,” Prentice told CNA. “The effect of a prohibition on fetal tissue research would actually be positive, steering scientists away from unproductive, antiquated research into practices that have already shown effectiveness at bringing treatments to patients.”
He noted that the Biden administration’s reversal “set back ethical, productive science.”
“The Biden administration abolished ethical review of the science, and opened the door to further funding of unethical research,” Prentice noted. “The Biden reversal of the first Trump administration’s efforts to steer away from unethical fetal tissue research actually set back ethical, productive science.”
This decision has a ripple effect on public health, Prentice observed.
“As Dr. Bhattacharya noted, this has significant public health implications, because the public is concerned about ethical production of medicines and treatments,” Prentice noted.
Research alternatives
Bioethicists have noted that the use of aborted fetuses is not only unethical — it is often unnecessary.
Franciscan University’s Dean of the School of Natural and Applied Sciences Dan Kuebler, a biologist and Catholic speaker, noted that there are viable ethical alternatives out there.
Aborted fetal tissue is typically obtained from elective abortions because it is fresher, Kuebler explained. Additionally, fetal cells are less immunogenic, meaning they are easier to transplant, but Kuebler noted that other non-immunogenic stem cells are available.
Prentice noted that both fetal tissue and fetal cell lines “are derived from elective abortion, are obtained by the willful destruction of a young human life, and exist due to that unethical act.”
“These young individuals did not die due to natural causes, but rather their lives were intentionally terminated with the deliberate goal of the intervention being their death,” Prentice continued.
But ethical alternatives exist, including in pluripotent stem cells, CRISPR technology, and adult stem cells.
“Switching to ethical sources is not going to slow down scientific advancement in the way that people often say,” Kuebler noted. “It’s going to make us change how we do it and the cell types we use, but it’s not going to inhibit the ability to develop cells for transplantation, cells for vaccine development, and so forth.”
“With our ability to use and manipulate adult stem cells and human-induced pluripotent stem cells, the need for fetal tissue for research is becoming obsolete,” Kuebler said. “Our ability to develop organoids from adult tissue as well is also making that obsolete.”
