The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has reinstated a ban on the research use of human fetal tissue (HFT) obtained from abortions, a prohibition originally put in place during President Donald Trump’s first term, only to be overturned by former President Joe Biden.
The ban does not include fetal tissue from miscarriages and stillbirths, which can still be used under decade-old provisions that specify required documentation and how the tissue can be collected.
As of Jan. 22, no internal or external NIH funds can be spent on research involving human fetal tissue from elective abortions. Fetal cells have been used across various biomedical disciplines since the 1930s. Existing grants can be rebudgeted so that cash originally meant for fetal tissue work can be used in other ways, the agency added.
“NIH is pushing American biomedical science into the 21st century,” NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya, M.D., Ph.D., said in a Jan. 22 release. “This decision is about advancing science by investing in breakthrough technologies more capable of modeling human health and disease. Under President Trump’s leadership, taxpayer-funded research must reflect the best science of today and the values of the American people.”
The reinstituted ban follows the September decision to not renew 17 NIH-funded projects using fetal tissue, which were identified by the animal rights group White Coat Waste. News of that decision was first reported by far-right news outlet Breitbart News.
Those 17 projects include research on various cancers, viral infections like HIV and the rare lysosomal disorder Gaucher disease, among others.
“Human fetal tissue research has been indispensable to understanding human development and advancing treatments for devastating diseases, from cancer and Parkinson’s to diabetes and rare neurological disorders,” Tyler Lamb, the director of policy for the International Society for Stem Cell Research (ISSCR), told Fierce Biotech in a statement. “Denying NIH-funded researchers access to HFT will likely delay discoveries and delivery of therapeutics to patients in need.”
In justifying the ban, the NIH said in the Jan. 22 notice that it was “prioritizing limited resources towards biomedical research models with more relevance to today’s rapidly evolving research ecosystem.” The agency also said that NIH-funded fetal tissue work has “been in sharp decline since 2019,” with 77 total projects using it backed by the NIH in 2024.
This reasoning is in contrast with Trump’s first ban in June 2019, which was ascribed to “promoting the dignity of human life from conception to natural death.” Those restrictions, which Biden reversed in April 2021, prohibited fetal tissue research within the NIH and set in place a stricter review process for external grants seeking to use the material. The new limitations are harsher, disallowing all aborted fetal tissue research entirely.
Alternative approaches being propped up by the NIH are similar to those proposed to replace animal testing, with organoids, tissue chips and computational methods named in the government release.
“While the ISSCR recognizes and supports the development of alternative research tools like organoids and microphysiological systems, these are often complementary to HFT rather than replacements,” Lamb told Fierce. Fetal tissue “remains the gold standard for revealing how human cells and organs form and offers insights that cannot yet be fully replicated with emerging technologies.”
Reached for comment by Fierce, the NIH repeated that funds can no longer be used for human fetal tissue from elective abortions and added that "in instances for which funds are already disbursed, NIH will work with the institutions to take appropriate steps to ensure compliance."
The agency did not respond to questions from Fierce Biotech about how existing grants can be rebudgeted and which research models will be funded instead of fetal tissue. The agency also did not respond to specific questions about the scope of its resource constraints, given Congress’ plans to boost the NIH budget by $415 million to a record-high $49 billion.
Fetal tissue is commonly used in vaccine development, with fetal cells serving as living factories for the production of viruses that are ultimately used to make the shots. Cells derived from fetal lungs by celebrated anatomist Leonard Hayflick, Ph.D., so-called “Hayflick cells,” were used to make vaccines for polio, measles, mumps, rabies, hepatitis A and more.
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., the leader of the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees NIH, has not been shy about using his powerful position to enact his long-desired anti-vaccine agenda. Under Kennedy, a lawyer by training, the CDC recently removed six vaccines from the recommended childhood vaccination schedule, a move the American Academy of Pediatrics called “dangerous and unnecessary.”
Editor's note: This story was updated at 9:40 a.m. ET on Jan. 23 with a statement from NIH.