Editorial: Fetal tissue bill is anti-life, anti-science

Among the threats to scientific advances are politicians who do not understand science. Unfortunately, too many of these politicians land jobs in the Iowa Legislature. They send a message this state is the last place a medical researcher should locate.

In 2002, lawmakers with an unfounded fear of scientists “cloning babies” passed a bill banning the creation of stem cells through a process called somatic cell nuclear transfer. Researchers use embryos, left over from in vitro fertilization, that would otherwise be discarded. After the vote banning the process, lawmakers were crying, hugging and carrying on about how life begins at conception.

Their emotion was pathetically misguided, as there was nothing “pro-life” about the measure. In fact, the law jeopardized life-saving research. It also prompted a cell biologist at the University of Iowa to pack up, move to Illinois and take her team and millions of federal dollars for cancer research with her.

Now here we go again. Lawmakers who apparently lack an understanding of laboratory research and the history of medical advancements are pushing Senate File 52 in yet another effort to meddle in the work of real scientists. The bill, recently approved by a GOP-led Senate subcommittee, would ban “acquiring, providing, receiving, otherwise transferring or using” fetal tissue in this state. Fetal tissue, extracted during legal, voluntary abortions, can be discarded or used in medical research.

Lawmakers apparently would rather it be discarded. Committee chair Sen. Jake Chapman, R-Adel, said he didn't want to hinder research, but “we also need to understand there is a moral responsibility, as well, to ensure that baby body parts aren’t being sold.”

The same way no one was cloning babies in Iowa more than a decade ago, no one is selling "baby parts" today.

But inflammatory rhetoric is what people resort to when they don't want to acknowledge facts. Federal law already prohibits profiting from selling fetal tissue. Planned Parenthood of the Heartland says its Iowa affiliate does not even donate it. If the bill becomes law, anyone using fetal tissue — namely researchers  — could land in the slammer for up to 10 years.

The Iowa Board of Regents registered opposition to the legislation, along with lobbyists representing the medical industry, churches and others. The board, which oversees state universities, requested an exemption that would allow research on certain fetal cells and proposed language to enable medical donations and permit the diagnosis of diseases.

Lawmakers did not immediately amend the bill, even though UI has been one of dozens of institutions across the country that has used fetal tissue in medical research. In recent years, the National Eye Institute provided the school more than $1 million for glaucoma research that used the tissue, according to data compiled by the Associated Press in 2015.

Fetal tissue has been successfully used for decades in medical research. It was critical in creating a vaccine for polio, a disease that crippled, paralyzed and sometimes killed its victims. Scientists infected fetal kidney cells to produce mass quantities of the virus that were collected, purified and used for inoculations. They won a Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1954.

Research using human fetal cells shows promise in treatments for spinal cord injuries, eye disease, strokes and Parkinson's disease. But some Iowa lawmakers appear uninterested in saving and improving lives. They are, however, interested in catering to the anti-abortion crowd with a bill that would not prevent a single abortion.