Fetal tissue research has been a staple of medical progress since the
1930s, including back in the 1950s in the development of the polio
vaccine, as well as vaccines for diseases like chicken pox, rubella, and
shingles. That's the part of the highly edited, deceptive "sting"
videos attacking Planned Parenthood that's not getting a whole lot of
media attention. But the backlash against the organization—with fetal
tissue research at its center—has not gone unnoticed by the scientists.
Having witnessed the reign of terror anti-abortion extremists have
unleashed on the medical provider community, they're terrified they'll
be the next targets.Over the past week, BuzzFeed News has written to more than 70 scientists
who have received federal funding — ranging from around $50,000 to
nearly $5 million — for research that involves human fetal tissue. They
work on a diverse range of projects: understanding human blindness,
developing vaccines, making better models of HIV, and creating therapies
for liver failure, just to name a few. Most of these scientists have
run their own labs for years, if not decades, and would normally be
happy to talk to the press.
But just six agreed to talk about their use of fetal cells, and only under the condition of anonymity.
“What a chilling effect, you know?” one stem cell biologist working at a large public university told BuzzFeed News.
She requested to be anonymous for two reasons. “There’s crazy people out
there and I have young children,” she said, adding that, so far, she
has not received any specific threats. […]
Another scientist agreed to be on the record, then changed his mind two
hours later, after talking to someone from his institution’s
communications office.
Yet another researcher panicked because he didn’t get an email
confirmation that BuzzFeed News wouldn’t use his name. Given the “toxic
environment” to abortion in the U.S., he explained in a follow-up
message, “[W]e scientists fantasize various kinds of horrible worst-case
scenarios that could derail our research and family life.”
There's very good reason, apart from the murder of abortion doctors.
Research clinics, too, have been the targets of bomb threats. The
companies working with researchers to get the tissue aren't immune from
threat, either. StemExpress, one of the companies targeted in the videos
is losing contracts and one of its leader's home address was posted
online, along with a message that she "should be strangled with a piano
wire."
That's what terrorism does. That's what every elected Republican and
every Republican candidate to be elected is bolstering: an environment
of terror. That's institutional fear that they will become the target of
either political or physical attacks and very real fear on the part of
individual researchers for their safety. Because they are conducting
perfectly legal and very important medical research that could save even
more lives.
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