'A One-Stop Human Fetal Tissue Shop': Millions in Federal Funds Spent on U. Pitt Quest to Harvest Unborn Baby Organs
NEWS ANALYSIS
In what sounds like something from the plot of a fictional horror movie, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) authorized a $3 million grant to the University of Pittsburgh for inducing labor on full-term pregnant women, and then surgically removing organs from their babies for the school's tissue bank.
Unfortunately, this is not fiction. It's all too real, according to newly-released public records recently acquired by the conservative watchdog Judicial Watch on behalf of the Center for Medical Progress (CMP).
Just The News reports the 2015 grant application by the University of Pittsburgh also guaranteed about half the fetuses whose organs were removed would be nonwhite, including a quarter black.
Judicial Watch sued the NIH after the agency delayed in responding to the CMP's Freedom of Information Act request for the documentation involving the school's proposed tissue bank.
Both organizations have posted hundreds of pages of the requested material received from the NIH to their respective websites. Some pages are fully redacted. Several of the pages are posted by themselves to highlight specific areas of the university's program.
The documents reveal that Pitt promised the NIH it could obtain "very high-quality tissue and biological specimens" from at least five unborn babies a week, ages 6 to 42 weeks, according to Just The News. At the time, the school was changing its Institutional Review Board and autopsy consent forms to permit the collection of aborted fetuses older than 24 weeks.
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Pitt was trying to become the hub and distribution site for the GenitoUrinary Development Molecular Anatomy Project (GUDMAP), in order to supply researchers across the country with aborted fetal kidneys, bladders, and other organs and body parts from healthy fetuses aborted up to 6 months old in order to study diseases, according to the CMP.
"Congenital diseases of the genitourinary tract (kidneys, bladder, ureter, urethra, etc.) are a leading cause of organ failure carrying with it an increased risk of death, and are a growing public health burden," the grant application reads.
In its application, Pitt said it had "over 18 years of experience" collecting body parts from aborted babies. Under the reasons for becoming a distribution hub for the NIH, the school pointed out, "Ischemia time is minimized": "We record the warm ischemic time on our samples and take steps to keep it at a minimum to ensure the highest quality biological specimens. We get feedback from our users and utilize this feedback to tailor our collection processes on a case-by-case basis to maximize the needs of investigators." (pg. 62). Later in the application, Pitt describes "labor induction" as a "procedure that will be used to obtain the tissue" (pg. 73), according to the CMP.
According to the NIH, warm ischemia time is "the time a tissue, organ, or body part remains at body temperature after its blood supply has been reduced or cut off but before it is cooled or reconnected to a blood supply."
If the unborn baby's heartbeat and blood circulation continue in a labor induction abortion for harvesting organs, it means the fetus is being delivered while still alive and the cause of death is the removal of the organs, the CMP said.
David Daleiden, founder and president of The Center for Medical Progress, likened the grant application to an episode of American Horror Story.
"Infants in the womb, some old enough to be viable, are being aborted alive and killed for organ harvesting, in order to bring in millions of dollars in taxpayer funding for Pitt and the Planned Parenthood abortion business it supports," Daleiden said. "People are outraged by such disregard for the lives of the vulnerable. Law enforcement and public officials should act immediately to bring the next Kermit Gosnell to justice under the law."
Gosnell is a former physician, abortion provider, and serial killer convicted of murdering seven infants who were born alive during attempted abortion procedures.
"These documents show taxpayer money is being used to turn the University of Pittsburgh is a one-stop human fetal tissue shop – from procuring the tissue from elective abortions, 'subdividing' the human remains, to distributing and shipping the harvested tissue," said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.
