January 22, 2026
2 min read
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NIH ends fetal tissue research
The National Institutes of Health’s move to end support for research using fetal human tissue is “clearly a political decision, not a scientific one,” one expert says
National Institutes of Health director Jay Bhattacharya speaks at the National Conservatism Conference in Washington, D.C., in 2025.
Dominic Gwinn/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images
The U.S. National Institutes of Health is ending support for research using human fetal tissue. Agency chief Jay Bhattacharya said in a statement on Thursday that the decision was motivated both by a need to cut costs and the “increasing availability of validated alternative technologies.”
The NIH currently has a nearly $48-billion budget, and in 2025 it spent $53 million on 77 projects that involved human fetal tissues, ranging from HIV studies to joint and tendon regeneration research to investigations into early human development. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the NIH, has not clarified whether ongoing projects will see their funding cut off immediately; agency officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Human fetal tissues are commonly defined as cells obtained from a dead human embryo or fetus after a spontaneous or induced abortion or stillbirth. Medical researchers have relied on the cells for decades for a myriad of scientific purposes, from developing vaccines to studying disease in “humanized” mice models.
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The NIH’s move has revived a politically contentious issue that pits abortion opponents—who have been among the most reliable supporters of the Trump administration but are now wavering—against researchers and patients who are pursuing cures for diseases, including ones that can begin in the womb.
“It’s clearly a political decision, not a scientific one,” says Lawrence Goldstein, an emeritus professor of cellular and molecular medicine at University of California, San Diego. “If you want to understand disease during fetal stages, you need the real thing as controls and guidance.”
Previously, in a statement last September, the National Right to Life, an antiabortion group, had applauded the move to defund fetal tissue research, with the organization’s president, Carol Tobias, calling it “a long-overdue step.”
This isn’t the first time fetal tissue research has come under federal fire: the George W. Bush administration made similar efforts to limit funding for embryonic stem cell research. The first Trump administration also saw furor over fetal tissues in biomedical research, an episode that culminated in a review board that was filled with abortion opponents nixing almost every already approved proposal for research using the tissues in 2020. The Biden administration reversed the first Trump administration’s restrictions in 2021 and approved new research using such tissues.
“There’s already a general consensus that fetal tissue be used only where there is no adequate substitute and where there is substantial potential benefit, under strict ethical and regulatory parameters,” says health policy expert Alicia Ely Amin, a lecturer on law at Harvard University. “This NIH is once again placing political considerations ahead of the expertise of the scientists conducting specific research.”
Editor’s Note (1/22/26): This article was edited after posting to correct the description of the National Right to Life’s statement last September. This story is in development and may be updated.
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