REPORT: Documents reveal UPitt may have used organs from live fetuses
A number of doctors and other experts have reviewed documents recently obtained by Judicial Watch and come to the conclusion that the University of Pittsburgh has been using live fetuses in their research.
UPitt allegedly removed tissue from up to 400 live fetuses for its medical research. The university denies any wrongdoing.
New documents obtained by Judicial Watch show that the University of Pittsburgh may have been involved in harvesting organs and other tissues from live fetuses for the purpose of medical research. Much of this research was funded by tax dollars disbursed via federal grants, according to the report.
This information was drawn from 252 pages of records acquired via a Freedom of Information Act request that was initially denied and only granted after Judicial Watch pursued legal action. Per Fox News, a number of physicians and academics familiar with the subject matter have reviewed the documents and came to the conclusion that the fetuses used in UPitt’s experiments were likely alive while their organs were being removed.
One such physician contacted by Fox, Dr. Ronna Jurow, who was formerly affiliated with Planned Parenthood and identifies as pro-choice, asserted that the fetuses unquestionably would have been alive during UPitt’s research, given the way the procedures are described in the documents.
The University of Pittsburgh set racial quotas for the aborted babies they were collecting organs from, according to the documents. This was done because “Pittsburgh is a racially mixed metropolis” and researchers hoped to attain “an appropriate racial mix to the tissue specimens produced.”
In a table outlining the racial composition of the fetuses used by researchers, exactly half were racial minorities and all of them were female.
On the same page where the racial composition of fetuses is discussed, researchers reference the age range of the fetuses they used, anywhere between six to 24 weeks. They also mention an agreement they have with the International Institute for the Advancement of Medicine that provided them with tissue samples from fetuses between the ages of 25 and 42 weeks.
Fetuses are generally considered viable after 24 weeks, though many babies have been born prior to that and survived.
UPitt flatly denies using live specimens in its research. In a statement that a university spokesperson shared with Campus Reform, the school stated that “these irresponsible accusations are completely false.”
”University of Pittsburgh does not perform medical procedures and is not part of the tissue collection process,” the statement read. “All of the University’s research is closely supervised to ensure compliance with strict and rigorous federal and state laws and regulations.”
Among the tissue used by UPitt are the “liver, heart, gonads, legs, brain, genitourinary tissues including kidneys, ureters and bladders” of fetuses, according to Judicial Watch.
To date, roughly $3 million in federal National Institute of Health grants have gone towards funding this research. Taxpayers fund the NIH and its grants.
[RELATED: UPitt calls women ‘birthing people’ in article about ‘reproductive justice’]
As outlined in the documents, scientists wanted to “develop a pipeline for the acquisition, quality control and distribution of human genitourinary samples obtained throughout development (6-42 weeks gestation)” and “generate an ongoing resource to distribute fresh developmental human genitourinary samples from various stages (6-42 weeks) to the GUDMAP Atlas projects.”
In a press release, David Daleiden, founder and president of The Center for Medical Progress, reacted to the reporting on the NIH documents.
“The NIH grant application for just one of Pitt’s numerous experiments with aborted infants reads like an episode of American Horror Story.,” Daeleiden said. “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.”
Campus Reform contacted Judicial Watch for comment; this article will be updated accordingly.
