A guide to fetal tissue research: the controversy, the stakes, and the hunt for alternatives
WASHINGTON — Two weeks ago, Will Burlingham, a professor of transplantation at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, got a surprise call from the National Institutes of Health: Would he like a little extra money to create more laboratory mice?
“It’s like Santa came early,” Burlingham told STAT. “We’ve been advised that we need to gear up and hire people.”
These aren’t just run-of-the-mill rodents. Burlingham’s mice are part-animal, part-person, implanted with a human-like immune system derived from tissue leftover when newborns undergo heart surgery. And the NIH is taking an interest in these mice because scientists might, in some cases, be able to use them instead of a more politically controversial research tool — mice implanted with fetal tissue that comes from abortions.
But mice made with similar techniques simply aren’t as useful, scientifically, as their counterparts created with fetal tissue. They tend to die more quickly, and the human-like immune systems
