House Panel Says Abortion Centers, Fetal Harvesting Company Violated Federal Law
The Congressional panel investigating the fetal tissue research company StemExpress, which the Center for Medical Progress exposed in its groundbreaking undercover videos about fetal body parts trafficking, found that StemExpress and the abortion centers with which it contracted violated federal patient privacy and informed consent regulations.
In two letters to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Select Investigative Panel on Infant Lives Chair Rep. Marsha Blackburn detailed the panel’s findings on StemExpress’s cozy relationships with abortion facilities. The panel found that StemExpress employees had access to confidential patient health information—which they had no medically necessary reason to see and the abortion centers had no reason to disclose—in order to streamline their workflow and thus maximize profits. According to the Panel, StemExpress was allowed to use this confidential information to be matched up with patients whose aborted babies matched their tissue demands.
The letters indicate that StemExpress employees were working alongside abortion workers in ways that appear to conflict with regulations related to research on human subjects and federal privacy law.
Blackburn wrote that federal regulations require specific procedures to be followed when research is being conducted on human subjects. Research on human subjects must be approved by a valid Institutional Review Board (IRB) to ensure that the research is ethical and safe.
StemExpress didn’t follow these procedures when obtaining informed consent from abortion clinic patients, Blackburn wrote. Blackburn’s letter said it’s unclear whether patients consented to donating tissue from their aborted infants before or after the abortion procedures took place and the manner in which patient consent was obtained raises “serious concerns” about whether patients were coerced or unduly influenced into donating fetal tissue. (Read more from “House Panel Says Abortion Centers, Fetal Harvesting Company Violated Federal Law” HERE)
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