IU, group argue fetal research

IU filed a legal challenge to Indiana’s controversial new abortion law, signed by Gov. Mike Pence. The lawwas take effect Friday, but shortly before a news conference in Evansville Thursday by Indiana Right to Life, U.S. District Judge Tanya Walton Pratt issued a temporary injunction, halting the law.

The injunction was sought by Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky. IU’s own legal challenge is still pending in federal court, before a different judge.

The new law forbids the procedure based on a mother’s objection to the fetus’ race, gender or disability, and it also places new restrictions on doctors. IU officials say it would impair its scientists’ academic freedom and shut down research of potential treatment of neurological disorders, such as autism and Alzheimer’s disease.

The law prohibits researchers for obtaining additional fetal tissue. IU, at its Stark Neurosciences Research Institute in Indianapolis, has conducted research using mixed cell cultures and components such as RNA and DNA, derived from fetal tissue. It acquires fetal tissue from the Birth Defects Research Laboratory at the University of Washington.

Violators of the law, including researchers, could be prosecuted for felony crimes.

“We think, at minimum, the folks of Evansville need to be fully aware and fully cognizant of what Indiana University is going to do when it comes to this community. And if they’re going to do things like experiments on aborted babies or using aborted baby tissue, that ought to be part of the discussion in the city,” Indiana Right to Life President Mike Fichter said at Evansville Country Club.

The new campus in Downtown Evansville, which is being built with local and state funding, will house medical education programs through the IU School of Medicine-Evansville as well as the University of Southern Indiana and the University of Evansville. A 2018 opening is planned.

IU spokesman Mark Land said most of the research in question is conducted at the university’s Indianapolis facility, and it’s unlikely any such research would take place at the new Evansville campus.

Dr. David Prentice, vice president of the Charlotte Lozier Institute, a Washington, D.C., think tank opposed to legal abortion, appeared with Fichter in Evansville on Thursday and said research on aborted fetal tissue "is frankly antiquated science that harkens back to the 1950s and 1960s. It's not lifesaving research. It stands very little chance of coming up with any particular discoveries." Work with adult stem cells has been more successful, Prentice said.

A prepared statement from IU called Fichter's and Prentice's statements "outlandish" and said the law could cost the university millions of dollars in research funding from the National Institutes of Health and other agencies.

"Indiana University conducts research that improves the lives of Hoosiers and those living beyond our borders," the statement reads. "The university does not experiment on aborted fetuses. Nor does the university conduct research using whole fetuses at any stage in their viability." The tissue is used to pursue "scientifically peer-reviewed, NIH-approved research involving the creation of cell cultures that, in turn, form the basis of work to find a cure for Alzheimer's disease and other devastating diseases," according to IU's statement.

Fichter said Indiana Right to Life wants to see research continue by IU through other means.

Fichter, when asked if violators of the state law should be criminally prosecuted, said yes.

"Let's use positive alternative resources that don't carry the unethical implication and controversies of using aborted babies. Let's find the cures, but let's find them the right way," Fichter said.

IU will continue to work through the court to halt implementation of the law.

"The new law will have a chilling effect on research done by IU," according to the university's statement. "It will slow the pace of progress being made by university researchers to find and develop cures for life-threatening diseases."