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American scientists are using tissue from aborted babies in genetically engineered mice to study how certain diseases are spread, and the experiments are being paid for with U.S. tax dollars. It's not clear how much fetal tissue is used or how it is supplied. Scientists involved in some of the research at the National Institutes of Health refused to speak with Cybercast News Service about their work.The experiments started 20 years ago, when scientists first began implanting or injecting a mouse without an immune system with human cells or tissue to study diseases, such as HIV/AIDS and certain cancers. While some of the cells and tissue comes from adults, much of it comes from babies aborted at 17-23 weeks' gestation. It is legal, but controversial and not well known outside of research circles.Over the years, thousands of "SCID-hu" mice (pronounced skid-hew) have been bred for experimentation purposes, making the animal-human hybrid-or "chimera"-a hot commodity for researchers.SCID-who?
The SCID-hu mouse originally was created in 1988 by Stanford researcher J. Michael McCune. SCID stands for "severe combined immuno-deficiency." "Hu" stands for human. The mouse itself is not considered to be controversial."It has been something of a godsend for modern-day research," said Dr. Joseph Bryant, director of animal research at the University of Maryland's Institute of Human Virology."It was discovered several years ago that this mouse, which is kind of like the bubble boy in that it has no real immune system, can't reject tissue, even from a human," Bryant said. "It is used in transplant medicine and cancer research, research on diabetes, for studying HIV, the effects of some drugs, Alzheimer's - you name it.."Thus far, its use has galvanized AIDS research, according to Dr. Dan Littman, a top SCID-hu researcher at New York University's Medical Center."I think in terms of testing for various drugs that may be effective in HIV infection in an animal model, SCID-hu may be as good an animal model as one can get," Littman told Cybercast News Service. "I think it has been successful for that." The mice are being utilized in so many areas of research that an online search of the scientific literature would generate a vast number of hits. As Bryant put it, "it would take you to the end of the year just to read all of them."Indeed, though the National Institutes of Health (NIH) would not comment on that research, Cybercast News Service has found records indicating that the federal government is funding hundreds of SCID-hu studies, likely to the tune of millions of dollars. It's not known exactly how much fetal tissue is being used. Attempts over a period of weeks to obtain details from the NIH have thus far proved unsuccessful. But article after article in prominent scientific journals such as Blood and The Journal of Virology, as well as The Proceedings of the National Academies of Science describe the transplantation of "fetal human tissue" in myriad SCID-hu experiments. For instance, a 2005 study published in Blood said, "Mice were surgically implanted with human bone chips of fetal femur or tibia from 19- to 23-week gestation human abortuses ...." Another study, published in 2000 in The Journal of Virology said: "The mice were implanted with 1-mm3 pieces of human fetal thymus and liver when they were 6- to 8-weeks-old. Tissue at 16- to 24-weeks of gestational age was obtained...." Yet another, from 2001 in The Proceedings of the National Academies of Science said, "Human fetal skin tissue (18 to 23 weeks gestational age) was purchased ... in accordance with all local, state, and federal guidelines."
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