State on sidelines in fray over fetal-tissue program

Rep. Kim Hammer, R-Benton, is shown in this file photo.
Rep. Kim Hammer, R-Benton, is shown in this file photo.

WASHINGTON -- Planned Parenthood facilities in Arkansas do not participate in the fetal-tissue program that has drawn national attention in recent weeks, a spokesman for the organization said.

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Rep. David Meeks, R-Conway, is shown in this file photo.

"While we do not have tissue donations programs in Arkansas, some Planned Parenthood affiliates have programs for women and families who want to donate tissue to leading research institutions that will use it to help find treatment and cures for diseases like Parkinson's and Alzheimer's," Susan Allen, spokesman for Planned Parenthood of the Heartland, said in a statement.

Over the past few weeks, the conservative anti-abortion group Center for Medical Progress has released edited clips of conversations with Planned Parenthood executives, doctors and staff members in other states talking about how much money the organization would receive for providing various body parts for medical research.

Those videos spurred calls for congressional investigations, and on Monday the U.S. Senate is to take a preliminary vote on legislation supported by Arkansas' two U.S. senators that would halt federal funding for Planned Parenthood.

The nonprofit Planned Parenthood receives more than $500 million annually to provide health services like mammograms and contraception mostly to low-income women. If the legislation is approved, that money would instead go to community health centers, hospitals, and state or county health centers.

Planned Parenthood has said it donates fetal remains only if the mother requests it and that it follows federal law, which bans the sale of human tissue for profit. While the organization gets reimbursed for the cost of shipping the tissue, it doesn't make money from it, Allen said.

Federal law doesn't restrict what can be charged for shipping and processing of tissue for transplant or medical research, and others in the industry said Planned Parenthood appears to be following standard practices.

"Planned Parenthood of the Heartland follows all laws and has the highest medical and ethical standards. We always seek and welcome feedback from medical experts, but not from politicians," Allen said. "These political attacks claiming that Planned Parenthood profits in any way from tissue donation are simply not true. This is yet another cynical attempt to restrict access to safe, legal abortion in the Heartland."

Planned Parenthood of the Heartland is an affiliate of Planned Parenthood and provides health services in Arkansas, eastern Oklahoma, Iowa and Nebraska.

Arkansas Right to Life Executive Director Rose Mimms said her group believes that Arkansas' Planned Parenthood facilities aren't among those collecting fetal tissue.

The Little Rock and Fayetteville facilities offer only medication-induced abortions that are performed within the first nine weeks of pregnancy and involve drugs such as the abortion pill RU-486.

Mimms said the pregnancies are ended so early that clinics don't normally recover any fetal tissue. "Oftentimes," she said, "it ends up in a toilet or wherever."

Little Rock Family Planning Services is the only location licensed by the Arkansas Department of Health to perform surgical abortions. A surgical abortion ends a pregnancy by removing the contents of the uterus through a suction device or other instrument.

Mimms said Arkansas Right to Life would like to know whether Little Rock Family Planning Services provides fetal remains for research but has been unable to obtain that information.

The Little Rock Family Planning Services administrator did not return two messages left at the clinic Friday.

Arkansas Code 20-17-802 bans the sale of fetal remains from an abortion. It also bans research on fetal tissue from an abortion unless the woman involved consents. Violation of the law is a Class A misdemeanor, punishable by up to a year in prison and a $2,500 fine.

During this year's legislative session, Arkansas lawmakers passed Act 535 of 2015 by state Rep. Kim Hammer, R-Benton, which calls for human tissue to be disposed of in a "respectful and proper manner" -- such as incineration, burial or cremation -- after it is separated from medical waste.

The law "was put there as a safeguard for the day this would come, and the day has come," Hammer said.

He said under previous law, a fetus could have been sent to a landfill along with used surgical gloves and other medical waste. He said he has no evidence that that ever happened in Arkansas, but it would have been legal under the previous law.

"It would have been just a question of time," Hammer said. "I just couldn't quite honestly live with myself knowing those babies' bodies were being treated that way."

Hammer said he expects the issue to come up again in the next legislative session in light of the recent videos. He said he wants to make sure there can be no financial gain from the transfer of fetal tissue, and he recognizes that facilities can be reimbursed for costs associated with transporting or preserving the remains.

State Rep. David Meeks, R-Conway, said he is reaching out to various organizations to learn more about the issue in Arkansas and what is legally allowed. He said he doesn't think Arkansas' Planned Parenthood clinics are distributing fetal remains, but he wants to be sure.

"The big thing is to make sure there are no laws that were broken," he said. "At this point I have not found anything."

Using human tissue for medical research isn't new, said Bill Leinweber, president of the National Disease Research Interchange, a Philadelphia-based nonprofit that receives some government funding to help doctors and researchers obtain human tissue.

"It's just the public consciousness has been awakened, clearly, in a very colorful way," he said. "Many advances that we live with and take for granted today in terms of treatments or cures from various diseases have somewhere in their background an interface with human tissue. It's just not something that folks think a lot about from a consumer perspective."

He said research on fetal tissue helped lead to vaccines for polio, rubella, shingles and hepatitis-A. Treatments for Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes have been tested on human tissue, and there is ongoing research on human tissue for ways to treat cystic fibrosis, cancer, heart disease and neurological disorders, he said.

National Institutes of Health records indicate that in 2014 it spent $76 million on hundreds of research projects using fetal tissue. The projects focus on blindness, HIV, early brain development, Down syndrome, congenital heart defects, and many other diseases and disorders.

Spokesmen for the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences and Arkansas Children's Hospital, both in Little Rock; the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville; and Arkansas State University at Jonesboro said their institutions do no research that uses fetal tissue.

The National Disease Research Interchange occasionally works with fetal tissue from miscarriages or spontaneous abortions, not from elective, or planned, abortions, Leinweber said. Fetal tissue has a wider range of uses than does adult tissue and has a "unique value" for researchers, he said.

He said that judging from what Planned Parenthood has said publicly, it appears the nonprofit is following industry standards.

The research interchange reimburses hospitals and tissue banks for the cost of having trained professionals remove and properly preserve the organs or tissue so the items can be used for research or transplant. The interchange is then reimbursed by researchers and scientists for those costs and for transporting the items to them.

"How do you do it otherwise? You don't get anything for free," Leinweber said. "We require and expect a high level of training and any processes or procedures to be done with the highest level of competence and integrity and informed consent. The bottom line is, there are costs associated with science, period, and this is a resource that scientists need and use."

He said costs vary depending on how difficult it is to obtain or preserve the tissue, what sex or age the researcher needs the tissue to be and how quickly it is needed. The research interchange distributes about 29,000 specimens a year to more than 500 researchers around the world.

Leinweber said it's understandable that people are uncomfortable with the idea, noting that most people don't like talking about death, much less what will happen to all or part of their body afterward.

"If you layer onto that conversation dialogue about the money that's exchanged for body parts, that's just completely disturbing and unsettling, as it should be, if it were being done in a for-profit mode," Leinweber said.

SundayMonday on 08/02/2015

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