The US National Institutes of Health (NIH) will continue to fund research on fetal tissue from miscarriages and stillbirths, according to an announcement made on 22 January. But researchers say the new restrictions, which were applauded by opponents of abortion, will make it more difficult to study fetal development and stem cell biology, and will slow the hunt for new medical treatments. But it is also not a dead end for all such research, he adds: some scientists will turn to a much smaller pool of private funding in lieu of government grants. 'Research is going to go ahead, [the decision is] just slowing it down,' Goldstein says. The NIH says that it funded 77 projects involving human fetal tissue in the fiscal year that began in September 2023, and that researchers can harness recent technological advances in alternative methods, such as computational biology and three-dimensional cell cultures, to conduct their studies. Goldstein says that not all research can be done using...
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