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Physician Attitudes toward the Regulation of Fetal Tissue Therapies: Empirical Findings and Implications for Public Policy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2021

Michelle A. Mullen  and
Frederick H. Lowy
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Extract

The use of aborted fetal tissues in research and therapy (FTT) has raised exciting possibilities and a host of social, legal and ethical issues. Perhaps the most difficult issue is whether the use of materials from elective abortion can be viewed and weighed separately from the abortion itself, or if in using these tissues there is inherent complicity with the abortion act. Those who oppose FTT claim that there is complicity with the abortion act and liken the use of fetal tissue from abortions to the use of data from the Nazi experiments. Within this lobby are those who claim that the option to donate fetal tissues will make abortion a more attractive alternative for pregnant women, and that there are doctors who will offer fetal tissue donation as a positive incentive to abortion-with the net effect that more abortions will take place.

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Article
Information
Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics , Volume 21 , Issue 2 , Summer 1993 , pp. 241 - 250
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Law, Medicine and Ethics 1993

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References

The authors wish to acknowledge the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, SSHRC Strategic Grant No. 806-02-0010, and the Ontario Ministry of Health Grant No. 03006 for support. Ms. Mullen is an Ontario Graduate Scholar and holds a SSHRC doctoral fellowship. The Centre for Bioethics is also supported by the William C. Harris and Bertha Rosenstadt estates.Google Scholar
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