WASHINGTON, D.C. (LifeSiteNews) – Federal investigators did look into allegations of grisly experiments using aborted babies at the University of Pittsburgh, newly discovered emails reveal.
In 2020, University of Pittsburgh researchers published a paper revealing that they grafted the scalps of aborted babies into mice for the purpose of exploring human skin’s potency as a “significant barrier for protection against pathogen transmission” and to “investigate human-specific pathogens that target the skin.”
The experiment received funding from the National Institute of Health and “support” from the National Institute of Allergy & Infectious Diseases, federal agencies formerly led by controversial doctors and ex-presidential advisers Francis Collins and Anthony Fauci, respectively.
Last year, the pro-life Center for Medical Progress (CMP) reported that a car for the company Center for Organ Recovery & Education (CORE), a supplier for the University of Pittsburgh’s Health Sciences Tissue Bank, was caught on video parked in a Planned Parenthood driveway with a man carrying what appeared to be specimen bags from the building and placing them in a cooler inside the vehicle. The report called into question the university’s claims that it does not obtain fetal tissue from Planned Parenthood.
In 2021, it was further revealed that a grant application by the university to NIH included admissions that aborted babies would likely be delivered alive before cutting their kidneys out and that the institution intended to procure specific percentages of aborted babies from mothers of specific races.
This week, CMP reported that a federal Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request it submitted in conjunction with the group Judicial Watch has yielded email exchanges from late 2021 and early 2022 confirming that the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services’ (HHS’s) Office of Inspector General (OIG) issued a subpoena for information pertaining to the fetal organ harvesting program.
In one such email, NIH deputy director for extramural research Dr. Michael Lauer asked University of Pennsylvania senior vice chancellor for research Dr. Rob Rutenbar for additional information concerning the “fetal tissue collection procedures associated with the GenitoUrinary Development Molecular Anatomy Project (GUDMAP) Tissue Hub and Collection Site at the University of Pittsburgh.” In response, Rutenbar notified Laure of the subpoena’s existence.
“With regard to your request for documentation/information, please be aware that we received a subpoena from HHS OIG requesting similar documentation on October 28, 2021,” Rutenbar wrote. “We are happy to provide the requested information to both you and the HHS OIG, however, [redacted] instructed us not to provide the documentation you have requested information until he has had the opportunity to speak with you.”
“Pitt’s own statements indicating its Planned Parenthood partners use criminal partial-birth abortions to harvest fetal organs to sell for NIH grant money are serious enough that a federal law enforcement agency opened a formal investigation following CMP’s reporting,” CMP founder and president David Daleiden commented. “If this investigation has been conducted honestly, the facts uncovered may be more horrifying than we ever imagined. Planned Parenthood has cloaked its human atrocities committed against vulnerable mothers and infants under its ‘research’ program for decades — it is time for justice under the law for every level of the taxpayer-funded enterprise of selling aborted baby body parts.”
It is not known if any further investigative actions have occurred since then, and the intensely pro-abortion Biden administration is not inclined to seriously threaten the abortion industry.
The sale of aborted fetal remains for research and experimentation first came to the political forefront in 2015, when CMP began releasing undercover videos of meetings with Planned Parenthood and National Abortion Federation personnel detailing the practice, which set off a firestorm of controversy and a string of revelations about the abortion industry breaking multiple federal laws against profiting off human tissue, altering abortion procedures for the sake of procuring better tissue samples, and potentially even committing partial-birth abortions or infanticide; as well as video examples of abortion workers displaying callousness toward the humanity of the children their work killed.
Neither the Obama nor Trump administrations took action to prosecute Planned Parenthood over the revelations.