The National Institutes of Health (HIH) granted $3.2 million taxpayer funds to the University of Pittsburg (Pitt) for their goal of becoming a fetal tissue collection site by harvesting full term aborted babies, according to documents obtained as part of a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit.
On Tuesday, Judicial Watch and Center for Medical Progress (CMP) announced receiving 252 pages of documents from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which oversees the nation’s medical research agency NIH.
The documents reveal that taxpayer funds support Pitt’s efforts to become a “Tissue Hub, by harvesting organs and tissues of aborted babies of 6-42 weeks gestation, according to a press release by Judicial Watch, which represents CMP in their lawsuit against HHS.
“The NIH grant application for just one of Pitt’s numerous experiments with aborted infants reads like an episode of American Horror Story,” said CMP project lead David Daleiden about the documents obtained via the FOIA request.
Daleiden conducted an undercover investigation of alleged fetal tissue trafficking by Planned Parenthood with biomedical procurement companies, he stated:
Infants in the womb, some old enough to be viable, are being aborted alive and killed for organ harvesting in order to bring in millions of dollars in taxpayer funding for Pitt and the Planned Parenthood abortion business it supports. People are outraged by such disregard for the lives of the vulnerable. Law enforcement and public officials should act immediately to bring the next Kermit Gosnell to justice under the law.
A video was released by CMP in May alleging NIH used taxpayer funds to sponsor experimentation on aborted babies obtained from local Planned Parenthood facilities at Pitt.
Graphic Video
Judicial Watch noted the current documents revealed Pitt’s goal was to use taxpayer grant funds to:
Develop a pipeline to the acquisition, quality control, and distribution of human genitourinary [urinary and genital organs and functions] samples obtained throughout development (6-42 weeks gestation). … [and] generate an ongoing resource to distribute fresh developmental human genitourinary samples from various stages (6-42 weeks) to the GUDMAP [GenitoUrinary Development Molecular Anatomy Project] Atlas projects.
Also indicated in Pitt’s proposal, the school had been “collecting fetal tissue for over ten years… includ[ing] liver, heart, gonads, legs, brain, genitourinary tissues including kidneys, ureters, and bladders,” Judicial Watch reported, adding the university said in 2015 it had already “disbursed over 300 fresh samples collected from 77 cases,” and envisioned its collections “can be significantly ramped up as material could have been accrued from as many as 725 cases last year.”
Judicial Watch stated the documents also reveal that Pitt records the “warm ischemic time on our samples and take steps to keep it at a minimum to ensure the highest quality biological specimens.
“Pitt’s statement suggests the time between the abortion and collection is minimal,” Judicial Watch explained, adding the university also included a “racial target for harvesting of human fetal parts.”
“Of its planned aborted ‘subjects,’ Pitt desired 50% to be minority fetuses,” the legal watchdog group said. “The proposal suggests that the ‘subjects’ be diverse because Pittsburgh is diverse, the U.S. Census Bureau shows the city of Pittsburgh is close to 70% white.”
Pitt also gave a target goal of having “available a minimum of 5 cases (tissues and if possible other biologicals) per week of gestational age for ages 6-42 weeks” in the grant application proposal.
According to Judicial Watch, documents reveal at least $2.7 million had already been granted from NIH to Pitt for its human fetal tissue harvesting activities.
Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said, “These documents show taxpayer money is being used to turn the University of Pittsburgh [into] a one-stop human fetal tissue shop – from procuring the tissue from elective abortions, ‘subdividing’ the human remains, to distributing and shipping the harvested tissue.”