(Nature) – Hindering studies involving fetal tissue will impede the development of the alternatives intended to replace it, while slowing the search for new medicines.

“This decision is about advancing science by investing in breakthrough technologies more capable of modeling human health and disease,” NIH director Jayanta Bhattacharya said in a statement. Those technologies, the statement added, include computer modelling, organ-on-a-chip systems and complex 3D cell cultures called organoids.

But developmental biologists say that these tools are not yet able to model human health and disease accurately. That is also the view of the International Society for Stem Cell Research (ISSCR) in Evanston, Illinois. In response to the NIH decision, the ISSCR said: “Research with human fetal tissue (HFT) and HFT-derived cell lines has been integral to biomedical progress for nearly a century”. (Read More)