Tara Sander Lee, Ph.D.

The purpose of this handbook is to provide a useful reference guide to understanding ethical and moral implications for scientific experimentation involving nascent human beings and cells derived from nascent human beings.  In particular, the attributes of nascent human beings and cells derived from them are presented in the context of their moral significance and bioethics considerations regarding the permissibility of their use in biomedical research.

Advancements in science and medicine over the past 50 years have paved the way for the “Perinatal Revolution”—recognizing the unborn child as a separate patient and offering life-saving care before birth. 

The purpose of this handbook is to provide a useful reference guide to understanding the biological nature and properties of nascent human beings and cells derived from nascent human beings. 

“We need to consider these young individuals as equally valued human lives. Eliminating young lives is not the answer to eliminating disease and disability once a risk of the disorder is identified. Destroying the patient is not curative medicine. Such acts become a modern-day form of eugenics.”

The trafficking of aborted baby body parts for research is barbaric. The Trump administration was dedicated to ending this practice and protecting the sanctity of human life. Grave injustices were exposed that exploited unborn children for experimentation, but were not fully remedied.

Dr. Tara Sander Lee testified on HB 1110, noting her scientific and clinical experience spanning 20 years, which includes expertise in molecular genetics and diagnostic testing. Dr. Sander Lee provided information on: the incidence of Down syndrome in the United States, methods of prenatal screening and testing, the high false-positive rate of incorrect reporting in standard screening tests, limitations with newer methods of non-invasive prenatal screening (NIPS or NIPT), and the “perinatal revolution”

“Uninformed commentary has emerged this morning stating that President Trump has received a medication created with the use of human embryonic stem cells.  CLI has reviewed the published information and our conclusion is straightforward: The president was not given any medicines to treat COVID-19 that involved the destruction of human life.  No human embryonic stem cells or human fetal tissue were used to produce the treatments President Trump received--period.

Here we evaluate the actions and policy changes made by the Trump administration that have been taken since his term in office and analyze the current standing of federal funds used to support fetal tissue research.  First, we give a brief overview of how federal tax dollars are used to fund medical research in the U.S.

At the Center for Bioethics and Human Dignity annual summer conference "Bioethics in Real Life,” Dr. David Prentice and Dr. Tara Sander Lee presented a workshop entitled Designing Babies: Science, Ethics, and Policies of a Post-Genomic Era. Scientific advancements in the fields of genetics, molecular diagnosis, and genetic engineering were introduced so that participants could better understand the benefits, risks, limitations, policies, and potential impact on society. The ethics were carefully evaluated and discussed.

As a result of the rapid spread of the new coronavirus technically known as SARS-CoV-2, the United States and other governments have begun crash efforts to create an effective vaccine or vaccines against the illness at “warp speed.”  An array of candidates for this vaccine have emerged and are in various stages of development and testing.  At the same time, questions have emerged about the ways in which these vaccines, reflecting experience across the history of development of these preventives, are produced, including processes to which millions of Americans object on moral grounds.  The variety of means used to produce vaccines today is immense, employing both ethically licit and questionable procedures.  To assist in understanding these modes of production, we offer this primer on the basic science involved.