Fetal tissue from spontaneous abortions: a new alternative for transplantation research?

While transplantation of fetal tissues may alleviate a great deal of suffering, current policy bars federal funding of research using tissue from elective abortions. Using fetal tissue from spontaneous abortions would obviate the moral concerns. If existing studies of small samples are extrapolated to the US population, then each year about 750,000 fetuses are aborted spontaneously by week 28 (500,000 in the first trimester and 250,000 in the second trimester). The consensus among researchers is that spontaneously aborted fetuses are few in number, and inappropriate for transplantation because they are born dead or have defects. This intuition may not be supported by the evidence, and there is a compelling need to focus research on these issues.