Dr. Ben Carson, Republican presidential candidate, is very opposed to Planned Parenthood. At the moment that requires being against fetal tissue research, or at least
openly dismissive of it.
In a July interview on Fox News, after the first videos broke, Carson said that there was “nothing that can’t be done without fetal tissue" and that babies aborted at 17 weeks were clearly human beings.
Dr. Ben Carson, Republican presidential candidate, has himself performed fetal tissue research.
Dr. Jen Gunter:
Carson also said, “At 17 weeks, you’ve got a nice little nose and little fingers and hands and the heart’s beating. It can respond to environmental stimulus. How can you believe that that’s just a[n] irrelevant mass of cells? That’s what they want you to believe, when in fact it is a human being.” [...]
While opining on the uselessness of fetal tissue research to Megyn Kelly Dr. Carson neglected to mention his own paper Colloid Cysts of the Third Ventricle: Immunohistochemical evidence for nonneuropithelial differentiation published in Hum Pathol 23:811-816 in 1992. The materials and methods describe using “human choroid plexus ependyma and nasal mucosa from two fetuses aborted in the ninth and 17th week of gestation.”
Dr. Ben Carson, mind you, thinks donating tissue from 17-week-old fetuses is
abominable.
Megyn Kelly presented the counter-argument from Planned Parenthood's defenders, who say it's not controversial to conduct medical research on fetuses that will be aborted anyway.
Carson said he believes the video is an indication of "how far we have drifted in terms of our humanity."
But Dr. Ben Carson has an explanation for why his own research was different, he told
Washington Post reporter David Weigel, which boils down to
Because Reasons.
"You have to look at the intent," Carson said before beginning a campaign swing through New Hampshire. "To willfully ignore evidence that you have for some ideological reason is wrong. If you’re killing babies and taking the tissue, that’s a very different thing than taking a dead specimen and keeping a record of it."
Sure, all right. I'm sure the base, which is known for their deeply nuanced stance on the issues, will be fine with having a candidate that personally did research on fetal tissues himself.