Ben Carson defends the use of fetal tissue for research

(Image credit: Mark Wilson/Getty Images)

published 13 August 2015

Back in 1992, retired neurosurgeon and 2016 GOP presidential candidate Ben Carson used aborted fetuses to do medical research. When news of his past research work surfaced on a blog this week, Carson was far from apologetic — rather, he defended the use of fetal tissue for research purposes and called the revelation "desperate and ignorant of the way medical research was carried out," The Washington Post reports. "You have to look at the intent," Carson told The Washington Post. "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."

This is a definite change in tone for Carson, who previously condemned the Planned Parenthood videos that revealed the organization's executives talking about the use of fetal tissue in research. Back in July, Carson said that he believed there was "nothing that can't be done without fetal tissue." It was that comment in a Fox News interview that inspired Jen Gunter, Carson's co-author from the 1992 paper, to dig it up. "Could he think his own research was useless?" Gunter asked. "If it was non contributory to the field why was it published? Maybe he forgot that he'd done the research on fetal tissue."