Oswald Clark and Paul Tuns:

The Center for Medical Progress and Judicial Watch announced on August 3 that they had received “252 pages of new documents” exposing the University of Pittsburgh’s lucrative “quest” to become a “tissue hub” for fetal organs taken from preborn children 6-42 weeks gestation.

The documents, acquired as part of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the university by the Center for Medical Progress (CMP), reveal the university received $2.7 million in federal funds through the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) over the last five years as part of a project to harvest fetal organs and tissue, including from preborn babies past the gestational age of viability.

The documents state that the university project sought to “develop a pipeline to the acquisition, quality control and distribution of human genitourinary (urinary and genital organs and functions) samples obtained throughout development (6-42 weeks gestation)” and “generate an ongoing resource to distribute fresh developmental human genitourinary samples from various stages (6-42 weeks) to the GUDMAP (GenitoUrinary Development Molecular Anatomy Project) Atlas projects.”

The University of Pittsburgh (Pitt) said it had been “collecting fetal tissue for over 10 years … include(ing) liver, heart, gonads, legs, brain, genitourinary tissues including kidneys, ureters and bladders.” They said that they harvested more than 300 samples from 77 “cases” — preborn babies. One Pitt document admits, “The collections can be significantly ramped up as material could have been accrued from as many as 725 cases last year.” 

Another document brags, “the numbers of consents and collections has been steadily increasing… and we are in an excellent position to expand our services to include the needs of the GUDMAP Atlas projects.” They say Pitt does “not anticipate any major problems related to the acquisition and distribution of the tissues.” The project’s goal is to provide a minimum of five “cases” per week, that is, organs and other tissue from five aborted babies each and every week.

The Pitt proposal to the Department of Health and Human Services includes racial targets for human fetal organs, which the CMP president David Daleiden calls racist. David Seldin, assistant vice chancellor at Pitt, told Fox News, “Projects funded by the National Institutes of Health must ensure appropriate inclusion of women and minorities.”

Another Pitt document states the university has a “strong working relationship” with several associated universities and laboratories, noting that the “flagship” University of Pittsburgh Medical Center hospital and its department of pathology has a “frozen section room has digital video feed to and from the operating rooms. This also allows for instantaneous discussions with the surgeons as well (as) immediate ‘show and tell’ for them.” One proposal states these facilities ensure “warm ischemic time on our samples and take steps to keep it at a minimum to ensure the highest quality biological specimens.” “Warm ischemic time,” Judicial Watch notes, “refers to the amount of time an organ remains at body temperature after blood supply has been cut off.” Judicial Watch also explains, “Pitt’s statement suggests the time between the abortion and collection is minimal.”

The University stated in one document that fetal organs do not undergo ischemia until “after the tissue collection procedure.” 

Daleiden explained in a statement, “If the fetus’ heartbeat and blood circulation continue in a labor induction abortion for harvesting organs, it means the fetus is being delivered while still alive and the cause of death is the removal of the organs.” In other words, organs are harvested from a live preborn child.

Judicial Watch is representing CMP, which was seeking information about its fetal organ trade from the National Institutes of Health, which was obstructing the queries. In March, a Federal Court ordered HHS to release information about its purchases of organs harvested from aborted human fetuses. The court also found “there is reason to question” whether the purchases violated federal law barring the sale of fetal organs.

Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton said, “These documents show taxpayer money is being used to turn the University of Pittsburgh is a one-stop human fetal tissue shop – from procuring the tissue from elective abortions, ‘subdividing’ the human remains, to distributing and shipping the harvested tissue.”

Daleiden said, “The NIH grant application for just one of Pitt’s numerous experiments with aborted infants reads like an episode of American Horror Story.” He added: “Infants in the womb, some old enough to be viable, are being aborted alive and killed for organ harvesting, in order to bring in millions of dollars in taxpayer funding for Pitt and the Planned Parenthood abortion business it supports. People are outraged by such disregard for the lives of the vulnerable.” Daleiden called up law

enforcement to act immediately “to bring the next Kermit Gosnell to justice under the law.” He said that government officials, representatives of Pitt, and Planned Parenthood employees should face “scrutiny for the enabling of partial-birth abortions and infanticide in the government-sponsored human trafficking of aborted infants.”