“No aborted fetuses were used in recent research for a cure for diabetes,” Colleen Morris, a medical relations officer with the University of Toronto, told The Interim recently.
The confirmation came as a response to our requests for further clarification on news reports that three University of Toronto researches had eliminated diabetes in some laboratory rats in two separate experiments. The reports had referred to experiments involving injections of “pancreatic tissue” into lab rats. No source for the tissue was given.
Ms. Morris stated that the pancreatic tissue used by Drs. Bernard Leibel, Julio Martin and Walter Zingg, was obtained form specially-bred laboratory rats, and that 92 per cent of the experiments were carried out on animals bred for experimentation. Eight per cent of the experiments used rabbits, sheep, pigs and frogs.
She said that it could be between seven and ten years before the new techniques could be safely adapted for human testing.
Organs needed for human transplants, and human tissue required for scientific purposes, are gathered from accident victims (if consent has previously been given) and from those who have willed their bodies for scientific purposes. Ms. Morris said that there is never any intention to use human fetuses for diabetes research.
