Trump’s treatments were tested in cells derived from fetal tissue

When the Trump administration suspended funding in 2019 for most new scientific research projects involving fetal tissue derived from abortions, officials argued there was a pressing moral imperative to find alternative research methods.

Yet the treatment for COVID-19 received by President Donald Trump — a combination of monoclonal antibodies he described as a “cure” in a celebratory video posted on Twitter — was developed using human cells derived from a fetus aborted decades ago.

Remdesivir, an antiviral drug that the president received late last week, was also developed with those cell lines. At least two companies racing to create a vaccine against the coronavirus, Moderna and AstraZeneca, are also relying on the cells. Johnson & Johnson is testing its vaccine in another so-called cell line originally produced from fetal tissue.

As participants in the White House’s Operation Warp Speed, all three vaccine-makers have received federal funding.

A Trump administration official argued Thursday the president’s embracing of the treatments was not a contradiction. The administration’s policy on fetal tissue research “specifically excluded” cell lines made before June 2019, said the official, who did not wish to be identified because he was not authorized to speak about the matter.

Scientific products made using cell lines that existed before then “would not implicate the administration’s policy on the use of human fetal tissue from elective abortions,” the official said.

Some scientists saw a double standard in Trump’s endorsement. “Hypocrisy has never bothered the man, as near as I can tell,” Lawrence Goldstein, a neuroscientist at the University of California, San Diego, who has used fetal tissue in his research, said of Trump.

The cells used by most of the companies now trying to find a COVID-19 treatment were derived from the kidney tissue of a fetus aborted in the 1970s.