The U.S. Food and Drug Administration signed a new contract on July 25 to acquire “fresh” human fetal tissue to transplant into “humanized mice” so that these mice will have a functioning “human immune system,” according to information published by the FDA and the General Services Administration.

“The objective is to acquire Tissue for Humanized Mice,” said a June 13 FDA “presolicitation notice” for the contract.

The contractor, the notice said, would “provide the human fetal tissue needed to continue the ongoing research being led by FDA.

“Fresh human tissues are required,” said the notice, “for implantation into severely immune-compromised mice to create chimeric animals that have a human immune system.”

According to GSA’s federal contract database, Advanced Bioscience Resources (ABR), a non-profit organization based in the San Francisco Bay Area, was awarded this $15,900 contract, which will run through July 25, 2019.

“Fetal tissue used in research is obtained from elective abortions,” says the Congressional Research Service.

In 2016, Harvard University provided the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Select Investigative Panel on Infant Lives with a background paper explaining that mice with human immune systems “are engineered to this condition only by means of the use of human fetal material” and that this material can only come from aborted babies, not from miscarriages.

Full story at CNS News.