On January 22, 2026, President Trump announced that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) would no longer fund biomedical research that uses human fetal tissue. For decades, the federal government has supported research using such tissue, which is crucial for developing treatments for diseases like HIV and cancer, and which would otherwise be discarded.
Since 2019, the use of fetal tissue has declined, with only 77 NIH-funded projects in 2024. While the first Trump administration halted fetal tissue use on NIH campuses and imposed hurdles for non-government scientists, President Biden later lifted those restrictions. The new NIH policy now covers all funded research.
In a statement following the announcement, NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya acknowledged that NIH has “long maintained policies governing the responsible and limited use of human fetal tissue in biomedical research.”