Please contact your state legislators regarding AB-305 and SB-260, which are bills banning use of fetal tissue in Wisconsin. The Wisconsin Technology Council strongly opposes profiteering from the sale of fetal tissue, as currently banned under federal law. However, it supports existing legal procedures for obtaining fetal tissue from regulated tissue banks. These bills would criminalize decades-old research and development procedures.
The bills as currently drafted would halt the ability of Wisconsin researchers to conduct research that is legal and commonplace in other states, thus creating a competitive disadvantage while blocking work on possible cures, therapies and diagnostics. The bills threaten to make felons of scientists who use fetal tissue to research such innovation.
Furthermore, the bills’ ban on “use” of fetal tissue in Wisconsin stands to bar medical professionals in Wisconsin from prescribing cures, therapies and diagnostics developed through the use of fetal tissue, even in part. A cure developed legally in Michigan, for example, could not be prescribed in Wisconsin.
Let’s not turn our scientists into criminals and our patients into medical tourists. Urge your state legislator, as well as bill sponsors Rep. Andre Jacque, Rep. Joel Kleefisch and Sen. Mary Lazich and Sen. Duey Stroebel, to limit AB-305 and SB-260 to reflecting current federal law banning the sale of fetal tissue.
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