Fetal tissue transplantation research and federal policy: a growing wall of separation.

The federal moratorium on fetal tissue transplantation research is creating an ever growing wall of separation between public and private research. This federal policy is based on undocumented psychological assumptions about what motivates women to have abortions, neglects to consider the suffering that could be prevented by allowing such research, disregards the fact that other forms of fetal research are performed at federal expense, infringes on the scientific freedom of federally employed scientists and compromises the federal government's ability to control the quality of research. Efforts must be made to legally dismantle this wall before it further impedes the goals of medical research.