Sponsors (13)
The bill provides clearer rules for researchers and hospitals about prohibited payments but tightens or ambiguously expands what counts as compensation, trading legal clarity for restrictions and compliance costs that could reduce donations, delay research, and impose burdens on donors.
Researchers and hospital tissue handlers get clearer rules about what counts as prohibited "valuable consideration," reducing legal uncertainty for labs and hospitals and making compliance decisions easier.
Hospitals, researchers, and patients could see reduced availability of fetal-tissue-based research and therapies because stricter limits on payments or cost-sharing may discourage donations or make tissue transfers harder to arrange.
Hospitals and researchers face broader compliance costs and legal risk if common non-monetary transfers (gifts, waived fees, honoraria, reduced charges) are treated as prohibited consideration, which could delay or increase the cost of research projects.
Women who want to donate fetal tissue may lose travel or processing reimbursements or face other financial burdens if those supports are construed as prohibited payments, discouraging donation and imposing out-of-pocket costs on donors.
Based on analysis of 2 sections of legislative text.
Rewrites the statutory definition of “valuable consideration” so specific payments, gifts, waived fees, forgiven debts, free/reduced services, and reimbursements tied to fetal tissue handling count as prohibited consideration.
Official title: To amend title IV of the Public Health Service Act to prohibit sale or transactions relating to human fetal tissue.
Introduced January 24, 2025 by Scott Franklin · Last progress January 24, 2025
Amends the federal prohibition on buying or selling human fetal tissue by changing how “valuable consideration” is defined. The bill lists specific forms of payment or benefit — including payments, gifts, forgiven debts, waived fees, free or reduced services, and reimbursements tied to handling or transporting fetal tissue — and makes those forms count as prohibited “valuable consideration.” This clarifies which transfers or reimbursements are treated as impermissible under the existing ban and affects organizations and individuals involved in fetal tissue procurement, handling, and research.