Two human tissue companies are being sued by the Orange County, Calif., District Attorney’s Office for allegedly profiting off fetal tissue provided by Planned Parenthood.
DaVinci Biosciences and its sister company DV Biologics made tens of thousands of dollars from selling fetal tissue and stem cells to research facilities around the world, according to a lawsuit filed by the district attorney late Tuesday.
The companies obtained fetal tissue from Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers, and turned a profit by selling tissue and stem cells from hearts, lungs, kidneys, brains and intestines, the lawsuit alleged. It accused DaVinci Biosciences and DV Biologics of selling products for more than their overhead costs to supply the tissue, profiting from at least 500 sales to research facilities between 2012 and 2015.
The companies were named in a series of undercover videos last year from David Daleiden, which showed that Planned Parenthood clinics provided aborted fetuses to biomedical companies.
“The wheels of justice are beginning to turn against Planned Parenthood and their corrupt business partners in the illicit trade in aborted baby body parts,” Daleiden’s group, the Center for Medical Progress, said in a statement Wednesday.
Federal law allows providers of fetal tissue to charge only for the overhead costs of supplying it, without turning a profit. Daleiden has claimed his investigation showed that Planned Parenthood clinics illegally profited from the tissue.
Last year, House Republicans formed a special panel to investigate the supply chain of fetal tissue to determine whether anyone involved broke the law. But the special committee’s interim report issued in July didn’t provide any details about the role DaVinci Biosciences may have played, and focused on other companies, including StemExpress, that haven’t been charged with any wrongdoing.
Rep. Marsha Blackburn, who chairs the panel, said the Orange County lawsuit proves wrong Democratic members of the panel who have asked for it to be disbanded.
“For nearly a year, critics of this panel’s fact-finding investigation have repeatedly called for it to be disbanded, saying there’s nothing to see here,” Blackburn said. “They claimed there was no wrongdoing in the fetal tissue industry.”
“This claim was soundly debunked with a lawsuit filed by Orange County District Attorney Tony Rackauckas, which reveals that officials at the state and local level share our concern that some fetal tissue middlemen may have broken the law,” she said.
