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Planned Parenthood Violates Patient Privacy Rights to Sell Fetal Tissue

House Fetal Tissue Panel Evidence Shows StemExpress and Abortion Business Contractors Violated Federal Privacy Laws

Congressional Panel Urges Obama Administration to Investigate Planned Parenthood and StemExpress

 

Planned Parenthood Violates Patient Privacy Rights to Sell Fetal Tissue

Life Legal applauds the Select Congressional Panel investigating Planned Parenthood for filing a complaint against the abortion giant, citing “serious and systematic violations of the HIPAA privacy rule.” https://energycommerce.house.gov/news-center/letters/letters-hhs-regarding-hipaa-privacy-rule-and-irb-regulations

The Panel requested a “swift and full investigation by the Office of Civil Rights in the Department of Health and Human Services.” Complaints were also filed against StemExpress, a broker of fetal specimens, and other abortion providers.

Life Legal is representing David Daleiden in three separate lawsuits by StemExpress, the National Abortion Federation, and Planned Parenthood.

The Select Congressional Panel was established after David Daleiden published a series of videos exposing Planned Parenthood’s role in the trafficking of baby body parts. https://energycommerce.house.gov/select-investigative-panel

The Panel uncovered information showing that Planned Parenthood “committed systematic violations of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (“HIPAA”) privacy rule from about 2010 to 2015.”

Planned Parenthood businesses shared patient health information with StemExpress in order to provide specific types of fetal tissue for resale.

Evidence gathered by the Panel showed that Planned Parenthood systematically shared patients’ medical charts with StemExpress employees. StemExpress then used the information, including the age of the patient, gestational age of the baby, health of the mother and the baby, to decide which patients to approach and obtain consent to harvest the fetal tissue.

StemExpress employees had daily orders from researchers for particular organs at certain gestational ages and access to all the patients’ medical charts allowed them to approach only those patients whose wombs contained the desired tissues.

“In addition to violating federal laws prohibiting the sale of tissue from aborted babies, now we discover that Planned Parenthood has violated federal laws protecting patient privacy,” says Alexandra Snyder, Executive Director of the Life Legal Defense Foundation. “Planned Parenthood and its media allies claim that none of the government investigations spurred by our client David Daleiden’s work have uncovered any wrongdoing by the abortion giant. This is manifestly untrue, and today’s letters from the Select Panel are the latest proof.”

Life Legal also learned that Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn, who chairs the Select Panel, sent a letter to the HHS office for Human Research Protections urging a separate investigation into StemExpress for “fraudulently using invalid consent forms” : http://energycommerce.house.gov/sites/republicans.energycommerce.house.gov/files/documents/114/letters/20160601HHSIRB.pdf

An earlier panel hearing highlighted evidence that Planned Parenthood’s consent forms incorrectly stated that fetal tissue had produced cures for a variety of diseases.

According to the Panel’s evidence, StemExpress also misled its customers to believe it had a valid Institutional Review Board approval, a federal requirement for conducting research involving human subjects.
[2 June 2016, Life Legal Defense Fdn email; N. Valko RN, 2 June]

 

 

House Fetal Tissue Panel Evidence Shows StemExpress and Abortion Clinic Contractors Violated Federal Privacy Laws

The chairman of the House’s special panel investigating fetal tissue practices wants the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to investigate the panel’s findings that StemExpress and the abortion clinics it contracts with have violated federal privacy and informed consent laws in order to profit from the sale of the body parts of aborted babies.

In a letter to Jocelyn Samuels, director of Centralized Case Management Operations at HHS, Select Investigative Panel Chairman Marsha Blackburn urged the department to investigate evidence that shows StemExpress and its contracted abortion clinics violated the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA). The HIPAA rule is intended to protect the privacy of patient’s medical information.

Additionally, the panel’s investigation finds that StemExpress violated federal regulations that govern Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) by covering up its use of invalid consent forms, activity which allegedly misled scientific researchers to believe they had valid IRB approvals. Blackburn asked Jerry Menikoff, director of the HHS Office for Human Research Protections, to conduct an investigation into its findings and to take all necessary actions.
For remainder of article, visit link below…
[2 June 2016, Dr. Susan Berry, http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2016/06/02/house-fetal-tissue-panel-evidence-shows-stemexpress-abortion-clinic-contractors-violated-federal-privacy-laws/ ]

 
Congressional Panel Urges Obama Administration to Investigate Planned Parenthood and StemExpress

The Select Investigative Panel on Infant Lives, chaired by Rep. Marsha Blackburn, revealed that it has discovered Planned Parenthood and and its fetal procurement partner, StemExpress, may have violated federal laws related to informed consent and patient privacy. The Panel has asked for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to launch an investigation.

In a letter to HHS, Blackburn writes of the potential violations of patient privacy, which include granting StemExpress’ fetal parts procurement workers access to confidential patient files when abortions were scheduled.

This allowed StemExpress to send a procurement agent to gather the fetal parts, but in doing so, gave the company unauthorized access to patient files, as well as to the patient, who would not have known her privacy was violated.

The excerpt of Blackburn’s letter reads:

These contracts produced a regime of cooperation between StemExpress and each clinic. In particular: (1) the day before scheduled abortions, StemExpress received a fax from a clinic with information about the abortions scheduled for the next day; (2) StemExpress employees were granted access to the medical files of individual patients; (3) The clinic’s medical employees (doctors and nurses) directed the StemExpress employees to particular patients who were “good candidates” for fetal tissue donations; (4) the StemExpress employees had access to the “patient terminal” inside the abortion clinic; and (5) the StemExpress employees were permitted by the abortion clinic to interview the patients about personal information, including their dates of birth.

Blackburn writes that these large Planned Parenthood affiliates potentially “committed systematic violations of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (‘HIPAA’)”:

These violations occurred when the abortion clinics disclosed patients’ individually identifiable health information to StemExpress’ to facilitate TPB’s [Tissue Procurement Business] efforts to procure human fetal tissue for resale.

The letter also refers the investigation to the HHS Office for Human Research Protections to investigate whether StemExpress used invalid consent forms and failed to have a valid Institutional Review Board (IRB) approval.

One issue outlined by the Panel is “the contracts’ admission that StemExpress reviewed protected health information (PHI) prior to obtaining patient’s consent to donate fetal tissue or patients’ authorization to view their PHI.” The letter adds:

The disclosures of patients’ PHI made by the abortion clinics, and received by StemExpress, were neither required nor permitted under HIPAA, and in particular did not meet the expectation for cadaveric organ, eye or tissue transplantation or for research…. Rather, StemExpress wanted patients’ PHI to facilitate the procurement of human tissue from aborted infants for resale to researchers.

Ultimately, the investigation by the Select Panel reveals potential violations of patient privacy, as well as questions of patient coercion (since fetal procurement technicians were planning to acquire baby parts before abortions had taken place and women had signed consent forms). The Panel questions whether this would show “coercion or undue influence.”

The Center for Medical Progress released the following statement, condemning the alleged “scheme to profit off aborted baby body parts” between Planned Parenthood and StemExpress.

StemExpress paid Planned Parenthood to break the law. The documents released today by the Select Investigative Panel show StemExpress and the biggest Planned Parenthood affiliate in the country engaged in a five-year-long scheme to profit off aborted baby body parts using unprotected confidential patient information and disregarding normal patient protections, in direct violation of HIPAA and other federal laws.

Now we know why Planned Parenthood and their allies have fought so hard to oppose any scrutiny of their barbaric aborted baby body parts business: the violations in Planned Parenthood and StemExpress’ illegal baby body parts trade goes far deeper than anyone ever realized. CMP’s videos only scratched the surface of the systematic profiteering off the private health information and baby body parts from pregnant women that Planned Parenthood and their business partners like StemExpress relentlessly pursued.

Elected officials at all levels must now act immediately to hold lawless entities like StemExpress and Planned Parenthood accountable for their atrocities against humanity.
[1 Jun 2016, Susan Michelle, http://liveactionnews.org/congressional-panel-urges-obama-administration-to-investigate-planned-parenthood-and-stemexpress/ ]