The Fetus Farming Prohibition Act of 2006 is an Act of the United States Congress

Act of Congress

An Act of Congress is a statute enacted by government with a legislature named "Congress," such as the United States Congress or the Congress of the Philippines....

 that was sponsored by Senators Rick Santorum

Rick Santorum

Richard John "Rick" Santorum is a lawyer and a former United States Senator from the commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Santorum was the chairman of the Senate Republican Conference -making him the third-ranking Senate Republican from 2001 until his leave in 2007. Santorum is considered both a social...

, Sam Brownback

Sam Brownback

Samuel Dale "Sam" Brownback is the 46th and current Governor of Kansas. A member of the Republican Party, he served as a U.S. Senator from Kansas from 1996 to 2011, and as a U.S. Representative for Kansas's 2nd congressional district from 1995 to 1996...

, Richard Burr

Richard Burr

Richard Mauze Burr is the senior United States Senator from North Carolina and a member of the Republican Party. Previously, Burr represented North Carolina's 5th congressional district in the United States House of Representatives....

 and Jeff Sessions

Jeff Sessions

Jefferson Beauregard "Jeff" Sessions III is the junior United States Senator from Alabama. First elected in 1996, Sessions is a member of the Republican Party...

, and signed by President George W. Bush

George W. Bush

George Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 43rd President of the United States, from 2001 to 2009. Before that, he was the 46th Governor of Texas, having served from 1995 to 2000....

. It is an amendment

Law

Law is a system of rules and guidelines which are enforced through social institutions to govern behavior, wherever possible. It shapes politics, economics and society in numerous ways and serves as a social mediator of relations between people. Contract law regulates everything from buying a bus...

 to the Public Health Service Act

Public Health Service Act

The Public Health Service Act is a United States federal law enacted in 1944. The full act is captured under Title 42 of the United States Code "The Public Health and Welfare", Chapter 6A "Public Health Service"....

 .

This act is a response to the idea that, at some point in the future, a technology might be developed that involved cells or tissues being removed from fetuses and used for fetal tissue implant

Fetal tissue implant

Fetal tissue implant or fetal cell therapy is an experimental medical therapy where researchers implant tissue from a fetus to a patient for treatment of disease. In the case of Parkinson's disease, it is hoped that the fetal tissue would produce chemicals, specifically dopamine, which is lacking...

s or stem cell therapy. This proposal is controversial and has been termed "fetal farming" and "fetal organ harvesting". In the act, this procedure was defined as the intentional creation and use of human fetal tissues

Biological tissue

Tissue is a cellular organizational level intermediate between cells and a complete organism. A tissue is an ensemble of cells, not necessarily identical, but from the same origin, that together carry out a specific function. These are called tissues because of their identical functioning...

 or organs for scientific or medical purposes.

Some politicians, including Robert George

Robert George

Air Vice Marshal Sir Robert Allingham George KCMG, KCVO, KBE, CB, MC was a senior officer in the Royal Air Force and Governor of South Australia from 23 February 1953 until 7 March 1960. He was born in the County of Ross and Cromarty, Scotland, on 25 July 1896, and educated at Invergordon and...

 and Wesley J. Smith

Wesley J. Smith

Wesley J. Smith is a lawyer and an award-winning author, a Senior Fellow at the Discovery Institute's Center on Human Exceptionalism. He is also a lawyer and consultant for the International Task Force on Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide, and a special consultant for the Center for Bioethics and...

, have argued that embryonic-stem-cell research will inevitably lead to such procedures. Some supporters of embryonic stem cell have rejected this comparison. Other bioethicists and medical experts, including Jacob M. Appel

Jacob M. Appel

Jacob M. Appel is an American author, bioethicist and social critic. He is best known for his short stories, his work as a playwright, and his writing in the fields of reproductive ethics, organ donation, neuroethics and euthanasia....

and Sir Richard Gardner, have welcomed the possibility of using fetuses as a way to increase the supply of organs available for transplantation.