There’s a delicate boundary between using taxpayer funds to facilitate the illegal acquisition of human fetal organs and the lawful gathering of research materials.
It seems that UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine, particularly its Division of Hematology-Oncology, might be on the verge of crossing that boundary. Reports indicate the school paid thousands to Cercle Allocation Services for organ procurement related to research. This information came to light through a request under the California Public Records Act, as noted by the Center for Medical Progress. Cercle has previously faced allegations of trafficking human fetal organs.
Recent public records reveal that UCLA’s lab, funded by taxpayers, paid Cercle, a company based in California, $765 for each of 21 liver and thymus specimens during August and September 2023, amounting to a total of $16,065. These purchase orders specified the organs by type, sample number, and date—for instance, entries like “THYMUS #3527 7/7/23” and “LIVER #3528 7/7/23” were found in documents reviewed. Interestingly, none of the descriptions explicitly included terms like “fetal” or “human fetal tissue.”
This omission likely stems from federal regulations that classify the buying or selling of human fetal tissue as a felony. A business like Cercle can receive compensation for costs associated with handling, shipping, and storing organs harvested from aborted fetuses, but the actual sale of the tissue is prohibited. Emails obtained by the Center for Medical Progress reveal a communication between UCLA and Cercle where the latter requested alterations to initial purchase orders that included language which could imply they were selling taxable items, as this would be illegal. Cercle insisted on framing the organ charges as fees for “procurement services” to avoid any misleading implications, and the university modified the documents accordingly.
One of Cercle’s account managers expressed, “The central issue is the terminology we need to avoid due to its improper implication of selling taxable items, which we’re not doing. Given our business nature, we need to be very cautious and clear about invoicing fees for our procurement services, which are untaxable.”
A previous report highlighted Cercle’s ties to the abortion industry and the collection of organs from aborted children. Parents of a baby named Clementine, aborted around 20 weeks gestation, have claimed that records suggest she was delivered alive at a New Jersey facility before being transferred to Cercle for organ procurement. They alleged the clinic used large doses of misoprostol to induce labor without using a feticidal injection typically administered to terminate the baby’s life.
David Daleiden from the Center for Medical Progress commented on the findings, saying, “These new records from Cercle’s operations in harvesting baby body parts illustrate the significant financial incentives for ‘research’ abortions to produce live, preemie-size babies, as seems to have been the case with baby Clementine.”
Thomas Kearns, Clementine’s father, remarked that the UCLA documents are a haunting reminder that the organs come from children like his daughter. “Seeing the prices listed makes me think of what they ascribe to Clementine’s life. It reminds me these body parts belonged to children who were so much more than just a liver or a thymus. They had lives, families, and souls that were interrupted by abortion and the organ harvesting industry,” Kearns reflected. He questioned whether the babies listed in the orders were harvested using the same methods that were used in his daughter’s case.
While the UCLA records do not confirm that the specimens purchased in 2023 were derived from aborted children, they do indicate a direct link between the company and the acquisition of human fetal tissue. Cercle Allocation Services is known to be the successor of Advanced Bioscience Resources, a firm that was implicated in a 2015 investigation by the Center for Medical Progress for supplying fetal tissue for research, subsequently leading to congressional actions.
