I used to work for a biotech company that used fetal remains in its research. It took me more than two years to realize what was going on. No one mentioned it in my interview, and no one said anything about it after I started working there. The company's structure was split between the big brains and the hands, and I was just one of the hands — a molecular biologist with a very specific skill set, for a pointed purpose. Other scientists used my work for their studies. It was easy for me not to know what the big brains were doing in their fiefdom.

It took a bomb threat to wake me up.

One spring day, alerted by fire alarms and PA announcements, 200 employees fled to the parking lots. There was real fear and panic as we asked, "Is there a fire?" "What's going on?" "Chemical?" until the reason — "bomb threat" — snaked its way through the group.

"Bomb threat?" I asked. "For what?" My colleagues didn't know, or wouldn't discuss it. I was bewildered.

But soon enough, executives addressed us, outside in the daylight: Someone had called to say that there was a bomb on site because we worked with aborted fetuses. The threat was being taken seriously. Dogs and the bomb squad were on their way.

And with that I was made aware of the source of one of my company's most useful research tools: fetal liver stem cells. How had I not put it together before?

I ended up working at the company for a decade. I never was completely comfortable with our use of fetal tissue, and I could sense my colleagues weren't, either — the culture of silence around the remains continued, even after the bomb threat. But now, years after I left, and as Planned Parenthood is under fire for how it provides organs from aborted fetuses to research companies, I see that using these cells is a necessary evil, contributing to medical research that could save millions of lives. If I had the opportunity to work with fetal cells again, I would.

At first, the fetal tissue dilemma didn't affect me directly

It was the ‘90s, and the company was at the cutting edge of stem cell biology's potential to solve some of our most intractable medical problems: ALS, HIV, cancer, Parkinson's, diabetes, Alzheimer's, even aging itself. It was a thrilling time: the end of a century, an exponential outburst in the biotech's uses and usefulness, the awe of the Human Genome Project, the untapped promise of gene therapy, the dot-com boom. And with this job, I landed smack in the middle of it all. I was ecstatic to be at a great company, and to be a spoke in a wheel on a meaningful journey.

When I first found out the company used fetal tissue, I was disturbed, but the fact felt distant — something that didn't touch me directly, something to misplace in the greater scheme of doing good works. I didn't use the fetal tissue in my own work — I worked with other cell lines and adult immune stem cells.

I use the word "baby" purposely — it was all I thought about on my trips to tissue processing

My misgivings simmered under the surface: Then, as now, I hope we will reach the point when abortions are rare because of medical advancement, early and enduring sex education, and easy access to long-acting birth control. And in that specific, future, fairy tale case, no research cause would be worth acquiring or generating fetal tissue. It is morally reprehensible for abortions to be performed, coerced, or bought specifically for research.

I also had personal, practical concerns with what my company was doing. I worried about my safety — I worried that the next bomb threat wouldn't be a threat at all, but very real; I analyzed my personal, internal views on abortion and, as a man, set them aside in favor of women's choice and health.

But mostly I compartmentalized, an easy thing in my 20s.

But I couldn't avoid working with fetal cells forever

Eventually, though, this aspect of the company's work started to affect me directly. A few years after that first bomb threat I, alone at the company, was given one of the great quests in the biotech field: to find a way to keep stem cells young, healthy, and multiplying in the lab.

Although the politics and bioethics of using fetal tissue in medical research can be contentious and complicated, the biological reasoning is simple. The tissues, organs, and systems of the human body replenish from their own, dedicated source of stem cells — blood, skin, immune system, heart, muscle. If a scientist wants to study an organ or system — in particular if she wants to repair or replace it — stem cells are where it's at. Heart attack: heart stem cells. ALS: neural stem cells. Blood cancers: blood stem cells.

Studies like this one have shown that the younger the stem cells, the better they do their rejuvenating job. That's what makes fetal tissue so valuable — it provides doctors and scientists with extremely young stem cells.