Gendelman's center receives donations of blood for these studies. Some of this tissue is usable for science, as is some of the tissue removed from the brains of people with epilepsy. It involves getting permission to extract brain tissue very quickly after a person's death, so the three cell types needed will not deteriorate. We only use the human cells as proof of concept. They're not mouse diseases.
Neurons transmit the electrical impulses with which the brain tells the body what to do.
They're the thinking cells. They're supremely important. As you've read before, but perhaps not all in one place, the sample of brain tissue Gendelman receives from aborted fetuses is the size of a pea. The samples used to come within hours of the abortion from the Bellevue abortion doctor, but now come via overnight delivery from a facility in Seattle, Washington. The samples do not come from the abortion procedure its opponents call partial-birth abortion.