When the first doctored, manipulatively-edited video emerged showing a Planned Parenthood doctor discussing the legal transfer of donated tissues from aborted fetuses for scientific research—which Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and other currently serving congressional Republicans voted for in 1993—Dr. Ben Carson was outraged enough to scoop up the email addresses of gullible idiots launch an online petition on his campaign website:

I, like many of you, was sickened when I saw the video of Dr. Deborah Nucatola of Planned Parenthood secretly video taped discussing selling aborted baby parts. I was more than sickened, I was enraged. Congress must act NOW! Please sign my petition to Congress demanding that they stop all public funds to Planned Parenthood. I spent my whole life caring for children. What I see in this video is barbaric. Congress must ACT!

The text of Carson's online petition:

We the undersigned insist that our tax dollars not be used in any way with Planned Parenthood in light of their Baby Organ Harvesting Programs. Please act immediately to stop the transfer of federal dollars to Planned Parenthood. Please act immediately to stop the transfer of federal dollars to Planned Parenthood.

First: Planned Parenthood is barred by law from spending any of the federal funds it receives on abortion services. Abortion services are just 3% of what Planned Parenthood does. When Republican politicians talk about defunding Planned Parenthood—or when Republican governors running for president brag about already having done so (Jeb!, Walker, Pataki)—they're taking money away from contraception, cancer screenings, STI treatment, and other services. So defunding Planned Parenthood doesn't prevent abortions. It kills women. (Also: Planned Parenthood wasn't "selling aborted baby parts," as anyone who watched the videos knows. Please read Amanda Marcotte's piece at Slate.)

Back to Ben Carson: he was outraged—outraged and sickened and outraged some more—to learn that Planned Parenthood was making "aborted baby parts" available to researchers, which is legal and beneficial. Carson has argued that fetal tissues are not needed for scientific research because, as he stated during the GOP debate last week, there's no research "that can't be done without fetal tissue."

But it turns out that Ben Carson himself did research on tissues obtained from aborted fetuses:

Dr. Ben Carson, GOP nominee hopeful, told Fox’s Megyn Kelly that “There’s nothing that can’t be done without fetal tissue” and that the benefits of fetal tissue have been “over promised” and the results have “very much under-delivered.” Carson also said, “At 17 weeks, you’ve got a nice little nose and little fingers and hands and the heart’s beating. It can respond to environmental stimulus. How can you believe that that’s just a[n] irrelevant mass of cells? That’s what they want you to believe, when in fact it is a human being.”

...

While opining on the uselessness of fetal tissue research to Megyn Kelly Dr. Carson neglected to mention his own paper Colloid Cysts of the Third Ventricle: Immunohistochemical evidence for nonneuropithelial differentiation published in Hum Pathol 23:811-816 in 1992. The materials and methods describe using “human choroid plexus ependyma and nasal mucosa from two fetuses aborted in the ninth and 17th week of gestation.” Yes, Dr. Ben Carson has done research on fetal tissue and published his findings. His name is on the paper so that means he had a substantive role in the research and supports the methods and findings.

Carson attempted to draw a distinction between the research he did using tissues obtained from aborted fetuses—one aborted at 17 weeks, aka the "nice little nose" stage of fetal development—and the kind of research other scientists and doctors are doing using tissues obtained from aborted fetuses. It didn't go well:

"You have to look at the intent," Carson told The Washington Post's Dave Weigel before he began a campaign swing through New Hampshire. "To willfully ignore evidence that you have for some ideological reason is wrong. If you’re killing babies and taking the tissue, that’s a very different thing than taking a dead specimen and keeping a record of it."

If you had to reread that once or twice, you're not alone. It's a very complex—and politically charged—issue. Carson appears to be saying that the fetal tissue he used for research didn't come from fetuses aborted specifically for use in medical research. He also appears to accuse Planned Parenthood of doing just that. But that's a charge Planned Parenthood has flatly rejected and isn't proved by the videos.

That's a distinction so false it makes your average obfuscating lie look honest. Unless other researchers are ordering up fetuses and then having them aborted for use in their research—and that's not what other researchers are doing—they're "taking a dead specimen" and using its tissues in their research too, just the same as Carson did.

Using tissues obtained from aborted fetuses? It's wrong, immoral, shocking, outrageous, online-petition-worthy, etc., when other researchers do it. But it's perfectly okay when Ben Carson does it.

We have reached peak IOKIYAR.