DES MOINES – (CT&P) – Republican presidential candidate Dr. Ben Carson passionately defended his use of fetal brain tissue in the Washington Post on Thursday. Earlier in the week it was revealed that in 1992 Dr. Carson had used fetal tissue in what many are calling monstrous research aimed at curing some of the most horrible diseases known to mankind.

Carson, a well-known kook who believes the earth is 6,000 years old and that Noah provided VIP seating for dinosaurs on the Ark, has been a vocal critic of fetal tissue research.

Last month, Carson railed against Planned Parenthood and pro-choice advocates by describing a fetus in the 17th week of gestation.

“At 17 weeks, you’ve got a nice little nose and little fingers and hands and the heart’s beating,” he said on Fox News. “It can respond to environmental stimulus. How can you believe that that’s just an irrelevant mass of cells? That’s what they want you to believe, when in fact it is a human being.”

However, according to Dr. Jen Gunter, an OB-GYN and pain medicine physician, the Republican presidential candidate published a study with three other colleagues in 1992 that described using “human choroid plexus ependyma and nasal mucosa from two fetuses aborted in the ninth and 17th week of gestation.”

She wrote on her blog:

“As a neurosurgeon Dr. Ben Carson knows full well that fetal tissue is essential for medical research. His discipline would have a hard time being [where] it is today without that kind of work. What is even more egregious than dismissing the multitude of researchers whose work allowed him to become a neurosurgeon is the hypocrisy of actually having done that research himself while spouting off about its supposed worthlessness.”

As soon as the revelations came to light, Dr. Carson mounted a spirited but often unintelligible defense of his team’s use of cute little unborn babies in their research:

“You have to look at the intent,” Carson said before beginning 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.”

His defense was called confused and self-serving by media outlets, so on Thursday Carson contacted the Washington Post to clear everything up.

“Although what we were doing was absolutely unconscionable, and clearly could have been done with lizard fetuses or on a computer, I want to assure all my wacked-out supporters that no Christian babies were dissected. Our salesman from Planned Parenthood, Dr. Beelzebub, assured us that we were paying for babies that were from Muslim, Jewish, or atheist mothers.

“I think we can all agree that questionable experiments on unsaved trash, whether they be unborn kiddos or fully functioning adults, is perfectly acceptable and even necessary if we are ever going to solve the public health crisis we face in this country.

“If we are going to defeat socialism, gay marriage, and the climate change conspiracy, then we’re going to have to find a way to make sure every child emerges from the womb a Christian, and our research was aimed at making that a reality.”

Dr. Carson’s explanation for his actions has been greeted with mixed reactions.

His followers in the Tea Party have been stupefied by the revelations, but that is their natural resting state, so he is not expected to lose many votes in that demographic.

However, people with an average IQ or higher point to his hypocrisy as just another reason that he should either be institutionalized or get a job as a tour guide at Ken Ham’s Creation Museum.

According to the latest polls, Dr. Carson continues to have “a snowball’s chance in hell” of winning the Republican nomination.