Florida congresswoman sued the Pentagon over stem cells. One problem: her husband's stocks

Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL) and her husband aresuing the federal government, alleging COVID vaccine requirements in the military violated their religious beliefs because the therapy was developed using embryonic stem cells.

But Luna’s husband, Andrew Gamberzky, who resigned from the Air National Guard over the issue, also invests in a company that uses human embryonic stem cells to treat disabilities, according to Luna’s most recent congressional financial disclosure.

Gamberzky owns between $1,001 and $15,000 of stock in Lineage Cell Therapeutics. The California-based company says it intends to “pioneer a new branch of medicine based on transplanting specific cell types to patients with serious medical conditions,” such as paralysis.

That, according to corporate filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, includes the use of embryonic stem cells derived from human embryos — a practice that many conservatives consider morally fraught, if not reprehensible, amid an age-old debate over the definition of personhood and when life truly begins.

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The lawsuit, which includes the Department of Defense and the U.S. Air Force as defendants, seeks monetary damages for “significant financial injury … including loss of healthcare, spousal benefits, and survivor benefits as provided for by the military.”

“Plaintiff is unable to receive any of the COVID-19 vaccines due to what they believe and understand is a connection between these vaccines and their testing, development, or production using fetal cell lines,” the lawsuit says.

“Plaintiffs hold the sincere religious belief that they must not take anything into their bodies that God has forbidden or that would alter their body functions, such as by inducing the production of a spike protein in a manner not designed by God.”

Luna’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Earlier this year — before Luna and Gamberzky filed the lawsuit — Raw Story first reported on Gamberzky’s ownership of Lineage Cell Therapeutics stock in the context of Luna’s staunch anti-abotion position.

At the time, Luna congressional press aide Darren Dershem acknowledged Raw Story’s several requests for comment, but Luna’s office did not otherwise respond to messages and emailed questions.

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Luna spokeswoman Edie Heipel subsequently said in an email to Raw Story that "Rep. Luna’s positions on this issue are blatantly clear" and that "she has no and has never had affiliation" with Lineage Cell Therapeutics "to include owning stock".

Heipel did not respond to several follow-up questions, including why Luna's husband purchased Lineage Cell Therapeutics stock, what she thinks of her husband's stock holding and whether he plans to sell it.

Congressional financial disclosures, which require members of Congress to detail stock trades made by themselves, their spouses and dependent children, offer no indication that Gamberzky sold his Lineage Cell Therapeutics.

Lineage Cell Therapeutics did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Earlier this year, the company declined to answer questions about its technology, use of embryonic stem cells or investments in the company by government officials.

“The company is not able to contribute to your report on the personal financial investments of federal government officials,” spokesman Nic Johnson wrote in an email.

‘No better than the Nazis’

Luna herself has previously questioned the use of certain human stem cells in medical research.

"A lot of times doctors and scientists will argue, well, 'we need stem cells.' Well, you don't have to have necessarily fetal stem cells,” Luna said during an interview in 2021 with One America News. “There's other stem cells that they can use. Then they can clone and harvest. So I feel like that whole argument in itself is really disturbing, because at the end of the day, you know, where are they getting this tissue?

"It's not OK. It's morally wrong,” Luna continued, citing the sale of pre-birth tissues for research purposes. “It's not done in the name of science. And frankly, if you're going to do human testing, that makes us no better than the Nazis."

In a March 9 filing with the SEC covering company activity in 2022, Lineage Cell Therapeutics briefly addressed embryonic stem cells.

"Government-imposed bans or restrictions on the use of embryos or hES cells in research and development in the United States and abroad could generally constrain stem cell research, thereby limiting the market and demand for our products," the company stated.

‘Pro-choice & pro-woman arguments are b-------’

The investment in Lineage Cell Therapeutics represents the only stock shares that Luna or Gamberzky own, according to Luna’s most recent financial disclosure, which she filed with U.S. House officials on Aug. 2, 2023.

Gamberzky appears to have purchased the stock sometime between late September 2021 and late August 2022, as an earlier disclosure filed by Luna in 2021 did not list a Lineage Cell Therapeutics stock holding. The 2022 filing did list the investment. No specific date is given for the purchase.

Lineage Cell Therapeutics says it uses stem cells to “replace or support cells that are dysfunctional or absent due to degenerative disease or traumatic injury, or administered as a means of helping the body mount an effective immune response to cancer.”

Then and now, Luna, a freshman who won Florida’s 13th Congressional District seat in 2022, routinely decries abortion and argues that human life is sacred from its earliest stages.

She has cheered the Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization decision, which overturned Roe v. Wade and ended a federal right to abortion. And during her brief congressional tenure, she's already co-sponsored several House bills that aim to reduce abortions or restrict and regulate abortion rights, including H.R. 862 — the "Dismemberment Abortion Ban Act of 2023" — H.R. 7 — the "No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion and Abortion Insurance Full Disclosure Act of 2023" and H.R. 4345, which seeks to "protect the dignity of fetal remains".

“My mother chose #life. My husband was adopted. There are so many stories like ours,” Luna wrote in a May 2022 Facebook post in explaining her opposition to abortion. “It’s time we look at what the science says about life. If a single cell organism is considered life on another planet, what about a multi-cellular being in a womb?”

In 2019, Luna wrote: “Abortion was never intended for women’s rights. It was intended to rid the 'supreme' race of less valued bloodlines. Abortion was born in eugenics. All those pro-choice & pro-woman arguments are b-------.”

More recently, in March, Luna pilloried Washington, D.C., city officials during a dramatic House Oversight Committee hearing. She accused them of ignoring “horrific” abortions of fetuses that she said were fully or near-fully developed and aborted by a doctor who should lose his medical license. She said the fetuses were children and named them: Christopher, Harriet, Phoenix, Holly and Angel.

Behind Luna in the Capitol hearing room as she spoke: large posters of their dead bodies.

Stem cell therapy, in general, offers great promise for people stricken with a variety of maladies.

But the use of embryonic stem cells, specifically, has for years caused doctors, scientists, bioethicists and the religious to debate whether the potential for life-improving stem cell treatments outweighs what some consider an immutable wrong — regardless of whether human embryos used would have ever been implanted or viable.

Human embryonic stem cells used for therapeutic purposes primarily come from early embryos known as blastocysts that “were created by in vitro fertilization (IVF) for assisted reproduction but were no longer needed,” according to the International Society for Stem Cell Research, a nonprofit organization that counts 4,500 scientists, educators, ethicists and business leaders among its ranks.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, for one, questions their use, stating: “The Church favors ethically acceptable stem cell research. It opposes destroying some human lives now, on the pretext that this may possibly help other lives in the future. We must respect life at all times, especially when our goal is to save lives.”

‘Floridians can count on Anna Paulina Luna’

Anti-abortion organizations have lauded Luna, an endorsee of former President Donald Trump who last year spearheaded the censure of Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), for such advocacy.

“Floridians can count on Anna Paulina Luna to champion life-affirming policies that protect moms and babies from the horror of abortion, and we are proud to endorse her for Congress,” Marilyn Musgrave, Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America’s vice president of government affairs, wrote last year when her organization endorsed Luna. “Anna Paulina was raised by a single mother and knows firsthand the compassion and vital services the pro-life movement offers mothers in need. She stands in stark contrast to Democrats who push for abortion on demand up to birth, even cruel late-term abortions, paid for with tax dollars – an agenda Floridians overwhelmingly reject.”

Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America did not immediately respond to questions about Luna’s husband’s investment in Lineage Cell Therapeutics.

Annual personal financial disclosures, which are mandatory for all members of Congress, detail the assets, investments, financial trades, debts, royalties and outside sources of income for lawmakers and their spouses. Congress requires these filings to in part defend against conflicts of interest and enhance government transparency.

Lawmakers are also required to disclose any individual stock or cryptocurrency trade within 45 days of making them, although dozens of members of Congress have failed to comply with this law, leading to some to introduce outright bans on members of Congress making such trades.

Federal records also indicate that on June 1, the U.S. House Committee on Ethics granted Luna’s request in May for a gift waiver associated with the birth of her first child, who was born in August.

The waiver allows Luna to forego publicly disclosing gifts related to the birth.