By now, everyone should realize that those "scandalous" Planned Parenthood videos allegedly showing the organization profiting from the sale of fetal tissue were fake. But that hasn't stop the videos from causing some major damage -- to way more than the women's health and pro-choice movements.

Mother Jones reports that, in addition to being blamed for prompting a number of terrorist attacks on Planned Parenthood clinics, the videos have "begun to undermine potentially life-saving research on diseases including diabetes, Parkinson's and Alzheimer's." And scientists are speaking out about it.

Thirty-eight states allow fetal tissue to be donated for research on curing deadly diseases and birth defects, while six ban this kind of research, according to Mother Jones. In the wake of the fake videos, lawmakers in nine states are now trying to get bans on the books, and Republican lawmakers have proposed a bill that would make fetal-tissue research illegal nationwide.

These bans won't affect Planned Parenthood in any way -- since it no longer receives any reimbursement for donating fetal tissue, and have proven that they never profited from doing so in the first place -- but they could ostensibly prevent researchers from finding life-saving cures for deadly diseases.

"It's anti-progress," Gail Robertson, a veteran researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told Mother Jones. "We're in a fight for the future of cures to the diseases that will affect us all." Robertson uses fetal tissue to study heart diseases like sudden cardiac death, which is the leading cause of natural death in the United States.

Theresa Naluai-Cecchini, a scientist at Birth Defects Research Lab at the University of Washington in Seattle, works at a lab that also distributes fetal tissue samples to researchers working on spinal cord injuries, cancer, HIV and eye disease. Mother Jones reports that in the last year, "her lab has distributed 1,109 tissue samples," but that in the last month, thanks to the Planned Parenthood videos, "only five specimens total have come in."

Naluai-Cecchini told Mother Jones that if this trend continues, her lab and many others will likely be forced to close, and "promising research would stop until a commercial alternative is found. The cost of research would increase dramatically, and new findings would take considerably longer."

Robertson, whose research on fatal heart diseases has been credited with saving lives, urged people to think about their loved ones before voting on the proposed bans on fetal-tissue research.

"I would ask the public to reflect on family members -- people you care about who have been saved by this technology," she told Mother Jones. "Think about the unanticipated implications of supporting these kinds of legislation."