The Blog

This news is over a week old, but I was traveling last week when it broke and wasn’t able to post on it. From the AP – the latest in the continuing story of federally funded embryonic stem cell research: Judge dismisses suit on federal stem cell research

For those of you who haven’t been following this very closely, or at all, a little background:

The Dickey-Wicker Amendment is part of the Department of Health and Human Services budget. It was signed into law by President Clinton in 1996 and has been renewed every year since. It prohibits federal tax dollars from being used to create or destroy human embryos for scientific research. In 2001, President Bush signed an executive order allowing for the funding of ESC research, but limited it to research on ESC lines created before August of 2001 so that the destruction of more human embryos would not be encouraged, thus complying with Dickey. In 2009, President Barack Obama signed an executive order overturning the Bush stem cell policy. Shortly after that the National Institutes of Health revised it’s own stem cell policy to allow for the funding of research newly created stem cell lines, but restricting it to lines derived from embryos created for reproductive purposes only and not from embryos created specifically for research.

Now to the courts. Last August U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth agreed with two adult stem cell researchers (Theresa Deisher, co-founder of the Sound Choice Pharmaceutical Institute, and James L. Sherley, a biological engineer at Boston Biomedical Research Institute) who argued that funding ESCR on new ESC lines violated Dickey by indirectly encouraging the destruction of human embryos and he temporarily blocked the NIH from using federal dollars to fund any ESCR. The Obama Administration appealed and the appellate court granted them a stay on the Lamberth ruling during the appeals process. This April the Court of Appeals finally ruled in favor of the administration and overturned the District Court ruling altogether.

WHEW! Did you follow all that? Cause I think even I started to get a little confused myself there for a second.

After the appeals court overturned his primary injunction, I had hoped that Lamberth would stick to his guns on this when Sherley and Deisher then asked him for a summary judgment. He was dead-on in his interpretation of the Dickey amendment and how the NIH guidelines violated it and it was refreshing to see someone in such a position not get swept up in the Dictatorship of Sentimentalism that usually dominates this debate. But, alas. According to the AP, in his opinion last Wednesday, he said that he was “bound by the higher court’s analysis and ruled in favor of the administration’s motion to dismiss the case.”

This, of course, is a huge disappointment to the many of us who do not want our tax dollars spent on the cannibalization of tiny human beings. But, what’s more disappointing is the fact that this is all we’ve got here in the US in terms of protecting human embryos from exploitation at the hands of researchers. I’m pretty sure it would surprise most people to know that the US is actually lagging far behind several other more progressive European countries in this regard. We’re often described as being hostile to science especially when it comes to stem cell research, but the fact is there are absolutely no laws limiting any kind of research involving the creation, use and destruction of human embryos (including human and human/animal hybrid cloning) here in the States. All we’ve got is Dickey-Wicker Amendment prohibiting the Federal Government from paying for such research and even that may soon be in jeopardy if scientists who would like to abolish it continue to gain friends in Washington.

In the words of Slim Pickins’ Blazing Saddles character Taggart, “I am depressed.”

Previous coverage:
Court Blocks New Fed. Funding for ESCR!
Boo-hoo! Scientists Can’t Destroy Embryos on Taxpayer Dime 🙁
Appeals Court Suspends Federal Embryonic Stem Cell Research Funding Ban
ESCR Funding: it’s Primarily About Ethics, not Science
Appeals Court Overrules ESCR Defunding