Judge stops stem cell funding
WASHINGTON (CNS) – A federal judge ruled Aug. 23 that the Obama administration’s guidelines for funding embryonic stem-cell research violate federal law and stopped such funding while a lawsuit against it continues.
Chief Judge Royce C. Lamberth of U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia said in his 15-page ruling granting a temporary injunction that Drs. James L. Sherley and Theresa Deisher, both adult stem-cell researchers, had standing to challenge the guidelines because they faced the possibility of losing funding from the National Institutes of Health when NIH funding for embryonic stem-cell research was expanded.
The lawsuit had originally been filed on behalf of the two doctors; Nightlight Christian Adoptions, an adoption and counseling agency that facilitates international, domestic and embryo adoptions; embryos themselves; two couples; and the Christian Medical Association. Lamberth ruled in 2009 that none of the plaintiffs had legal standing, but an appeals court overruled him only in the case of the two doctors.
The Aug. 23 ruling said the researchers’ attorneys had shown that the Dickey-Wicker amendment, approved annually since 1996 “without substantive alteration,” demonstrates that “the unambiguous intent of Congress is to prohibit the expenditure of federal funds on ‘research in which a human embryos or embryos are destroyed.’”
“By allowing federal funding of ESC research, the guidelines are in violation of the Dickey-Wicker amendment,” Lamberth wrote.
He also ruled that “the guidelines threaten the very livelihood of plaintiffs Sherley and Deisher” because their “injury of increased competition ... is actual and imminent.”
Supporters of the Obama administration’s guidelines for funding embryonic stem-cell research have argued that no embryos will be created and destroyed for the research since only already existing embryos created for in vitro fertilization and later discarded would be used.
Steven H. Aden, senior legal counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund, co-counsel in the lawsuit, said the decision “is simply enforcing an existing law passed by Congress that prevents Americans from paying another penny for needless research on human embryos.”
“Experimentation on embryonic stem cells isn’t even necessary because adult stem-cell research has been enormously successful,” he added. “In economic times like we are in now, it doesn’t make sense for the federal government to use precious taxpayer dollars for this illegal and unethical purpose.”
“Judge Lamberth ruled correctly and upheld the will of Congress,” said Vickie Evans, Respect Life Coordinator for the Archdiocese of San Francisco. “Congress passed the Dickey Amendment in 1995 during the Clinton Administration to provtect human beings from being experimented on at any stage of development. It denied federal funds for research causing the destruction of human embryos by extracting their stem cells.”
However, she said, “President Obama’s 2009 executive order allowed federal dollars to be spent for research causing the destruction of embryos acquired from fertility clinics. Congress in 1995 understood that the American people were not so utilitarian that they would approve the destruction of one person so that another could live or be cured.”
She added, “Scientists have already determined that adult stem cells and induced pluripotent stem cells have healing capabilities currently outweighing those of human embryonic stem cells, without the ethical implications of destroying a human embryo.”
The Catholic Church strongly supports adult stem-cell research but opposes any research that involves the destruction of human embryos.
By Nancy Frazier O’Brien
From August 27, 2010 issue of Catholic San Francisco.
