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Good news. There was a federal ruling very favorable for those of us who are science and reality based. One of the horrible decisions by the Bush administration continues to be untangled in the courts.:
• CSM: Victory for stem-cell research: Court backs Obama's guidelines
• ScienceInsider: Stem Court Ruling a Decisive Victory for NIH
• LA Times: Government funding reaffirmed for stem cell research
• New Scientist: Court ends threat to US embryonic stem cell funding
Victories, even partial and temporary ones, are few and far between and this one is worth highlighting. What happened and why isn't it over, despite the positive headlines? From Bloomberg:
Lamberth last year temporarily barred the government from funding the research, finding it probably violated the so-called Dickey-Wicker Amendment. The 1996 law bars government spending on research that damages or destroys a human embryo. The U.S. Appeals Court in Washington in a 2-1 decision in April let funding continue pending final ruling from Lamberth, saying the language of statute wouldn’t support a funding cutoff...
The NIH then wrote guidelines allowing research on cells derived from embryos that would otherwise be disposed of after in vitro fertilization procedures.
James Sherley, a researcher at Boston Biomedical Research Institute, and Theresa Deisher of Seattle, the plaintiffs, won the right to sue by claiming they were unfairly disadvantaged in competing for NIH funding with researchers who used embryonic cells.
The government said the stem-cell research is separate from any that destroys the embryo because the cells must be grown in a medium and are then “differentiated” into other cells, such as nerve cells.
The appeals court agreed with the government’s contention that because the Dickey-Wicker Amendment is written in the present tense the “statute strongly suggests it does not extend to past actions.”
In a dissenting opinion, Judge Karen LeCraft Henderson accused her colleagues on the three judge panel of “linguistic jujitsu” in parsing verb tenses in order to narrow the amendment’s meaning from what Congress intended.
This is a huge step, but the issue won't go away until there's clarity in the law. From the
LA Times:
Sherley and Deisher can appeal the ruling. The Alliance Defense Fund, a conservative organization that assisted with the lawsuit, said in a statement that its attorneys and other lawyers involved in the case were "weighing all of their options for appeal."
For the time being, advocates for stem cell research rejoiced.
"We clearly think it's the right decision," said Dr. Jonathan Thomas, chairman of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, the state's stem cell funding agency. "It will now lift the cloud that's been hanging over researchers around the country."
The last quote comes from
ScienceInsider:
Harvard Medical School stem cell researcher George Daley is more cautious. "I hope we're done for now, but nothing surprises me anymore," Daley says.
Expect an appeal, and expect a SCOTUS ruling (a friendly reminder that elections have consequences).