Court Rules Against Stem Cell Policy 388
An anonymous reader sends this quote from Reuters:
"A US district court issued a preliminary injunction Monday stopping federal funding of human embryonic stem cell research, in a slap to the Obama administration's new guidelines on the sensitive issue. The court ruled in favor of a suit filed in June by researchers who said human embryonic stem cell research involves the destruction of human embryos. Judge Royce Lamberth granted the injunction after finding that the lawsuit would likely succeed because the guidelines violated law banning the use of federal funds to destroy human embryos. '(Embryonic stem cell) research is clearly research in which an embryo is destroyed,' Lamberth wrote in a 15-page ruling."
Federal funds used to destroy embryos... (Score:5, Informative)
Federal funds used to conduct research on embryos that would otherwise be destroyed anyway...
Why distinguish?
Personally I think this is ridiculous. (Score:1, Informative)
Embryos created for IVF clinics that are unused are destroyed by the clinic anyway unless the "owners" want to donate them to other patients. I think it should be up to the people who the embryos are created for to begin with as to what happens to them after the IVF process is completed. Embryos aren't people, they're collections of cells. Apparently it's ok to dispose of them but not ok to use them for research that could eventually save lives or at least have positive benefits for humanity.
Re:It's just the US (Score:4, Informative)
It's just federal funding. Private funding and state funding are both pushing forward.
Re:Federal funds used to destroy embryos... (Score:5, Informative)
I'm not exactly a bio chem geek per say, but I have done a fair amount of research, particularly into the embryonic stem cell thing.
The problem is, destroying embryo's purposefully is what people think it always entails, in reality thats just a shortcut. Once they have embryonic stem cells from a source(something like a miscarriage etc, cells that would have been destroyed anyways) they can basically grow them in a petri dish almost indefinitely and multiply them almost infinitely. After they have a line of embryonic stem cells going they add a slurry of your DNA to them and viola, embryonic stem cells tailored to you without all that nasty purposely killing embryo's. The thing is, they need more lines of embryonic stem cells as the closer the original is to your line the easier it is for your own tailored cure, but that goes for both types of embryonic stem cells, however it adds more layers of difficulty to the non embryo destroying method than the embryo destroying one, hence the need for more lines.
There are so many miscarriages and abortions anyways that theres no need to not use the byproduct for something useful. Its either use it or it goes in the garbage anyways.
Any real bio chem geek feel free to correct me if I've jumbled things badly, but from what I understand, the funding was also conditional upon no embryo destruction, but lifted the blanket restriction against research into stem cells originating from embryo's period.
Re:Playing devils advocate here (Score:5, Informative)
About this claim that embryonic stem cell research hasn't yielded anything useful yet...
Re:Federal funds used to destroy embryos... (Score:5, Informative)
Federal funds used to conduct research on embryos that would otherwise be destroyed anyway...
Why distinguish?
Because it was the manifest and obvious intent of Congress to forbid the Federal funding of such research. See, e.g. the dickey amendment [wikipedia.org] which provides in no uncertain terms that no funds are to be expended on research in which embryos are destroyed irrespective of the origin or fate of those embryos.
SEC. 509. (a) None of the funds made available in this Act may be used for--
(1) the creation of a human embryo or embryos for research purposes; or
(2) research in which a human embryo or embryos are destroyed, discarded, or knowingly subjected to risk of injury or death greater than that allowed for research on fetuses in utero under 45 CFR 46.208(a)(2) and Section 498(b) of the Public Health Service Act [1](42 U.S.C. 289g(b)) (Title 42, Section 289g(b), United States Code).
(b) For purposes of this section, the term "human embryo or embryos" includes any organism, not protected as a human subject under 45 CFR 46 (the Human Subject Protection regulations) . . . that is derived by fertilization, parthenogenesis, cloning, or any other means from one or more human gametes (sperm or egg) or human diploid cells (cells that have two sets of chromosomes, such as somatic cells).
It is absolutely galling that Obama (& his subordinates at HHS/NIH, for whom he is responsible) would just ignore the clear language of the statute and decide to fund this research. There is just no way to square it with the statute.
[ As an aside, as a personal political matter, I would vote against such an amendment and for unrestricted funding for stem cell research. As a legal matter before the court here, the question is whether the NIH policy comports with the law not whether the law is a good, or even coherent, one. ]
Re:Was this one of Obama's first things to do? (Score:3, Informative)
Both Bush and Obama differentiated between creation of embryonic stem cells and their use in research. Bush did not allow the use of stem cell lines created after ~2000. Obama allowed the use of stem cell lines created with private funds in federal research. Both administrations viewed this as consistent with the 1996 law which prohibited Federal funds from being used to destroy embryos as the stem cell lines were created with private funds. The judge wrote that one can't make this distinction between funds used to create the lines and funds for research using the lines, that the law prohibits all research using embryonic stem cell lines. I trust that the Department of Justice will appeal.
The judge was a Reagan appointee.
Re:Federal funds used to destroy embryos... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Federal funds used to destroy embryos... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Federal funds used to destroy embryos... (Score:3, Informative)
Right, so I really shouldn't answer you, but I'll repeat myself anyways since you didn't read my post.
"they can basically grow them in a petri dish almost indefinitely and multiply them almost infinitely"
This nearly infinite amount from a single line sort of negates your argument in its entirety, and new technology and methods are pushing that nearly infinite line further and further back into effectively infinite territory.
Basically, as there is a finite amount of variation in human genetic code that needs to be accounted for, there is a finite amount of lines that could ever be needed. As research continues it may even cease the need for new lines almost entirely since they will eventually develop a method for creating entirely new lines from existing lines.
Also, IVF is and will continue to be a major source of these stem cells for reasons I mentioned elsewhere in the comments on this story.
Re:Was this one of Obama's first things to do? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Federal funds used to destroy embryos... (Score:5, Informative)
Embryonic stem cells [wikipedia.org] are not harvested from miscarriages or abortions. They are harvested from artificially fertilized eggs that grow into embryos and have reached the blastocyst [wikipedia.org] phase and have grown to 50 to 150 cells in size.
The blastocyst that is the source of ebryonic stem cells has never came into contact with a uterus, has never been implanted into the wall of a uterus and absolutely positively never will develop beyond the blastocyst phase since there is no uterus in which to embed itself and start the process of developing the umbilical cord.
There are ethical issues that we need to deal with but it is important to have the facts on which to base conclusions as there are many people who try to confuse the uninformed and have them believe that the evil scientists are ripping babies from the womb and killing them to collect stem cells. This is nowhere near reality.
Re:Federal funds used to destroy embryos... (Score:3, Informative)
Abortions can and do occur at this stage, but you are correct on the miscarriages. Miscarriages mostly provide different types of stem cells, but there have been some research milestones made from research on them, but less in the stem cell area and more in the genetic toolkit areas.
Re:I appreciate the moral implications for some (Score:2, Informative)
I never heard the argument about being pro-birth control but anti-abortion until I dated a couple women who'd had abortions.
With the various morning after pills, norplant, birth control pills, Mifepristone and now a drug that works for up to 7 days, the surgical abortion procedures seem very archaic and dark age.
When a very liberal and very feminist women who has had an abortion tells you its the worst thing that could be done to a human and should be outlawed, it made me think really hard about abortions.
Re:Federal funds used to destroy embryos... (Score:2, Informative)
Actually embryonic stem cells are losing ground to adult stem cells, because adult stem cells have almost no chance at all of rejection, being the persons own genetic material. Also, the aborted fetuses are destroyed anyways, it would simply be putting the literally garbage (it is thrown out otherwise) to good use, and possibly saving lives. But I guess some people don't care about saving lives.
Even though adult stem cells will be more useful, embrionic stem cells are more useful for the beginning stages of research, as we begin to get a clue as to how they work. And hundreds of embryos are made for some proceedures, to make sure at least one will take, many of them end up garbage, and that is simply a ball of cells, barely even at the point of specialization yet. And if that is a full human being, than so is a large percentage of all life on this planet, including monkeys.
Re:More complicated than you think (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Wow, weak cause for harm by the plantiffs (Score:3, Informative)
Scientifically everyone is in absolute agreement that those embryos are 100% human
That's an outright twisting of the truth. People agree that the material is human material, but so are my toenail clippings. Those aren't human, and that's the same debate here with blastocysts. So you're vastly overstating the case.
I believe the lawsuit (see a few posts up in the thread) actually specifies the exact law they claim the other researchers are breaching. If you can name the exact law you claim your competitors are breaching, then yes you most certainly can go sue them...
Nope, you also have to show harm. That's why the guy suing over "under God" in the pledge wasn't allowed to pursue his suit on behalf of his daughter, remember? (He wasn't the custodial parent.) If that's sufficient reason to dismiss a suit, it seems like this demonstration of "harm" is even weaker.
Re:Was this one of Obama's first things to do? (Score:3, Informative)
Interesting, but in my experience, most embryologists don't bat an eye at calling a blastocyst an embryo.
I have not yet heard one person opposed to stem cell research suggest actually stopping in vitro fertilization,which would be the only way to stop these embryos from being killed.
It's true, the talking heads aren't calling for an end to IVF in the ESC debate, but they're only the loudest voices. In fact people have been calling for an end on IVF for a while, at my catholic grade school they did emphasize that. Matter of fact, they also oppose birth control methods that don't prevent conception, such as IUDs unless I'm mistaken.
Pretty callous group of that group of out of touch old men, demanding that any fertile woman gets saddled with as many babies as possible and any couple having trouble conceiving be cursed with no babies, but they are at least somewhat consistent.