NIH Orders Halt To Embryonic Stem Cell Research 593
sciencehabit writes "Responding to a court order issued a week ago, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) on Friday ordered intramural researchers studying human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) to shut down their experiments. NIH's action — probably unprecedented in its history — is a response to a preliminary injunction on 23 August from US District Judge Royce Lamberth. The judge ruled that the Obama policy allowing NIH funding to be used to study hESC lines violates a law prohibiting the use of federal funds to destroy embryos."
Buy one get one? (Score:5, Interesting)
The judge ruled that the Obama policy allowing NIH funding to be used to study hESC lines violates a law prohibiting the use of federal funds to destroy embryos."
What if the scientists just charge for the research, but present an itemized bill that throws in the embryo destruction for free?
I'm mostly kidding, but isn't there some decent way to weasel around this?
Lets be fair then, (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Buy one get one? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:As always, not mentioned (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm pretty sure it applies to all of them; IIRC, the judge found that not only the Obama-era but also the Bush-era research violated the law. TFA seems to indicate that all hESC research under the auspices of NIH is covered by the order.
Re:Libertarian Approach (Score:3, Interesting)
That's not exactly the problem. It what happens after the Egg + Sperm stage. The some magic occurs and you have a proto human that various and sundry groups are trying to give full human rights to. Exactly when the embryo becomes legally human is the issue. Not whether or not you can pretend that your travels to the darker side of the Internet is somehow helping the human condition.
Re:Buy one get one? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Libertarian Approach (Score:4, Interesting)
This is more or less the same debate as over early abortions and chemical contraceptives, it's about when your genetic material becomes an independent and legally protected person. Unless you're suggesting that the libertarian approach is to let people sell their children thus making the question irrelevant, you need to set some defined boundaries of personhood and embryohood.
Re:When Religion Meets Science (Score:5, Interesting)
Why must your beliefs mandate that another individual fund (via mandatory taxation) research they view as fundamentally unethical?
I think the answer has to simply be: that's where we've chosen to draw the line in our Constitution.
That is to say, we've set it up so that (in theory), the majority doesn't get to take your individual rights away, but they do get to decide what we collectively spend money on. (And in that context, I don't consider anyone to have a right to not have their tax dollars spent on something the majority agrees with, excepting, of course, when it abridges another individual right.)
Overall I think that strikes a pretty good compromise between a government that can't do anything (even when it should) and a government that can do too much. It's not perfect, but it beats any alternative we've tried so far.
Re:Sickening (Score:5, Interesting)
It's not necessarily that. The belief that a fertilized embryo is a human isn't necessarily linked to religion (and I'm not sure how anyone can assume that link). I'm personally not religious, but I do hold that belief.
We're not talking creationist "maybe some guy in the sky created everything but we can't prove it" sort of ideology here. We're talking about a BIOLOGICALLY IDENTIFIABLE marker in the stage of the creation of a new life: the fertilization of of a cell and the forming of a unique DNA sequence. To me as a non-religious person that is actually a much less vague point of definition as to use birth as the marker is too variable - a baby can be born at 5 months into the term or 10 months into the term and still survive in some cases. Some say viability outside of the womb, but the reality is that NO baby is self-sufficient outside of the womb (all of them need additional assistance from others). Even if you take it down to the level of "able to survive with external assistance outside of the womb" then you have a situation that will vary depending on the technological environment present. A baby born in a well-equipped modern NICU can survive MUCH earlier than one born into a 3rd world backwater.
In short, completely aside from religion, fertilization seems to me like the most obvious point to declare a human life as started without getting into judgement calls and gray areas. Now, that may make certain research topics difficult, but that's the way things are. Experimentation on live humans would likely allow much faster progress too, but we as a society have agreed that the ethical implications of such research outweigh any potential gains.
Indeed I find it much LESS scientific of a matter when many people's definitions basically boil down to condition that "it's not a human if I can't hear it complain", which to me is more of an emotional definition than a scientific one.
Re:Law's the Law (Score:3, Interesting)
So when will they put a halt to all IVF treatments that destroy embryos?
The fact that this can be applied very very broadly is a reason to worry, and hope.
Re:But yet... (Score:3, Interesting)
Your two implications are inherently self contradicting. If, as you imply in your oh so clever "Osama, Obama" inference, Obama is a closet conservative Muslim, then he would object to your second inference. Since conservatives Muslims, like conservative Christians, are generally anti-abortion.
Re:Buy one get one? (Score:3, Interesting)
I refuse to allow the beliefs of anybody to get in the way of scientific research.
While I agree in general with the rest of your post, I feel like I have to caution you about this point. There are a lot of arguments (some more valid than others) that a human embryo is a potential person and is deserving of the rights and protections of any other human. I don't necessarily agree with this, but I don't know that it is completely untrue either.
We would not terminate a person for the purpose of harvesting their organs. An adult human is capable of expressing a desire to donate their organs, but the default without an expressed preference would be to not take those organs. If one is of the opinion that the embryo is in some way a human being, then it would seem to me to be unethical to harvest from them without their express permission.
Again I am not claiming that I think an embryo is a person, but a lot of people do feel that way. The fact that this is still hotly debated says to me that as a society we have not reached a consensus.
Re:Buy one get one? (Score:3, Interesting)
ok, but who watches cspan?
Re:Buy one get one? (Score:4, Interesting)
No, what these people are saying is that "obey the laws we agree with, disobey the laws we don't agree with".
Nope. What I'm saying is, in any system of laws, there are usually ways to obey the letter of a law while violating its spirit. These loopholes are, in many cases, eventually closed.
If we accept that, for example, many people don't pay as much in taxes as the spirit of the law says that they should by finding ways to get deductions or shelter income -- all things allowed within the letter of the law -- why couldn't we also accept that scientists might obey the letter of a law preventing them from doing research while violating the hell out of the spirit of it?
I'm sorry if my position is too nuanced or irreducible to a false dichotomy for you, but, there it is.
Re:Buy one get one? (Score:3, Interesting)
She's not the vice president today, so I'd guess that it turned out pretty darned well for the Democrats, didn't it?
Re:Buy one get one? (Score:3, Interesting)
I refuse to allow the beliefs of anybody to get in the way of scientific research.
That is until the tables are turned, right?
Would you subject yourself to dangerous radiation RIGHT NOW so that scientists could study the harmful effects?
That is basically what you are stating. The whole debate about whether an Embryo is a person gets real messy real fast - since there is no real line to draw it at, as everyone develops differently at slight variances. When they are born? What about during labour, moments before their first breath? Until they have a cerebral cortex? But they'll have one if you don't stop it from developing...
No really - if you TRULY believe that it's alright to kill someone to further research, waltz right down to your local hospital and say "Study me! Dissect me! Make me a case study!" If it's that you don't believe an Embryo is a person, then I have to ask where it is that YOU draw the line, because right now no one has agreed on it.
Re:Lets be fair then, (Score:3, Interesting)
You're going to have to draw an arbitrary line where a bunch of cells becomes human. No matter where you draw that arbitrary line it'll be stupid, but not drawing the line is even more stupid. Erring on the safe side is a good way of symbolically saying that "human life is special".
Most human societies have agreed that human life is special. So even if some idiot takes a GPS, wanders in the wilderness, makes emergency calls about water tasting salty, we still save him when he finally actually gets in trouble if we humanly can (we may fine him, but we still save him).
Why is special casing human life important? Even if you're an atheist, consider these:
1) Many of the psychopaths in power think they are special and everyone else isn't, so they will be very happy if they don't have to keep up the pretense that all humans are special, and people just have the same rights as some chicken in a poultry farm, or a single cell in a test tube.
2) If we fool ourselves well enough, we might even fool the future transhumans/posthumans or AIs for a few years or even decades. So they treat human life as important too, at least for a while (maybe long enough)
Of course we better treat the transhumans/posthumans/AI well. Hence I do have some reservations about certain branches of AI research. We already have nonhuman intelligent/sentient creatures - they're in the pet shop etc. If we can't treat animals well, I don't think we should create AIs only to enslave and mistreat them similarly. Especially when some AI researchers are in the habit of just "chucking things together" without really understanding what is going on... Same goes for the human-animal hybrids people are researching on, I personally think that's not a good idea, unless you want to do away with the idea that human life is special and the big implications of it. Do we think society is ready to decide at which point a human-animal hybrid is human (and thus has the special rights and privileges of a human). How about a human-machine hybrid, or a human-animal-machine hybrid? I personally don't think so. Most of us are eating animals and enjoying it too much (and some thriving even e.g. those who eat fish vs those who don't).
Yes the research might help, but consider the predicted percentages of "help" vs the long term implications if you do it now vs later. It might actually be better to just leave some stuff for later. There are so many other areas where more research and researchers can help, without these issues.
Must this be done now? Why not do something else instead? I guess I regularly answer this incorrectly - that's why I'm on slashdot so often
Re:China (Score:3, Interesting)