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Sherley, et. al., v. Sebelius, et al. lawsuit dropped
07-27-2011
EDIT CONNECT
SHARING OPTIONS:
WASHINGTON—Stem cell research got a reprieve this week
as
the courts dismissed the Sherley, et. al., v. Sebelius, et al. lawsuit against the Obama administration's Executive
Order 13505,
"Removing Barriers to Responsible Scientific Research Involving
Human Stem Cells," which allowed and funded stem cell research. With the
lawsuit
dropped, U.S. researchers are free to continue researching and looking
for cures that might be possible through stem cell treatments. Sherley, et. al., v. Sebelius, et al. claimed that stem cell
research that was funded by
the National Institutes of Health (NIH)
violated then-President Bill Clinton's
1995 Dickey-Wicker law, which banned the NIH and the Department of Health and
Human Services from using funds for research that would harm or destroy a human
embryo. It was filed
back in 2009 by two scientists who also argued that
Obama's pronouncement threatened their ability to get government funding for
adult stem cell
research due to the extra competition.
In 2010, U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth, chief of the
federal court in Washington, ordered
a halt on stem cell research, saying that
the lawsuit was likely to succeed. The injunction was overturned by the U.S.
Circuit Court of Appeals,
spurred by protest from the Obama administration.
"This Court, following the D.C. Circuit's reasoning
and
conclusions, must find that defendants reasonably interpreted the Dickey-Wicker
Amendment to permit funding for human embryonic stem cell research
because such
research is not 'research in which a human embryo or embryos are destroyed,'"
Lamberth said in an opinion Wednesday.
As stem cell research has progressed and knowledge of and
interest in its potential has multiplied, it has become
a hot topic, enough so
that Clinton, Bush and Obama have all passed varying legislation on the issue
during their tenures as president, coming down on
different facets of the
issue. While Clinton's legislation banned the funding, Bush made his own proclamation,
saying that researchers using human
embryonic stem cells could get federal
funding provided the cell lines were derived before Aug. 9, 2001, from an
embryo that had been created for
reproductive purposes and was no longer
needed. He also made it required that informed consent for the donation of the
embryo was secured. Bush
followed that up with Executive Order 13435,
"Expanding Approved Stem Cell Lines in Ethically Responsible Ways." The order
stated that stem cell
research could get government support, provided it was
"research on the isolation, derivation, production and testing of stem cells …
derived without
creating a human embryo for research purposes or destroying,
discarding or subjecting to harm a human embryo or fetus."
Obama's edict allows projects involving stem cell from
already-destroyed embryos as well as embryos that will be destroyed in
the
future, but parents who donate the original embryo have to give consent and be
informed of other options, such as donating the embryo to another
infertile
woman. It has also allowed the number of stem cell lines created with private
money that federally funded scientists could study to increase
from 21 during
Bush's tenure to about 100.
While the decision will lay things
to rest for the time being,
it is unlikely that it will solve the situation long-term. Stem cell research
remains a point of growing concern for its
opponents, who worry that additional
support and interest will lead to the destruction of more embryos, bringing up
the issue of viability, something
else that will likely never be solved to
everyone's satisfaction. However, most of their fears are unfounded, as stem
cell research supporters point
out that the majority of all stem cells used in
this research are discarded extras from fertility clinics that would be
destroyed
regardless. Code: E07271100 Back |
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