Solomonic Justice for Embryonic Stem Cell Research?

According to an Associated Press report, a federal appeals court on August 24 refused to order the Obama administration to stop funding embryonic stem cell research. The plaintiffs argued that the research relies on destroyed human embryos.

The U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia upheld a lower court decision throwing out a lawsuit that challenged federal funding for the research, which is used in pursuit of cures to deadly diseases. Opponents claimed the National Institutes of Health was violating the 1996 Dickey-Wicker law that prohibits taxpayer financing for work that harms an embryo.

The three-judge appeals court panel unanimously agreed with a lower court judge’s dismissal of the case. This is the second time the appeals court has said that the federal funding of embryonic stem cell research was permissible.

Dickey-Wicker permits federal funding of research projects that utilize already-derived cells—which are not themselves embryos—because no ‘human embryo or embryos are destroyed’ in such projects, ” Chief Judge David B. Sentelle said in the ruling, adding that the plaintiffs made the same argument the last the time the court reviewed the issue. “Therefore, unless they have established some ‘extraordinary circumstance, ’ the law of the case is established and we will not revisit the issue, ” he said.

Opponents of the research object because the cells which are being used were obtained from human embryos. They say they fear that success in the research would spur new embryo destruction. Proponents say the research cells come mostly from extra embryos that fertility clinics would have discarded anyway.