On Thursday (September 9th), the U.S. Court of Appeals in the District of Columbia lifted a ban on federal taxpayer funding of human embryonic stem cell research pending further review.

Proponents of the research involving the destruction of human embryos have been up in arms that new funding approved by President Barack Obama’s administration had previously been blocked by a federal judge. As a result of an injunction on the funding issued by U.S. Chief District Judge Royce C. Lamberth of the District of Columbia, the National Institutes of Health had announced it was suspending consideration of new grants for the research.

According to Tony Perkins of The Family Research Council, “The Judge’s initial opinion noted that ‘ESC research necessarily depends upon the destruction of a human embryo,’ and the plain language of the Dickey-Wicker amendment, passed by Congress every year since 1996, says that no federal funds shall be used for ‘research in which a human embryo or embryos are destroyed.'”

The Judge added, correctly, that, “In this Court’s view, a stay [of the injunction] would flout the will of Congress, as this Court understands what Congress has enacted in the Dickey-Wicker Amendment. Congress remains perfectly free to amend or revise the statute. This Court is not free to do so.” The judge added, “defendants are incorrect about much of their ‘parade of horribles’ that will supposedly result from this Court’s preliminary injunction.”

The appellate court decision at least temporarily reverses Judge Lamberth’s ban on the taxpayer funding.

This new legal battle has ripped open the debate over taxpayer funding of research that is unethical, illegal and complete fruitless. Rhetoric from researchers that benefit financially from the grants and politicians and organizations bent on making sure human embryos are not recognized as having any intrinsic value continues unchanged. They again are claiming that the use of human embryonic stem cells is the only hope for those who suffer from disease and paint those opposed to embryonic stem cell research as “anti-science.”

The truth is, as usual, much different. Those that oppose continued funding of failed research instead point to the multitude of successful treatments and cures from adult stem cell research. Dozens of effective and lifesaving treatments are not simply a pipe dream but a reality with adult stem cells which can be manipulated to act in much the same way as human embryonic stem cells. If we want to be pro-science and pro-hope for sufferers of disease, shouldn’t we be funding and supporting the science that is actually working and actually producing cures?

If taxpayers are going to be forced to pay for research, it should be research that is not only ethical but also successful. While much of the rest of the world has rejected human embryonic stem cell research as a hopeless waste of money, in the United States our politicians continue to try to raid the empty public trough to prop up failing research. It’s another bailout that simply must stop.

A U.S. district court issued a preliminary injunction on Monday, stopping the federal funding of human embryonic stem cell research in the Obama administration’s new guidelines.

The court ruled in favor of a suit filed by Dr. James L. Sherley, a former MIT professor and scientist, and other researchers who said human embryonic stem cell research involves the destruction of human embryos. They also made the very sensible argument that funds plowed into useless ESC research are depriving life-saving research and cures with adult stem cells.

Judge Royce Lamberth granted the injunction after finding that the lawsuit would likely succeed because the guidelines violated current law banning the use of federal funds to destroy human embryos.

The lawsuit says the guidelines violate the Dickey-Wicker appropriations provision regarding embryo research that prohibits federal funding of the creation of human embryos by any method, explicitly including humancloning, or any “research in which” human embryos are harmed in any way.

The National Institutes of Health received 50,000 comments almost all of which were opposed to funding this research on human embryos, and by its own admission, NIH totally ignored these comments.

Human embryonic stem cell research has yet to help a single patient, unlike adult stem cell research — which has helped patients with more than 100 diseases and medical conditions and which President George W. Bush supported with hundreds of millions in federal funding.

The Obama administration could appeal the decision or try to rewrite the guidelines to comply with U.S. law. Since the judge implied they would not win on appeal, they might go to Congress. They will have to pass something before the end of this session.

It was following California’s passage of Proposition 71 that Illinois felt the need to start funding embryonic stem cell research with taxpayer money. However, after five years, California’s budget-busting $3 billion embryonic stem cell research project has yielded no cures, no therapies and little progress, explains Investors.com.

The backers of Prop 71 are now admitting failure. “The California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, the state agency created to, as some have put it, restore science to its rightful place, is diverting funds from ESCR to research that has produced actual therapies and treatments: adult stem cell research. It not only has treated real people with real results; it also does not come with the moral baggage ESCR does.”

The article accuses the backers of Prop 71 of using a classic bait-and-switch tactic by trying to take credit for discoveries and advances achieved by research that they once cavalierly dismissed. The Institute is attempting to do this by funding adult stem cell research. Nearly $230 million was handed out this past October to 14 teams, but notably, only four of those projects involved embryonic stem cells.

The article concludes:

Real promise is held in what are called induced pluripotent stem cells. In 2006, researchers led by Dr. Shinya Yamanaka of Japan’s Kyoto University were first able to “reprogram” human skin cells to behave like embryonic stem cells. They can do everything stem cells from destroyed embryos can do.

The National Institute of Health has said that this type of stem cell offers the prospect of having a renewable source of replacement cells and tissues to treat diseases like Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s, spinal cord injury, stroke, burns, heart disease, diabetes, osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis, to name a few.

It is ESCR researchers who have politicized science and stood in the way of real progress. We are pleased to see California researchers beginning to put science in its rightful place.

Source: California’s Proposition 71 Failure (Investors.com)