Just last year, President Obama signed an executive order that expanded embryonic stem cell research, giving scientists more federally allocated tax dollars. This order overturned a previous order put in place by President Bush in 2001 that no longer allowed the federal government to fund the research of embryonic stem cells.
The federal judge who made the ruling, U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth, concluded that Obama’s executive order was unlawful because it directly violates the Dickey-Wicker Amendment signed by Congress in 1996. This amendment states that the federal government cannot fund any research in which human embryos are created, destroyed or discarded.
Currently, the government does not provide any funding in the creation of new stem cell lines, but it funds the research necessary after they have already been created. But Lamberth seems to believe that funding the subsequent research is the same as funding the creation of stem cells in which human embryos are destroyed.
The government and judicial system does not need to put a hold on embryonic stem cell research. Instead, Congress needs to look at the law and ask one question: Why has the Dickey-Wicker Amendment been the cause of debate for the last 14 years?
There is one answer: The law is too vague. It has been interpreted many different ways, depending on which administration was in charge, and it will continue to be if it is not significantly changed.
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The Obama administration filed and won an appeal last week, stating that the court needs to implement a stay on the ruling in order to “avoid terminating research projects midstream, invalidating results in process and impeding years of scientific progress toward finding new treatments for devastating illnesses.”
In winning the appeal, scientists who have already received taxpayers’ money from grants, can continue their research on stem cells. Other scientists who were due to receive federal grants have been told to find money in other ways, due to the uncertainty of the status of the actual law.
Judge Lamberth has the opportunity to issue a final order that would ban the funding again, which will most likely cause another set of appeals that could last a while. Although Lamberth’s ruling has been overturned for now, this is only a temporary fix and not the necessary long-term solution.
Lamberth’s decision could cause irreparable harm to this research, and that alone should be enough to prompt Congress to scrap the Dickey-Wicker Amendment and produce a clearer law that allows federal funding for embryonic stem cell research.
Stem cell research needs to continue in order to help millions of people with chronic, life-altering diseases, and Congress needs to ensure that it continues.
