Court: Embryonic stem cell research is legal

By Maggie Fox, NBC News

The federal government may continue to pay for controversial human embryonic stem cell research, a federal appeals court ruled Friday.

The three-judge panel says the government has correctly interpreted a law that bans the use of federal funds to destroy human embryos for research. The ruling is unlikely to put the issue to rest and one of the judges pleaded for Congress to make clear what the government should and should not be able to do.

The hard-to-understand case pits science against mostly religious arguments against using embryos in medical research. It's even more confusing because there are so many differenlt types of cells called stem cells.

Dr. James Sherley of Boston Biomedical Research Institute and Theresa Deisher of AVM Biotechnology in Seattle, who both do research using adult stem cells and oppose the use of human embryonic stem cells, sued in 2009. They said federal guidelines violate the law and would harm their work by increasing competition for limited federal funding.

Its been back and forth in the federal courts since then, and Sherley has vowed to take the case all the way to the Supreme Court.

The embryonic stem cells at issue are the bodys master cells. Found in days-old embryos, they are the source of all the cells and tissues in the body blood, brain, bone and muscle. Researchers are studying them to investigate how disease develops and are using some as transplants to treat diseases from Parkinsons to cancer. They are being tested in people to repair spinal cord injuries and as a possible cure for some forms of blindness.

Opponents of the research say its unacceptable to destroy a human embryo to get the cells. The 1996 Dickey-Wicker amendment, added by Congress to budget language every year, forbids the use offederal funds in research that destroys embryos.

When he was president, George W. Bush decided that the ban extended to human embryonic stem-cell research and greatly limited the federal program.

As one of his first acts after he entered office, President Barack Obama issued an executive order reversing this and encouraging the National Institutes of Health to pay for embryonic stem-cell research, so long as federal money wasnt used to directly make the stem cells. To get the cells, someone in a private lab using private money has to take apart the embryos usually left over from fertility clinics and destined for the trash can. Federal funds may be used to work with the cells that private labs make available.

The rest is here:
Court: Embryonic stem cell research is legal