Genomics Forum Blog

Tuesday, August 24, 2010

Legal ruling blocks NIH funding of hESC research

What are your thoughts?

A US court has issued a temporary block against federal funding for human embryonic stem cell research as permitted by the Obama administration last year. The judge agreed with plaintiffs in a lawsuit contending that such research is illegal because it destroys embryos. In the court opinion, Judge Lamberth noted that he believed the case was likely to succeed. “ESC research is clearly research in which an embryo is destroyed. To conduct ESC research, ESCs must be derived from an embryo. The process of deriving ESCs from an embryo results in the destruction of the embryo. Thus, ESC research necessarily depends upon the destruction of a human embryo.”


Court Opinion: https://ecf.dcd.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/show_public_doc?2009cv1575-44

Current NIH Position: http://stemcells.nih.gov/index.asp