Federal court dismisses lawsuit on funding of embryo-destructive research
A U.S. District Court has dismissed a lawsuit that challenged the Obama administration's funding of embryonic stem cell research. The lawsuit was based on the interpretation of the 1996 Dickey-Wicker Amendment which prohibits the federal government from supporting research that destroys human embryos with tax dollars.
Judge Royce Lamberth originally granted an injunction on August 23, 2011 to temporarily stop funding of the research. The U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia quickly overturned the injunction on September 9, and funding has continued since.
In his dismissal of the suit Judge Lamberth wrote that he felt contrainted by the circuit court, which would have taken the case on appeal after his decision. The lawsuit was originally filed in response to new guidelines developed by the Obama Administration. President Obama issued an executive order in March 2009 requiring the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to draft rules on how federal funding can be used to support embryonic stem cell research.
The Dickey-Wicker Amendment was adopted as law in 1996, and has been renewed every year by Congress. The NIH drafted guidelines in 2000 that attempted to skirt the law by using federal funds on cell lines that were created after researchers used private funding to destroy the live human embryos required to obtain the cell lines. The NIH argued that because they were not funding the actual destruction of embryos they were technically following the law.
In a compromise to limit the NIH's open-ended policy, President Bush decided in 2001 that embryonic stem cell lines created before his decision were eligible for federal funding, but no cell lines created after would be eligible. President Obama's 2009 order rescinded President Bush's original executive order.