Appeals Court OKs Fed Funding of Embryonic-Stem-Cell Research

[LaurenG]

A three-judge panel of a US Appeals Court lifted an injunction Friday against the National Institutes of Health’s revised policy on the funding of stem cell research. The new policy, which would open up research funding to many more human embryonic-stem-cell linesm or hESCs, attracted a lawsuit from researchers who focus on adult stem cells, who claimed that their chances of obtaining grants had been diminished.

That suit produced an injunction that would block the NIH from distributing funding for hESC work. The Appeals Court had previously stayed this injunction. Now it has lifted it entirely, although the case is continuing towards trial at the district court level.

Legislation called the Dickey-Wicker Amendment has prevented the U.S. government for decades from funding research in which a human embryo is destroyed. Everyone agrees that this prohibits funding of work in which hESCs are derived through the destruction of fertilized eggs.

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/04/esc-funding-ban/

[blondeatlast]

1. It'a about damn time. In the concern over "lif", how many lives might have been

saved?

It's too late for me, I'm afraid, but I can hope the next generation of insulin-dependent diabetics can be helped.

[IDemo]

2. What you said..

Over 50,000 injections and not expecting to go needle-free in my lifetime. But the promise for the young or not yet born is huge.

[blondeatlast]

3. DXed at 7 and I pump now, but I don't even want to know how many

and of course I still have secondary complications and the daily struggle for good control.

Hang in there!