Friday, August 27th, 2010

Stem Cell Policy Update

The center cluster of cells, colored blue, shows a colony of human embryonic stem cells in the lab of the University of Wisconsin-Madison's James Thomson. Photo by Clay Glennon, University of Wisconsin-Madison.

This week, a federal district court judge blocked President Obama's executive order dealing with federal financing for embryonic stem cell research. In his decision, US District Court Judge Royce Lamberth found that the 2009 order issued by President Obama, which expanded the pool of human stem cell lines available for federal research funding, violated a ban on using federal money to destroy embryos. The rule in question, known as the Dickey-Wicker Amendment, was first attached to an appropriations bill in 1996. It has appeared ever since then in the annual appropriations bills for the Department of Health and Human Services.

The ruling left stem cell researchers in confusion, unsure about what types of research could and could not be performed using federal funds. We'll talk about the ruling and what it means for researchers.