Appeals court greenlights stem-cell research

The court handed the Obama administration a victory by ruling that federal funding of human embryonic stem cell research can go forward.

National Journal: Appeals Court Hands Obama A Stem-Cell Victory
A U.S. appeals court handed the Obama administration a victory on Friday over the controversial issue of human embryonic stem cells, ruling that federal funding of such research may go ahead. The U.S Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled 2-1 to overturn an earlier court ruling that stopped the National Institutes of Health from funding the research. This appeals case does not settle the matter — it merely allows the NIH to continue with the work while the main case goes through the courts. NIH has been doing so anyway, since the same appeals court made a tentative ruling last September (Fox, 4/29).

Politico: Appeals Court Overturns Ban On Stem Cell Research Funds
In a 2-1 decision, the appeals court ruled that "the plaintiffs are unlikely to prevail because Dickey-Wicker is ambiguous and the NIH seems reasonably to have concluded that although Dickey-Wicker bars funding for the destructive act of deriving an ESC from an embryo, it does not prohibit funding a research project in which an ESC will be used." The ruling is a win for the Obama administration, which has expanded the funding for stem cell research (Nocera, 4/29).

Bloomberg: U.S. Human Embryonic Stem-Cell Research Can Continue, Appeals Court Says
U.S. funding of human embryonic stem-cell studies can continue while a lower court decides whether the government-backed research violates the law, a federal appeals court said (Schoenberg and Riley, 4/29).

Reuters: Court Backs Federal Embryonic Stem Cells Funds
The appeals court overturned a ruling by a federal judge who found that the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) guidelines on such research violated the law because embryos were destroyed and it put other researchers working with adult stem cells at a disadvantage to win federal grants (Pelofsky, 4/29).