A lawsuit has been filed to stop Federal funding for embryonic stem cell research citing the Dickey-Wicker Amendment. That amendment, passed in 1995 and renewed each year since, bars tax dollars from funding the creation of embryos for research and research that involves the destruction of embryos.
Advocates International, co-counsel for the plaintiffs, explained the lawsuit:
A lawsuit filed today in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia seeks to enjoin and overturn the controversial guidelines for public funding of embryonic stem cell research that the National Institutes of Health issued on July 7, 2009. The implementation of these guidelines marks the first time that taxpayer dollars will be used to fund research that will result in the destruction of human embryos. Since 1994, Congress has expressly banned NIH from funding research in which human embryos “are destroyed, discarded, or knowingly subjected to risk of injury or death.”
According to Thomas G. Hungar, one of the lawyers for the plaintiffs, “the language of the statute is clear. It bans public funding for any research that leads to the destruction of human embryos. NIH’s attempt to avoid Congress’s command by funding everything but the act of ‘harvesting’ is pure sophistry. The guidelines will result in the destruction of human embryos and are unlawful, unethical, and unnecessary.”
The plaintiffs contend that the NIH guidelines violate the congressional ban because they “necessarily condition funding on the destruction of human embryos.” In addition, the plaintiffs also allege that the NIH guidelines were invalidly implemented, because the decision to fund human embryonic stem cell research was made without the proper procedures required by law and without properly considering the more effective and less ethically problematic forms of adult and induced pluripotent stem cell research.
What are the rules regarding standing before the court? Don't you have to be harmed to have standing to sue?
Posted by: Drew | October 19, 2009 at 02:23 PM
The embryo is used after 5 days having grown into a ball of 100 or so undifferentiated cells. There is not even one nerve cell let alone a nervous system or any other system for that matter. Rest assured: they won't mind.
RonH
Posted by: RonH | October 19, 2009 at 06:40 PM
Ron H, if someone injected you with a toxin that rendered your nervous system useless, would you mind if they then experimented on you?
The existence of nerve cells isn't the issue. The issue is wether or not the embryo is a human being.
Posted by: Shaun | October 19, 2009 at 08:48 PM
Shaun,
To tell you the truth I'm not keen on the plan. It's the first part I most object to, though.
By the way, I'd be dead if you made my nervous system 'useless'. Did you realize that.
But it's not really the same thing anyway, is it? Not a useful analogy?
RonH
Posted by: RonH | October 20, 2009 at 03:56 AM
Hi RonH,
Why did you pick the nervous system?
Posted by: KWM | October 20, 2009 at 02:36 PM
"Rest assured: they won't mind."
I'm sure your biology is correct. Ad I get that the nervous system is important and all that. But is the standard for the justifiability of killing that the victim doesn't mind? For that matter, I really doubt that a newborn would mind it I killed it. Does it follow that if someone actively wants to be killed that that's makes it OK?
Just askin'
Posted by: WisdomLover | October 20, 2009 at 04:14 PM