This new forum is meant to be a hub for truthful and charitable conversation on issues ranging from marriage and family to bioethics and human rights. Our goal is to think with the mind of the Church, and to respond with the heart of the Church, engaging media and the sciences in a dialogue that is challenging but respectful.
U.S. district court rules against stem cell policy
Posted By adminWASHINGTON — A U.S. district court issued a preliminary injunction Monday stopping federal funding of human embryonic stem cell research in a slap to the Obama administration’s new guidelines on the sensitive issue.
The court ruled in favor of a suit filed in June by researchers who said human embryonic stem cell research involves the destruction of human embryos.
Judge Royce Lamberth granted the injunction after finding that the lawsuit would likely succeed because the guidelines violated law banning the use of federal funds to destroy human embryos.
“(Embryonic stem cell) research is clearly research in which an embryo is destroyed,” Lamberth wrote in a 15-page ruling. The Obama administration could appeal his decision or try to rewrite the guidelines to comply with U.S. law.
The unusual suit against the National Institutes of Health, backed by some Christian groups opposed to embryo research, argued that the NIH policy violates U.S. law and takes funds from researchers seeking to work with adult stem cells.
The U.S. Department of Justice and NIH had no immediate comment.
RULING:
https://ecf.dcd.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/show_public_doc?2009cv1575-44
Posted in News & Commentary | Comments Off