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BY MATTHEW HIBBARD
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA, MARCH 2009: “Today with the executive order I am about to sign we will bring the change that so many scientists and researchers, doctors and innovators, patients and loved one have hoped for and fought for these past eight years, we will lift the ban on federal funding for promising embryonic stem celled research.” (CBS News)
The Obama administration will have to wait a little longer on stem cell research. Judge Royce Lamberth ruled that the executive order, passed in 2009 by the Obama Administration, violates a 1996 ban to use federal funds to research discarded embryos.
Dr. Irving Weissman of the Stanford Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine said in a recent New York Times article that the ruling would be...
“... devastating to the hopes of researchers and patients who have been waiting so long for the promise of stem cell therapies.”
So what does this mean for research happening now? CNN’s senior legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin says the future is still unclear.
“The Obama administration will appeal this ruling to the D.C. circuit, it may well be overturned. This case has already been to the appeals court once, but if it stands up it will certainly cut way back on federal funding for stem cell research, and it is not clear from Judge Lamberth’s order what happens to projects that are underway as we speak.”
The Christian Broadcasting Network reports religious organizations support the judge’s ruling.
“An embryo is not egg, not sperm, it’s a baby. It’s a baby at its very earliest stage of development, but it’s a baby and the idea of destroying it you know is the same as an abortion.”
According to the Wall Street Journal, the government currently spends about $137 million on human embryonic stem cell research and is projected to spend about $126 million next year.
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