On Aug. 23, Chief Judge Royce C. Lamberth of Federal District Court for the District of Columbia blocked the executive order issued by President Barack Obama in 2009 to expand embryonic stem cell research.
Ridiculous, right?
The issue was brought to Lamberth’s attention by two researchers who stated that Obama’s policy violated the Dickey-Wicker amendment. The amendment, according to the Genetics and Public Policy Center, was enacted in 1996 and states that federal funds cannot be used to support research “in which human embryos are created, destroyed, discarded or knowingly be subjected to risk of injury or death…”
According to the UK Stem Cell Foundation, the first stem cells weren’t successfully removed and grown from a human embryo until 1998, two years after the Dickey-Wicker amendment was put into place.
Over the past decade, researchers have been successfully removing stem cells for research, a process that we think should be allowed to continue, especially with how close many researchers are to having a breakthrough.
The current plan is to ask for an appeal that would lift the injunction, but, as of right now, medical professionals are unsure if the research should be halted. Officials are allowing research that is already under way to continue, but if the injunction is not appealed, many projects will be forced to shut down early, and future projects will be nearly impossible to fund.
According to an article in the New York Times, this would mean the government would have to eliminate $54 million in financing for 22 research projects, all by the end of September.
“This decision has the potential to do serious damage to one of the most promising areas of biomedical research, just at the time when we were really gaining momentum,” Dr. Francis S. Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, told the New York Times.
According to the National Institutes of Health, stem cells can divide infinitely, and the stem cells produced by the divisions can either remain stem cells or they can be coaxed to become another type of cell with a more specific function, like a brain cell. Stem cell therapy has the potential to treat Alzheimer’s disease, spinal cord injury, stroke and many other ailments.
Our opinion is very simple: Lift the ban and allow stem cell research to continue.
This injunction would not only make it nearly impossible to fund new projects in the future, but it would also prevent further exploration in past research projects, which would basically result in a waste of all the previous research and advancements.
As our society expands and new advances in medicine develop, there are instances where we are going to have to sacrifice morality for the greater good of society. Stem cell research is one of those instances where we may not like the actual research process, but the results are far too promising to totally abandon.
We believe that embryos can easily be created or destroyed, but it’s impossible to replace the life of a loved one, and it’s horrible to watch them suffer from a disease that could be cured by stem cell therapy.
We’ll be keeping our fingers crossed that the ban will be lifted and that our generation may possibly be able to benefit from the use of stem cell research in the future.