Judge: Human Embryonic Stem Cell Research Destroys Non-Existent Embryos!

[BurtWorm]

Devastating critique of the Lambert ruling on stem cell research from Lindsay Beyerstein:


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On Monday, U.S. District Court Judge Royce Lambert ruled that all federally funded research on human embryonic stem cells (hESC) is illegal. He reasoned as follows: If a human embryo was destroyed to make a cell line, then any experiment on any cell descended from that embryo is "research" where a human embryo "is to be harmed or destroyed." According to the judge, this runs afoul of an obscure proviso known as the Dickey Amendment which bars federal funds for research that destroys human embryos.

The ruling flies in the face of facts and logic. Research on existing lines of hESC does not destroy human embryos.

The first human embryonic stem cell line was created in 1998. The 5-cell embryo used to create that line died at least 12 years ago.

As I wrote in today's edition of the Weekly Pulse:

According to the judge's logic, a scientist is destroying an embryo when she tests a drug on an embryonic stem cell that is the great-great-great--granddaughter of a cell that belonged to a 5-celled embryo that was destroyed in 1998. Hundreds of scientists all over the world might be working with cells from that embryo at this very moment. According to the judge, each of them is destroying an embryo that ceased to exist 12 years ago. So, every day, they all get up, go to work and destroy the same non-existent embryo? What happens when come back from a coffee break? Do they destroy it again?

To its credit, the Obama administration announced on Tuesday that it will appeal. It's a brave decision. The midterm elections are just weeks away.

The stakes are too high to play politics. If the ruling is upheld, the government will have to suspend $54 million in funding for 22 research projects by September. One of the projects that will be delayed is a clinical trial of hESC for Parkinson's disease.

...

[uncommon]

1. Why does anyone give a crap about an EMBRYO???

It's tissue samples - it's nothing - it's an atrocity to protect a tissue sample over the possibility of saving lives.

[indepat]

2. RW atrocities and atrocious travesties litter the American landscape for as far as the eye can

see. :P

[NYC Liberal]

3. Right-wingers do. Until, of course, it's them or their loved one

that would benefit. Then they're all for it.

Not that I don't want them changing their minds on it...I just wish they weren't so self-centered that OTHER people's suffering isn't enough to move them.