Diana DeGette wants an executive order now.R. Edmonds/AP PhotoPosted on 02/27/2009 4:35:57 PM PST by neverdem
Legal complexities may underlie the delay in fulfilling election pledge.
Diana DeGette wants an executive order now.R. Edmonds/AP PhotoColorado congresswoman Diana DeGette had one message for President Barack Obama when she shook his hand on 17 February, moments after he signed the massive US economic stimulus bill into law. "I just looked at him and said: 'Mr President, just to reiterate my hope that you will sign an executive order reversing President Bush's ban on [human] embryonic stem-cell research'," says DeGette (Democrat). "He said: 'We're gonna do it soon.'"
Those words, and others like them from Obama, are doing less and less to placate backers of federal funding for stem-cell research. During his campaign, Obama promised to reverse President George W. Bush's 2001 policy that strictly limited federal funding for the research. Many expected it to be one of Obama's first moves, mirroring President Bill Clinton's lifting of the moratorium on fetal tissue transplantation research just after taking office in 1993.
"Obviously, we have concerns and would like to see this done," says Tony Mazzaschi, interim chief scientific officer at the Association of American Medical Colleges based in Washington DC and a board member at the Coalition for the Advancement of Medical Research (CAMR, also Washington-based), an umbrella group of associations that back federal funding for the research. "All of us have been getting pressure from our constituents: 'When is this going to happen? Is everything okay?'"
On 6 February, CAMR wrote to Obama saying it was "concerned" about media reports that presidential action was being delayed to coincide with congressional legislation. On 4 February, DeGette, together with Michael Castle (Republican, Delaware), introduced such legislation, which would explicitly permit federal funding for research on stem-cell lines derived with parental permission from embryos left over at fertility clinics and otherwise slated for destruction. And on 18 February, six Republican members of Congress led by Castle wrote to Obama to "urge that you immediately lift the current federal restrictions on funding for embryonic stem cell research".
"As president, I will lift the current administration's ban on federal funding of research on embryonic stem-cell lines created after 9 August 2001 through executive order." — Barack Obama (Nature 455, 446; 2008).R. Edmonds/AP PhotoThe White House has been by turns affirming and evasive. Senior presidential adviser David Axelrod, when asked on Fox News Sunday on 15 February when the president would enact an executive order, replied only that Obama is "considering" such a move. White House spokesman Shin Inouye told Nature last week: "President Obama is committed to providing federal support to stem-cell research. His administration will be acting soon to lift the previous restrictions on this important effort."
Some Washington insiders suggest that there is no more to the delay than a president consumed by a major economic crisis. Others note that the new administration had (at the time Nature went to press) yet to install a National Institutes of Health (NIH) director or secretary of health and human services — key people the president will need to rely on to enact an executive order and serve as the public face of the administration on a controversial issue.
Yet others contend that Obama's lack of action five weeks into his presidency highlights the complexity of the legal issues involved in reversing the Bush ban, which limited federal funding for stem-cell research to a score of lines derived before 9 August 2001.
Louis Guenin, a lecturer on ethics at Harvard Medical School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, believes that an Obama executive order could be successfully challenged in court in the absence of enacted legislation explicitly approving federal funding for stem-cell research. That, he says, is because of the Dickey-Wicker amendment: a law first enacted by Congress in 1995 and renewed each year since, which prohibits US funding of research in which embryos are created or destroyed.
"Anyone concerned about complicity in embryo destruction is keen to spot collaboration, inducement, or artifices to mask them," says Guenin. "In view of congressional intent to prevent taxpayer complicity, 'research in which a human embryo or embryos are destroyed' captures any project whose demand for materials induces embryo destruction."
Other legal scholars disagree with Guenin, and point to a 1999 legal opinion by Harriet Rabb, then the general counsel at the Department of Health and Human Services, which concluded that federal funding for stem-cell research does not contravene Dickey-Wicker because the cells themselves are not embryos and research on already derived cells does not destroy embryos. The Rabb opinion has never been tested in court.
Guenin has caught the ear of some key scientists, including John Gearhart, director of the Institute for Regenerative Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. During the presidential transition, Gearhart forwarded a 29-page Guenin memo to Harold Varmus, a former NIH director and a leading member of the Obama transition team. "I am concerned that an executive order is not sufficient to prevent what happened during the Bush administration on stem-cell research," says Gearhart.
Varmus was out of the country and did not respond to an e-mail asking for comment.
George Daley, the associate director of the Stem Cell Program at the Children's Hospital, Boston, passed the same memo to Alta Charo, a professor of law at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and another transition-team member. "I think it's an important issue to vet," says Daley. "We want to make sure we do have all the possible legal rights to get funding."
Charo said that her role on the transition team prevented her from commenting.
DeGette, for her part, argues that legislation is needed — but not to subvert court challenges. She wants to prevent Obama's successor from reversing an Obama executive order. "My main concern is that the whole issue of embryonic stem-cell research does not become a ping-pong ball," she says.
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Like global cooling, the payback for the politization of stem cell science will not be without cost.
stem cell ping
President Bush DID NOT ban stem cell research.
President Bush DID NOT ban stem cell research.
President Bush DID NOT ban stem cell research.
President Bush DID NOT ban stem cell research.
Stem cell research, including that employing cells derived from nascent forms of human life, has been proceeding without government interference, funded by private entities.
I suppose its too much to expect, that any press minion would undertake to correct this deeply ingrained misrepresentation of truth.
This woman is just eager to kill babies as many ways as possible, and as soon as possible.
They all seem to forget that the Nazi descent into euthanasia of “useless eaters” and the death camps began with medical experimentation on human subjects.
Correct. Embryonic stem cell "research" and cloning are being pursued for the purpose of dehumanizing the embryonic person, not for curing diseases.
Quick! Hurry Up! We need to have an excuse for killing babies NOW!
The only research worth looking at right now is adult stem cells and enhancing and improving YOUR OWN stem cells.
Indeed, and it will almost certainly progress more efficiently if it continues to be exclusively privately funded.
I’m all in favor of embryonic stem cell research, but opposed to government funding for it (just as I’m opposed to government funding for any sort of research that isn’t a clear national security priority). But, honestly, what on earth is going on in the heads of people who are pushing for federal funding for this NOW? Do they not read the headlines? Have they not heard that the federal government is urgently trying to scrounge up hundreds of billions of dollars to bail out the financial system and re-start the economy? Do they seriously imagine that the ban on federal funding for this research is the only thing standing in the way of bundles of cash pouring into their pet research projects?
What do you expect from liberals? They ignore or lie about any facts that don’t fit their storyline, if they are even aware of them. Liberals and truth just don’t mix.
Myth 4. Embryonic stem cell research is against the law. In reality, there is no law or regulation against destroying human embryos for research purposes. While President Bush has banned the use of federal funding to support research on embryonic stem cell lines created after August 2001, it is not illegal. Anyone using private funds is free to pursue it.
Source: http://www.stemcellresearchfacts.com/media_myths.html
One of my clients is the head of the stem cell center at a huge northeastern university hospital. He has ridiculed the embryonic stem cell bias, telling me “there has not been a single breakthrough from this research”, even though thousands of U.S. companies are conducting such research, in addition to 3 dozen national health centers around the world.
These fetal stem cell a-holes are desperate to do anything to justify the abortion at all costs racket. There are dozens of strains of fetal stem cells that were eligible for Federal funds under GWB, but these a-holes refuse to talk about them. They will do or say anything to justify cuisinarting fetuses. It’s pathetic that this is the only justification they can come up with for grinding up fetuses. It’s no justification in the real world for the reason I gave above, and because of the fact that, overall, fetal stem cells are nearly useless in medical research and therapy when compared to adult stem cells.
There has not yet been revealed any medical reason to prefer embryonic stem cell research over its alternatives.
Can’t wait to get tumor factories going.
“President Bush DID NOT ban stem cell research.”
I had this ‘discussion’ with a co worker when he insisted that it was great that Odumbo was lifting the stem cell ban.
I said , no the only thing that Odumbo was lifting was a ban on the feds non funding of FETAL stem cell research. That ADULT stem cell research has been going on all the time. Even then private funding could be used for studies using fetal cells. He kept insisting that NO stem cell research had been done since Bush banned fetal research. sigh.
I do think I may have gotten some of the facts inserted into his cranium when I told him that even in that time I knew that Adult stem cells were being used for many BMT patients in the clinic we work for who have had their own stem cells used in their transplants. (I had talked to a family in hospital who’s family member was going to have such a transplant done) Since I moved internally a few times since I met that family I have no idea if this person is still a survivor, but at that time I thought it was a great concept, using the bodies own cells to fix the errors.
I being me, also had to inform him that so far there hasn’t been a research project using fetal cells that has not resulted in tumors developing, instead of the hoped for remission/cure of the problem, but there have been successes in using adult cells.
I think in the end this has to be a project of informing people one at a time on exactly what Bush banned and exactly where the successes are occurring.
Thanks for trying. Willful ignorance is a barrier difficult to surmount.
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I think this is the right time to push Obama.
I have already sent Fax, e-mails and Phone call to the White House in the last days.
I would like the all the Scientific community and anyone take care about it could do the same
http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/
Thanks
In general I do not like politics interfering with science. The previous ban on stem cell research was based on a misunderstanding that adult stem cells (ASCs) are totally different entities from embryonic stem cells (ESCs) so that ASCs are "ethical" stem cells (dispensable without destroy whole life) and ESCs are unethical stem cells (indispensable for fearing of destroying embryos). In reality some ASCs are just ESCs which have lived into the adult age. There is an article "Embryonic stem cells versus adult stem cells: Similarities and differences" that I found at http://im1.biz/StemCell.htm which gives a very scientific account on this issue. The restriction on using ESCs has forced stem cell researchers to look for alternatives. Thus when someone claimed that, with introducing a few transcription factors, any normal adult cells can be induced back into embryonic-like (or, as claimed by some, embryonic) stem cells, many people including those in the white house were very pleased. A seismic change in stem cell research happened quickly and many researchers quickly jumped onto the iPS band wagon as the funding is shifted into that way. However, as revealed by a series articles that I found at http://im1.biz/Cloning.htm, iPSCs are NOT indistinguishable from ESCs as earlier claimed and still insisted by some today. They may more likely come from some pre-existing ASCs by being first transformed into some "immortalized"/cancer cells and then selected out according to some stemness markers. However, using these oncogene-containing transformed ASCs (iPSCs) for stem cell therapy may present more risks than using normal ASCs. Already teratomas-formation is a standard feature for all iPSCs and cancer formation has been shown by most iPSC researches which were carried long-enough time. So let's first get the science correctly done and then see if we really need any political restriction and where the restriction should be set.
Some companies such as Advanced Cell Technologies are developing technologies that will enable the extraction of embryonic stem cells without the destruction of the embryo. I wonder if such technologies would be viewed more favorably?