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Scientists in Britain face being barred from developing life-saving treatments after a court ruled it is ‘immoral’ to use embryos to produce stem cells. The European Court of Justice has decreed that patenting any treatment using the cells is ‘commercial exploitation’ and ‘contrary to morality’. Scientists warned the ‘devastating decision’ will stop pioneering treatments for degenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s being developed in the UK, with potentially catastrophic consequences for the multi-million pound biotechnology industry. But pro-life groups, who argue it is immoral to experiment with embryos to advance medicine, welcomed the ruling. The decision, made unanimously by...

A federal judge on Wednesday dismissed a lawsuit challenging the Obama administration’s funding of stem cell research. The lawsuit, filed by Boston biological engineer James L. Shirley, asserted that the funding violated a 1996 law prohibiting federal taxpayer money from supporting work that harms an embryo. The Obama administration policy allows research on embryos that were harvested long ago through private funding ... ... The Court of Appeals overruled him, and (Judge Royce) Lamberth said Wednesday he is bound by the higher court’s ruling and dismissed the case. The White House hailed the ruling as a “victory for research and...

Stem cells, it seems, have become almost as ubiquitous in medicine as stethoscopes. Yankees pitcher Bartolo Colon received injections of stem cells from his own fat and bone marrow to treat an injured shoulder and elbow, his doctor recently revealed. Meanwhile, a Texas hospital is testing whether stem cells from a patient's bone marrow will improve the effectiveness of cardiac bypass surgery. It's enough to suggest that the bitter religious, ethical, and political battles over stem cells that began in 1998 were pointless. If cells harvested from patients themselves can treat disease, perhaps there's no need to use ones obtained...

Mitt Romney can’t seem to win for losing when it comes to some of the criticisms he faces on pro-life and health care issues. The former Massachusetts governor is giving a major speech today about health care in an attempt to overcome the hurdle he faces about the health care plan implemented during his gubernatorial administration that requires state residents to purchase health insurance in a way similar to Obamacare. Romney has already faced questions about the sincerity of his conversion on abortion — from abortion to pro-life before the 2008 presidential campaign — and the location of his speech...

<p>WASHINGTON (Dow Jones)--A federal appeals court ruled Friday that the federal government can continue to fund research involving human embryonic stem cells, a significant legal victory for the Obama administration.</p> <p>The divided ruling, by the U.S Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, overturned a trial judge's surprise ruling in 2010 that barred funding for the research.</p>

The Stem-Cell WarUnlike embryonic stem cells, adult stem cells do have a record of healing. You wouldn't know it from the media. An enduring liberal myth, that of the Republican “war on science,” got a subtle rebuke this week when the first and only patient to receive FDA-approved embryonic-stem-cell therapy publicly revealed his identity. Timothy J. Atchison, a 21-year-old nursing student, had been partially paralyzed in a car crash. Six months ago, scientists at the Shepherd Center in Atlanta sought to test on him the safety of a drug concocted from stem cells of the kind derived by destroying a...

Medical researchers' hopes of replacing politically fraught embryonic stem (ES) cells with stem cells derived from adult tissues have suffered a setback. Induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells, created by turning back the developmental clock on adult tissues, and ES cells display similar gene-expression patterns, and both can produce any of the various tissues in the human body. But patterns of epigenetic changes — alterations that affect gene expression without changing the DNA sequence — tell a different story about iPS cells, a team led by Joseph Ecker, a molecular geneticist at the Salk Institute in La Jolla, California, reports online...

It is no secret that the ranks of scientists and engineers in the United States include dismal numbers of Hispanics and African-Americans, but few have remarked about another significantly underrepresented group: Republicans. No, this is not the punch line of a joke. A Pew Research Center Poll from July 2009 showed that only around 6 percent of U.S. scientists are Republicans; 55 percent are Democrats, 32 percent are independent, and the rest "don't know" their affiliation.This immense imbalance has political consequences. When President Obama appears Wednesday on Discovery Channel's Mythbusters (9 p.m. ET), he will be there not just to...

www.catholicnewsagency.com Former President Bush's memoir will highlight influence of Pope John Paul II Pope John Paul II and President George W. Bush Washington D.C., Oct 30, 2010 / 07:21 am (CNA).- An early preview of President George W. Bush's forthcoming memoir “Decision Points,” has revealed that the book will discuss the former president's relationship with Pope John Paul II—especially the Pope's influence on his decision to restrict embryonic stem cell research. The Pontiff and president met publicly in 2001, 2002 and 2004, for discussions that displayed both profound agreements and serious differences between the two men. On October 28,...

Science: After decades of promises, the first clinical trial using human embryonic stem cells has begun. Again, the success stories using adult stem cells are ignored as ideology, and profit, triumph over science. The announcement by Geron Corp. on Monday that the first clinical trial using its embryonic stem cells to treat an actual human patient was under way sent its stock up 6.4%. Geron has the first FDA license to use embryonic stem cells to treat people, in this case a patient with a spinal cord injury. We wish the patient well, but using stem cells to treat disease...

"Progress in research on umbilical cord blood cells and adult stem cells is to be saluted and supported. Patients and advocates alike can look to the growing number of cures and treatments discovered through research that does not destroy the living human embryo. Conversely, experiments on human embryonic stem cells deserve our scrutiny and scorn. If not us, who will speak for our fellow citizens-to-be? "We are blessed to live in a country with some of the most extraordinary founding documents in history. If, indeed, we believe we were "created equal," doesn't that belief extend to the indefensible living embryo...

On Monday, August 23, 2010 Chief Judge Royce C. Lamberth of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia enjoined the implementation of the Obama Administration guidelines of 2009 which would have allowed researchers to extract stem cells from "surplus" embryos donated by patients at fertility clinics. Every "extraction" is an execution, killing human embryonic life... ...human embryology and developmental biology affirm that a human embryo is not distinct in kind from a human being, but a human being at an early stage of development. Even prior to implantation, a human embryo is a unique living human being...

Bioethics: A federal judge rules that the administration violated congressional intent when it lifted restrictions on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research. No, this will not usher in a new dark age. The ruling by U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth was striking enough. Lamberth said that when President Obama lifted Bush administration restrictions on ESCR, he violated the Dickey-Wicker Amendment. First passed in 1996, and passed every year as part of the federal budget, Dickey-Wicker blocks federal funds for stem cell research in which human embryos are destroyed. Perhaps more striking is the press coverage of Lamberth's ruling. The...

In a significant opinion issued by Chief Judge Royce C. Lamberth of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia human embryonic life was given a stay of execution on Monday, August 23, 2010. The Federal Court enjoined the implementation of the Obama Administration guidelines which would have allowed researchers to extract stem cells from "surplus" embryos donated by patients at fertility clinics. This "extraction" amounts to an execution of human embryonic life. These guidelines went into effect in July, 2009. ...In the Courts own words "having concluded that the Dickey-Wicker Amendment is unambiguous, the question before the...

(Reuters) - A U.S. district court issued a preliminary injunction on 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 involved the destruction of human embryos. Judge Royce Lamberth granted the injunction after finding the lawsuit would likely succeed because the guidelines violated law banning the use of federal funds to destroy human embryos.

Findings could affect future treatments for macular degeneration, stargardt disease & other forms of retinal diseaseNEW YORK (February 24, 2010) – An international research team led by Columbia University Medical Center successfully used mouse embryonic stem cells to replace diseased retinal cells and restore sight in a mouse model of retinitis pigmentosa. This strategy could potentially become a new treatment for retinitis pigmentosa, a leading cause of blindness that affects approximately one in 3,000 to 4,000 people, or 1.5 million people worldwide. The study appears online ahead of print in the journal Transplantation (March 27, 2010 print issue). Specialized retinal...

LifeNews.com Note: This opinion column originally appeared on the blog of First Things, a pro-life, Catholic publication founded by Father Richard John Neuhaus.   The battle over embryonic stem cell research is over. A few skirmishes will no doubt continue -- perhaps even for years -- and some ESCR advocates will refuse to acknowledge defeat. But they have decisively lost. Years from now, when we look back in astonishment at having been fleeced for billions to pay for therapeutically worthless research, we'll recognize that California was the Waterloo for ESCR.In 2004, California approved Proposition71, a ballot measure that would allow...

LifeNews.com Note: Dr. David Prentice is Senior Fellow for Life Sciences at Family Research Council. Up to July 2004 he had spent almost 20 years as Professor of Life Sciences, Indiana State University, and Adjunct Professor of Medical and Molecular Genetics, Indiana University School of Medicine. Two recent papers–one published online by the New England Journal of Medicine and one just published in Nature Methods–analyzed the genetic ethnic diversity of some of the existing human embryonic stem cell (hESC) lines. One group examined 47 hESC lines, while another checked 42 hESC lines; there were 9 lines that both groups checked,...

Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- President Barack Obama has established a new presidential bioethics council that may feature advisors who could push his decision to force taxpayers to fund embryonic stem cell research even further. They could advise Obama that his administration should push human cloning.Last week, under the cover of the death of news given the Thanksgiving holiday, Obama signed an executive order to create the new council.Obama created the Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues and named Amy Gutmann, president of the University of Pennsylvania, to serve as its chair and James W. Wagner, president of Emory...

VATICAN CITY – Pope Benedict XVI stressed the church's opposition to abortion and stem cell research in his first meeting with President Barack Obama on Friday, pressing the Vatican's case with the U.S. leader who is already under fire on those issues from some conservative Catholics and bishops back home...Afterward, the Vatican said the leaders discussed immigration, the Middle East peace process and aid to developing nations. But the Vatican's statement also underscored the pair's deep disagreement on abortion. "In the course of their cordial exchanges, the conversation turned first of all to questions which are in the interest of...