Tag Archives: Topic: Embryonic Stem Cell Research

Samuel Aquila at National Review: The embryos killed are the first class of victims; the second class of victims will be the rest of us.

LifeNews: Michigan is in the national news because of a disturbing development in human fetal stem cell experimentation. Neuralstem, Inc. announced that it has received approval from the Food and Drug Administration to expand an amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (Lou Gehrig’s disease) Phase II study to the University of Michigan.

One News Now: Attorney Roger Kiska with Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) tells American Family News the case, heard in Hungary’s capital on Wednesday, involves several people – Hungarians and Ukranians – who operate several clinics. “One of them is an abortion clinic from which they harvest from the aborted unborn children tissue and embryonic stem cells, which they then use in a cosmetic clinic injected directly into the veins of wealthy patients for $25,000 U.S. per injection,” he states.

Charisma News: Alliance Defending Freedom filed a friend-of-the-court brief opposing such use. “A baby is precious, not a precious commodity,” said Alliance Defending Freedom Senior Legal Counsel Daniel Lipsic. “This horrific and inhuman use of a child’s cells and tissues has no place in a civilized society. No one should be allowed to line their wallets with profit gained from creating this kind of black market—one that generates a hideous demand for babies’ bodies for use in unapproved, elective cosmetic procedures.”

LifeNews: Alliance Defending Freedom Senior Legal Counsel Daniel Lipsic will be participating in a hearing in Hungarian General Court in a criminal case involving the harvesting of embryonic stem cells and tissue from aborted babies and using them for profit in cosmetic procedures. The pro-life group filed a friend-of-the-court brief opposing such use. “A baby is precious, not a precious commodity,” said Lipsic. “This horrific and inhuman use of a child’s cells and tissues has no place in a civilized society. No one should be allowed to line their wallets with profit gained from creating this kind of black market–one that generates a hideous demand for babies’ bodies for use in unapproved, elective cosmetic procedures.” [more]

Alliance Defending Freedom Senior Legal Counsel Daniel Lipsic will be available for media interviews immediately following a hearing in a criminal case involving the harvesting of embryonic stem cells and tissue from aborted babies and using them for profit in cosmetic procedures.

Christian Newswire: HB 481, The Ethical Treatment of Human Embryos Act, is designed to help bring biotechnological companies to Georgia by removing uncertainty for venture capitalists and companies. The measure has five co-sponsors.

LiveScience: Imagine if you could take living cells, load them into a printer, and squirt out a 3D tissue that could develop into a kidney or a heart. Scientists are one step closer to that reality, now that they have developed the first printer for embryonic human stem cells.

World Magazine: Alliance Defending Freedom attorneys who argued on behalf of the two researchers said the success of adult stem cell research has made federally funded research on embryonic stem cells “irrelevant.”

Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News: “Congress designed a law to ensure that Americans don’t pay any more precious taxpayer dollars for needless research made irrelevant by adult stem cell and other research. That law is clear, and we had hoped the U.S. Supreme Court would uphold its clear intent,” Steven H. Aden, senior counsel for the Alliance Defending Freedom, which co-litigated the case for Drs. Sherley and Deisher. “Americans should not be forced to pay for experiments that destroy human life, have produced no real-world treatments, and violate federal law—especially in burdened fiscal times like these.”

Baptist Press: “Americans should not be forced to pay for experiments that destroy human life, have produced no real-world treatments, and violate federal law — especially in burdened fiscal times like these,” said Steven H. Aden, senior counsel for Alliance Defending Freedom, which helped litigate the case against the Obama administration. “Congress designed a law to ensure that Americans don’t pay any more precious taxpayer dollars for needless research made irrelevant by adult stem cell and other research,” Aden said in a news release. “That law is clear, and we had hoped the U.S. Supreme Court would uphold its clear intent.”

Cheryl Wetzstein at Washington Times: Congress passed legislation in 1996 “to ensure that Americans don’t pay any more precious taxpayer dollars for needless research made irrelevant by adult stem-cell and other research,” said Steven H. Aden, senior counsel for Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF). “We had hoped the U.S. Supreme Court would uphold [the law’s] clear intent.” ADF was one of the legal-defense groups representing plaintiffs Dr. James L. Sherley and Theresa Deisher, both scientists whose research uses only adult stem cells.

The HIll: “Americans should not be forced to pay for experiments that destroy human life, have produced no real-world treatments, and violate federal law — especially in burdened fiscal times like these,” said Steven Aden, senior counsel for The Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), a Christian group that helped bring the case. “Congress designed a law to ensure that Americans don’t pay any more precious taxpayer dollars for needless research made irrelevant by adult stem cell and other research. That law is clear, and we had hoped the U.S. Supreme Court would uphold its clear intent.”

World Magazine: Alliance Defending Freedom attorneys, who argued on behalf of the two researchers, said the success of adult stem cell research has made research on embryonic stem cells “irrelevant.” . . . The Alliance Defending Freedom attorneys challenging that policy on behalf of the two scientists argued that the guidelines gave incentive to destroy embryos, thus violating Dickey-Wicker. They also argued that the line between those destroying the embryos and the federal researchers using the destroyed embryos was fuzzy. But the D.C. Circuit and the Supreme Court rejected those arguments.

NBC: Steven Aden, senior counsel for the Alliance Defending Freedom, a Christian legal center that helped litigate the case, criticized the decision Monday, saying the 1996 law “is clear, and we had hoped the U.S. Supreme Court would uphold its clear intent.” “Americans should not be forced to pay for experiments that destroy human life, have produced no real-world treatments and violate federal law — especially in burdened fiscal times like these,” he said.

Christian Newswire: Today, on behalf of the adult stem researchers it represents, the Jubilee Campaign’s Law of Life Project and their co-counsel at the Alliance Defending Freedom and Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, expressed great disappointment that the United State Supreme Court declined to hear their petition for certiorari.

LifeNews: Thomas G. Hungar, one of the lawyers for the plaintiffs, which includes the Alliance Defense Fund and the Christian Medical Association, said in 2009 when the lawsuit was filed, “the language of the [Dickey-Wicker] statute is clear” that it “bans public funding for any research that leads to the destruction of human embryos.” . . . Sam Casey, General Counsel of Advocates International’s Law of Life Project, a public interest legal project involved in the case, pointed out that NIH officials have admitted they violated the public comment process by ignoring the majority of comments coming from pro-life advocates opposed to destroying unborn children for their stem cells.

“Americans should not be forced to pay for experiments that destroy human life, have produced no real-world treatments, and violate federal law–especially in burdened fiscal times like these. Congress designed a law to ensure that Americans don’t pay any more precious taxpayer dollars for needless research made irrelevant by adult stem cell and other research. That law is clear, and we had hoped the U.S. Supreme Court would uphold its clear intent.”

AP: The Supreme Court won’t stop the government’s funding of embryonic stem cell research, despite some researchers’ complaints that the work relies on destroyed human embryos.

FRC: We’re also grateful for their gutsy legal team–Tom Hungar of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, Sam Casey of Law of Life Project, Steve Aden of Alliance Defending Freedom, and their colleagues, who gave this battle–and so many innocent lives–their absolute best.

FRC Blog (1/4 – links to filings): If you’ve lost track of where things are with the federal lawsuit to stop taxpayer funding of destructive embryonic stem cell research, here’s the update. | also posted at LifeNews

Interview with Mr Piero Tozzim of Defending Freedom Alliance, a defender of life . . . There is something truly ironic and downright perverse that the United States is currently promoting the civilization of death, not only in their area, but also abroad. Meanwhile, in the post-communist countries are reborn movements for the defense of life and the renewal of Christian identity – says Mr Piero Tozzi, American lawyer and defender of life . . .

One News Now: Alliance Defending Freedom is asking the court to review an appeals court decision that allows federal funding of embryonic stem-cell research to continue. . . . “Americans shouldn’t be forced to pay for experiments that destroy human life, have produced no real-world treatments and violate federal law, especially in economic times like these,” contends ADF senior counsel Steven H. Aden.

FRC: Alliance Defending Freedom and the Jubilee Campaign together with Tom Hungar of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher today filed a petition for certiorari with the U.S. Supreme Court in the case Sherley v. Sebelius, which seeks to end federal funding of human embryonic stem cell research. Of the petition David Prentice , Ph.D., senior fellow for life sciences at the Family Research Council’s Center for Human Life and Bioethics, made the following comments . . . | Also at Meldicka.net

Alliance Defending Freedom attorneys together with Samuel B. Casey of the Jubilee Campaign’s Law of Life Project and Tom Hungar of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, LLP, asked the U.S. Supreme Court Wednesday to review an appellate court ruling that allows federal funding of embryonic stem cell research to continue.

Telegraph: Researchers from Kyoto University successfully turned stem cells into eggs in mice, which went on to give birth to healthy and fertile offspring. The technique can either be used with stem cells taken from embryos, or ones created artificially from other adult cells such as skin, according to their study published in the Science journal.

Wesley Smith comments at First Things.

Reuters: Scientists have restored hearing to deaf gerbils using human embryonic stem cells in an advance that could eventually help people with an intractable form of deafness caused by nerve damage.

Americans should not be forced to pay for experiments that destroy human life, have produced no real-world treatments, and violate federal law. That law’s clear intent has been utterly ignored.”

Public Discourse: A report from The Witherspoon Council, a newly-formed bioethics body, argues that even the noblest aspirations of the scientific enterprise must be guided by ethics and governed under political authority.

LifeNews: A new report released today by the Charlotte Lozier Institute takes a comprehensive look at the stem cell research debate and comes to the conclusion that proponents of embryonic stem cell research have lost.

Turtle Bay and Beyond: While EU governments are currently discussing “Horizon 2020″, the 8th multiannual framework programme for research, several countries have announced that they were not going to support the EU funding of research projects on embryonic stem cells, which is ethically controversial because such cells are obtained from embryos that have been aborted or created in vitro. The move was led by the Austrian government, which was joined by Malta, Lithuania, Slovakia, Poland, Ireland and Slovenia.

NC Register: Stem cells derived from human fetuses will be injected into the eyes of a dozen patients suffering from age-related macular degeneration, under a clinical trial approved early this year by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

Ken Connor at Townhall: This week, another of the President’s infamous “compromises” is in the spotlight, namely his executive order expanding federal funding for embryonic stem cell research. Stymied by existing law limiting the government’s involvement in this ethically troubling area of “scientific” work, the President crafted a workaround based on rhetorical hair-splitting, issued his order, and the dollars began flowing. The Alliance Defense Fund filed suit to enjoin the funding and in 2010 a federal judge issued a temporary injunction blocking the executive order. [also available at Renew America]

LifeNews: After months of pro-life protests and opposition, PepsiCo has indicated it will no longer contract with biotech firm Senomyx Inc., which uses cells from a baby killed in an abortion to conduct flavor testing.

One News Now: “This case is challenging President Obama’s executive order to really ignore the federal law that protects American tax dollars from being used to destroy human embryos and goes ahead and has funded millions and millions of dollars’ worth of destructive research,” Bowman shares.

The Blog of the Legal Times: A top U.S. Justice Department appellate lawyer, defending a controversial Obama administration executive order, today said federal funding restrictions do not prohibit research involving human embryonic stem cells.

Available for media interviews following oral arguments in Sherley v. Sebelius, a lawsuit challenging an Obama administration policy that authorized the National Institutes of Health to fund additional research projects that destroy human embryos even though a federal law known as the Dickey/Wicker Amendment specifically prohibits such funding.

LifeNews: PepsiCo has come under fire from pro-life advocates because it has been contracting with a research firm that uses fetal cells from babies victimized by abortions to test and produce artificial flavor enhancers.

New York Times: Researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital say they have extracted stem cells from human ovaries and made them generate egg cells. The advance, if confirmed, might provide a new source of eggs for treating infertility, though scientists say it is far too early to tell if the work holds such promise.

LifeNews: A Judge Daniel Green in the Cole County Circuit Court ruled Monday evening that the MOSIRA (Missouri Science Innovation and Reinvestment Act) that allows for embryonic stem cell research and human cloning funding is unconstitutional.

ABC News: An Oklahoma bill that would ban the sale of food containing aborted human fetuses has some people wondering: What food currently contains aborted human fetuses?

LifeNews.com: Turning a blind eye toward both good science and good ethics, the embryonic stem cell and cloning company, Advanced Cell Technology (ACT), has published a very preliminary online report regarding their first two patients injected with embryonic stem cell derivatives.

NYTimes.com: A treatment for eye diseases that is derived from human embryonic stem cells might have improved the vision of two patients, bolstering the beleaguered field, researchers reported Monday.

Prof Life Blogs: Today, on behalf of the adult stem researchers it represents, the Jubilee Campaign’sLaw of Life Project and their co-counsel at the Alliance Defense Fund and Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, filed their opening Appellants’ Brief asking the United States Court of Appeals to “reverse the district court’s judgment in favor of Defendants, reverse the grant of Defendants’ Motion for Summary Judgment and the denial of [Appellants'] Motion for Summary Judgment, and remand with directions to enter summary judgment for [Appellants].”

LifeNews.com: NIH Director Francis Collins has approved four more human embryonic stem cell lines as eligible for federal taxpayer funding. The latest approval brings the total to 146.

News from The Associated Press: The ministry stopped accepting applications for stem cell procedures until July and is implementing a yearlong campaign to halt unauthorized stem cell therapy trials.

BBC : For the first time, scientists have produced monkeys composed of cells taken from separate embryos.

LifeNews.com: In case you missed it, the appeal that was filed in the federal embryonic stem cell lawsuit regarding taxpayer funding, Sherley and Deisher et al. v. Sebelius et al., is moving forward.

TheStar.com: British scientists have made the first human embryonic stem cells of a high enough grade to use in patients and deposited them in a public stem-cell bank for development in human trials by drug companies and researchers by 2014.

LifeNews: Ian Wilmut, the scientist who achieved international notoriety for cloning the sheep Dolly, is now urging his fellow scientists and researchers to abandon embryonic stem cell research.

LifeNews.com: After making headlines nationwide with curious comments in an interview in which many observers say he indicated he believes human life begins at implantation, Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich has restated his pro-life views.

Breaking from groups that believe human life begins at the moment an egg is fertilized — also the position of the Catholic Church, of which he is a member — former House Speaker Newt Gingrich told ABC News he believes life begins at implantation.

It was Geron that started this whole mess.

The New American: Citing the uncertain economy and the scarcity of needed capital, the company that launched the first government funded embryonic stem-cell trials announced that it is halting further stem-cell research and will lay off nearly 40 percent of its staff. The California-based Geron Corp., which began the first FDA-approved stem-cell trials in 2010, said that it would shift its focus to cancer research.

News from The Associated Press: The company doing the first government-approved test of embryonic stem cell therapy is discontinuing further stem cell work, a move with stark implications for a field offering hope of future medicines for conditions with inadequate or no current treatments.

Life News: Pope Benedict XVI gave an excellent speech to attendees of a bioethics conference in Rome last week and one doesn’t have to be Catholic to appreciate his sentiment that researchers shouldn’t take one human life (human embryos) to potentially save the lives of patients.

News from The Associated Press: The Vatican has entered into an unusual partnership with a small U.S. biotech company to promote using adult stem cells for treating disease, rather than focusing research on embryonic stem cells.

LifeNews.com: Pepsi shareholders have filed a shareholder resolution with the Securities and Exchange Commission and PepsiCo demanding that the company has been contracting with a research firm that uses fetal cells from babies victimized by abortions to test and produce artificial flavor enhancers.

LifeNews.com: You may or may not have heard that recently a European Union court has ruled that the extraction of embryonic stem cells cannot be patented because it destroys a human embryo.

SMH.com.au: Serious and fatal diseases such as pancreatic cancer, Parkinson’s disease and diabetes may eventually be treated using stem cells from breast milk following a remarkable discovery at the University of Western Australia.

Scientists reported Wednesday that for the first time they used cloning techniques to coax human eggs to generate embryonic stem cells containing the genes of specific patients.

Catholic News Agency (CNA): The Notice of Appeal was filed on September 19 by Jubilee Campaign’s Law of Life Project and their co-counsel at the Alliance Defense Fund and Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher.

BBC News (includes video): Doctors at Moorfields Eye hospital in London have been given the go-ahead to carry out Europe’s first clinical trial using human embryonic stem cell.

ProLife Blogs: Today, on behalf of the adult stem researchers it represents, the Jubilee Campaign’s Law of Life Project and their co-counsel at the Alliance Defense Fund and Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, filed their Notice of Appeal asking the United States Court of Appeals to reinstate their case dismissed by United States District Court for the District of Columbia in its July 27 decision . . .

LifeNews.com: The Scientist has a great article called “Skipping Pluripotency.” What is pluripotency? Pluripotent is a term used to describe a cell that is undifferentiated. A pluripotent cell can become most or all of the cell types in the body.

LifeNews.com: he appeal was filed by the Jubilee Campaign, a Christian law firm, and their co-counsel at the Alliance Defense Fund and Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher. The Obama administration, via the National Institute of Health’s regulations permitted the federal funding of “research in which” human embryos are “knowingly subjected to risk of injury or death.” Sam Casey, pro-life attorney arguing the case, commented on the appeal, saying, “Each time grant-awarding officials and federally funded scientists support or engage in hESC research, living human embryos are ‘knowingly subjected to risk of injury or death,’ in violation of the federal law known as the Dickey-Wicker Amendment.

Christian Newswire: Today, on behalf of the adult stem researchers it represents, the Jubilee Campaign’s Law of Life Project and their co-counsel at the Alliance Defense Fund and Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, filed their Notice of Appeal asking the United States Court of Appeals to reinstate their case dismissed by United States District Court for the District of Columbia in its July 27 decision based upon the district court’s interpretation of the Court of Appeal’s April 29 ruling vacating the district court’s August 23, 2010 preliminary injunction of the National Institute of Health’s regulations that Obama administration promulgated to permit the federal funding of “research in which” human embryos are “knowingly subjected to risk of injury or death.”

FRC: Family Research Council (FRC) today praised the passage of the “Weldon Patent Ban” as part of the “America Invents Act” (formerly called the Patent Reform Act) to prevent patenting of human embryos

LifeNews.com: On Wednesday night, the Missouri Senate Jobs, Economic Development and Local Government Committee voted “do pass” on two bills that pro-life advocates are concerned will lead to taxpayer funding of embryonic stem cell research.

O. Carter Snead at Public Discourse: Public officials—especially the President—are obligated to protect the intrinsic equal dignity of all human beings, regardless not only of sex and race, but also without regard to age, size, condition of dependency, vulnerability, or the esteem of others. Abortion and embryo-destructive research are profound and lethal violations of this principle of equality to which the law (and the President) must respond.

LifeNews.com: For those keeping track, late yesterday NIH Director Francis Collins approved four more human embryonic stem cell (hESC) lines for the embryonic stem cell registry.

LifeNews.com: You may have missed it, given that such occurrences have sadly become all too common, but another state has wasted good taxpayer dollars, pouring more money on unethical and unsuccessful embryonic stem cell research and ignoring life-saving adult stem cell research. The State of Connecticut recently announced the award of $9.8 million in state taxpayer funds for twenty stem cell research grants.

American Medical News: he plaintiffs have not decided whether to appeal Lamberth’s dismissal but are considering all options, said Steve Aden, senior counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund in Washington, part of the plaintiffs’ legal team. “In these tough economic times, it makes no sense for the federal government to use taxpayer money for this illegal and unethical purpose.”

American Medical News: The plaintiffs have not decided whether to appeal Lamberth’s dismissal but are considering all options, said Steve Aden, senior counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund in Washington, part of the plaintiffs’ legal team. “In these tough economic times, it makes no sense for the federal government to use taxpayer money for this illegal and unethical purpose.”