Stem Cell Research Legislation

Stem Cell Research Legislation

Introduction

Official policy toward stem-cell research has changed dramatically in recent years, largely because of the varying stances taken by the administrations of President George W. Bush (R, 2001-09) and President Barack Obama (D). In 2001, George Bush prohibited the governmental funding of embryonic stem cell research and twice voted against the legislation, using his presidential power to veto, that effectively put an end to any form of governmental funding restrictions on embryonic stem-cell research. Bush argued that stem-cell research involving human embryos crossed a "moral boundary" and asserted that a bill authorizing such research would in turn be in support of allowing to take human life for the sake of discovering medical gains. He did sign a presidential order; however, heartening researchers to search for alternative techniques of stem cell research that did not include the damage to embryos. Embryonic stem-cell research required the use of human egg cells and the destruction of human embryos, prompting impassioned debate over the morality of such research (Gottweis et al, 2009).

Current Legislation

In March 2009, however, President Obama drastically changed the central government's procedure toward stem cell research by approving a presidential order that removed all forms of restrictions on financial support of research aim at stem cells, thereby reversing the ban instituted by Bush in 2001. In 2008 during his presidential campaign, Obama had shown his support for stem cell research and promised to lift all restrictions on funding of the program.

At a signing ceremony that took place in the White House, Obama reiterated his views that, this research on tiny cells could possess the potential to assist humans in understanding and finding treatments to some of the most dangerous diseases in out society. President Obama was also critical of the Bush government for exploiting the issue and creation of a sense of misguided choice and sparking a debate involving moral values and scientific research. The following month, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) released a set of projected principles for the governmental funding of embryonic stem cell research. Under the proposed rules, research involving stem-cells created from embryos donated by fertility clinics would receive federal financing, but the rules also required that all stem-cell lines receiving federal funds be created ethically—meaning that an embryo used to create a stem-cell line must have been slated for destruction after an in vitro fertilization attempt. The rules further stated that the donors of the embryos would also have to be fully aware of its intended use to create stem cells, and that no donor was paid for the embryo (Koka, 2011).

The changes to federal financing of embryonic stem-cell research under the Obama administration, however, did not go unchallenged. In August 2010, Judge Royce Lambert of the U.S. District Court of Washington, D.C., released a ruling blocking Obama's permission of governmental funding of embryonic stem-cell research, stating that it violated a 1996 federal law known as the Dickey-Wicker Amendment, which prohibited the use of federal money to fund research that ...