Federal lawsuit filed today to block federally funded human embryo research

Federal lawsuit filed today to block federally funded human embryo research A group of plaintiffs filed a federal lawsuit today in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to "enjoin and overturn the controversial guidelines for public funding of embryonic stem cell research that the National Institutes of Health issued on July 7, 2009," according to a press statement.... A legal coalition of the Alliance Defense Fund, Advocates International, and Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher are bringing forth the suit on behalf of the 16k-membered Christian Medical Association, Nightlight Christian Adoptions, which specializes in human embryo adoptions, and "all individual human embryos whose lives are now at risk under NIH's guidelines," among others. An attorney for the plaintiffs, Thomas Hungar, called NIH's plan to fund everything but harvesting "pure sophistry." The lawsuit contends NIH guidelines violate the ban because they "necessarily condition funding on the destruction of human embryos." escr 7.jpgPlaintiffs also allege the guidelines were "invalidly implemented, because the decision to fund human embryonic stem cell research was made without the proper procedures required by law and without properly considering the more effective and less ethically problematic forms of adult and induced pluripotent stem cell research." The lawsuit alleges the NIH guidelines fail President Obama's own standard. He earlier stated policy should fund ethically "responsible, scientifically worthy human stem cell research." But the NIH utterly ignored ethically and scientifically superior adult and Induced pluripotent stem cell research and treatment due to a "preconceived determination to fund human embryonic stem cell research," according to the lawsuit. Attorney Sam Casey further charged the NIH rebuffed public opinion. "The majority of the almost 50k comments that the NIH received were opposed to funding this research, and by its own admission, NIH totally ignored these comments," wrote Casey. Contact: Jill Stanek Source: JillStanek.com Publish Date: August 19, 2009 Link to this article.   Send this article to a friend.