Gov. Jim Doyle came out in support of embryonic stem cell research at the University of Wisconsin Tuesday, vowing to fight a recent injunction halting federal funding for facilities across the country that perform stem cell research.
Doyle said the new injunction against stem cell funding could hurt Wisconsin especially, speaking at a press conference at the Waisman Center alongside UW researchers and professors.
“Wisconsin is particularly affected by this ruling because we are such a center of stem cell research,” Doyle said at the press conference. “The harm that’s been done to us really exceeds probably any other state in this country.”
Chief Justice Royce Lamberth of the US District Court in Washington, DC, issued an injunction Aug. 23 halting all federal funding from the National Institutes of Health toward research involving human embryonic stem cells.
Wisconsin receives the majority of its stem cell research funding federally and is therefore more vulnerable to the injunction, while other states, such as Massachusetts and California, have larger sources of private funding that are not subject to funding injunctions.
“We at the University of Wisconsin are extremely proud that UW has become such a center for stem cell research,” UW Chancellor Biddy Martin said at the press conference.
Lamberth ruled an executive order issued by President Barack Obama in 2009 extending stem cell research funding was prohibited by an appropriations rider. Obama’s order reversed a policy statement by former President George W. Bush in 2001 restricting federal stem cell funding.
The Dickey-Wicker amendment is an appropriations bill rider that has been attached to every appropriations bill since 1995 and prohibits federal funding for research that creates embryos or research where a human embryo is knowingly destroyed.
“The Dickey-Wicker amendment was designed under some fear that we would be cloning little human beings,” Doyle said, adding it was not created with current research circumstances in mind.
Between 22 and 24 researchers are currently impacted by the injunction, said Marsha Selzer, director of the Waisman Center.
Two grants that were originally awarded to UW totaling $400,000 of federal funding a year have been put on hold as a result of the injunction, Selzer said.
One grant involved using stem cells to learn about eye disorders, and the other used stem cells to study Down’s Syndrome, Selzer said.
In 2010, UW received approximately $7 million in federal funding for research.
However, the exact amount affected by the injunction in federally funded dollars at UW is not precisely known, Selzer said.
Human embryonic stem cells are “still the gold standard” in stem cell research, despite developments in adult stem cell research and artificially created stem cells, said Tim Kampp, professor of medicine at the UW Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine Center.
In addition, as facilities attempt to follow new guidelines, important research time is being wasted, Kampp said.
“All this time and energy could be going toward making progress, but instead they’re being used on activities that aren’t as helpful,” Kampp sad.
