The battle over the stem cell funding ban rages on following an Court of Appeals decision to temporarily lift the injunction Thursday while President Barack Obama’s emergency motion goes through appeal.
The three-person appeals panel agreed to stay the injunction in order to review details of the motion, but also issued its decision with an air of caution.
“The purpose of this administrative stay is to give the court sufficient opportunity to consider the merits of the emergency motion for stay and should not be construed in any way as a ruling on the merits of that motion,” the court said in its decision.
The court will decide whether to extend or end the temporary lifting of the ban Sept. 20.
Chief Justice Royce Lamberth of the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., issued an injunction Aug. 23, halting all federal funding for embryonic stem cells research, citing an appropriations rider that prohibits federal funding for research that knowingly destroys embryos.
President Obama filed an emergency motion Tuesday to halt the injunction, citing a “magnitude of harms” that would result if federal funding was not restored to stem cell research projects across the country.
Lamberth remained unimpressed, denying the request Wednesday.
The Department of Justice then appealed the decision, and the appeals court halted the preliminary injunction ruling, citing a need to examine details of the motion before permanently reversing the injunction in a move cautiously welcomed by many researchers at the University of Wisconsin.
“I think it’s welcome news, but it’s far from a victory. This is just a holding point,” Tim Kamp, professor at the UW Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine Center, said.
Kamp said judicial decisions can be written and reversed almost instantaneously, but it takes longer for facilities at UW to follow the changing stem cell funding policies under guidance from the National Institutes of Health.
Cash flow for 22 grants for embryonic stem cell research is currently halted, according to the NIH, which approves grants and distributes federal funding for research projects across the country.
Two of these grants were for projects at the UW Waisman Center and were scheduled to receive $400,000 in federal funding before the injunction, Marsha Selzer, director of the Waisman Center, said at a press conference Tuesday.
“The injunction threatens to stop progress in one of the most encouraging areas of biomedical research, just as scientists are gaining momentum – and squander the investment we have already made,” Francis S. Collins, director of the NIH, said in a statement.
Annual federal investments of up to $30 million go through the NIH to fund research grants according to the Department of Health and Human Services.
Additionally, on-again, off-again research can present a problem for all researchers, Kamp said.
“It’s not a simple on-off switch. People are going to be concerned about restructuring everything if next week it’s turned off again,” Kamp said. “It looks more and more like a problem that will need a legislative solution.”
