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When the case came before Judge Royce Lamberth of the US District Court for the District of Columbia, he shocked the research community in August 2010 by issuing an injunction that shut down all NIH-funded experiments for 17 days. However, an appeals court suspended the injunction while the case moved through the courts.
A three-judge panel of that higher court, the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, ruled against the plaintiffs in August 2012. It said that the NIH had reasonably interpreted the Dickey Wicker amendment, a 17-year-old law that says that NIH funds may not be used in research in which an embryo is “destroyed” or “discarded”, and the mainstay of the case. The court found the law’s wording to be ambiguous enough to allow the NIH to fund research on the cell lines, if not their derivation.
Sherley and Deisher then appealed to the Supreme Court, the court of last resort.
Although the case may now be over, Deisher says that the lawsuit accomplished one of its goals: some scientists and clinicians have focused instead on working with adult stem cells.
But supporters of the research are celebrating the decision, saying that work on embryonic-stem-cell lines could lead to therapies for Parkinson’s disease, diabetes and other ailments. “What a great day for science,” says Amy Comstock Rick, president of the Coalition for the Advancement of Medical Research in Washington DC, an umbrella group of organizations that advocate for the research. Collins says that he is “very pleased”.
Under Obama, the NIH has made 195 stem-cell lines available for use to researchers; under Bush, the number was around 20. George Daley, an NIH-supported stem-cell researcher at Children’s Hospital Boston, says that he is relieved. “The ruling erases the nagging worry that existing funding could be cut off at any time.” Still, he says, the threat alone achieved some of its intended effect — to instil enough uncertainty to keep some researchers from entering the field.
