A law in time?
Nature 467 , 7 (02 September 2010)
doi:10.1038/467007a
Published online 01 September 2010
Congress must act quickly to save US stem-cell research.
Subject terms: Stem cells Policy Politics Research management
Human embryonic-stem-cell research in the United States has been dealt a potentially devastating blow by a federal judge, who last week issued an injunction halting US government funding for the research until a lawsuit challenging its legality is decided (see page 12). The Department of Justice vowed to speedily appeal against the injunction, but had not done so as Naturewent to press. Unless the injunction is quickly reversed, and unless the government then prevails when the case is heard on its merits, hundreds of experiments funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) will be crippled, and many will have to be abandoned.
Scientists, patients and others who care about the survival of a highly promising area of biomedical research should not expect the courts to act in their favour. The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, where the NIH's appeal will be heard, is dominated by conservatives, who are likely to sustain last week's injunction, as is the US Supreme Court.
In any case, Congress should not leave to the courts a case in which the public, on both sides of the debate, has so much invested, and which so clearly calls out for lawmakers to clarify what they intend by the amendment at the heart of the crisis. Since 1996, the Dickey–Wicker Amendment has been attached annually to the bill that funds the NIH. It bars federal funding for research in which human embryos are destroyed or discarded. Although it originated several years before human embryonic stem cells were isolated, Congress has repeatedly reapproved it, even as the therapeutic potential of human embryonic-stem-cell research has become evident. [???]
Read more here/Leia mais aqui: Nature
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NOTA CAUSTICANTE DESTE BLOGGER:
Desde quando uma publicação científica interfere nos assuntos internos de uma nação? E ainda incentiva seus habitantes se mobilizarem a favor de um pesquisa científica que hoje é uma baita nota promissória sem nenhuma perspectiva ou garantia de resgate fiduciário em termos de terapias?
Fui, nem sei por que, pensando que o espectro de Huxley, um dos fundadores da Nature, deve estar rondando por lá e bem contente: seus discípulos aprenderam a lição que a Nature deve ser um veículo para a promoção de agendas mais ideológicas do que científicas.
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