News Release
From Immediate Release: August 24, 2010
Contact: Diane Gramley 1.814.271.9078 or 1.814.437.5355
Judge Halts Federal Funding of Embryonic Stem Cell Research
(Harrisburg) – Today the American Family Association of Pennsylvania (AFA of PA) applauded the decision of US District Judge for the District of Columbia Royce Lamberth to halt federal funding of embryonic stem cell research (ESCR). Nightlight Christian Adoptions, a group that encourages adoption of frozen embryonic children, had filed suit last year. The suit was over the guidelines that the National Institutes of Health developed for taxpayer-funded research that would involve the destruction of living human embryos.
A 2007 United States governments’ Domestic Policy Council admitted that embryos are human beings; the only differences between embryos and other human beings, the report said, are accidental differences in levels of development. Dr. Bernadine Healy, the director of the National Institutes of Health under the Bush administration, wrote in a March 2009 U.S. News & World Report column that “embryonic stem cells, once thought to hold the cure for Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and diabetes, are obsolete.” In early 2010 California’s Institute for Regenerative Medicine, after five years of fruitless work in embryonic stem cell research, has now quietly diverted funds from ESCR to adult stem cell research.”
“The judge rightly found that the new guidelines clearly violated the Dickey-Wicker amendment which prevents taxpayer monies from funding research in which embryos are ‘destroyed, discarded, or knowingly subjected to risk of injury or death.’ The AFA of PA is very pleased with the decision,” noted Diane Gramley, president of the AFA of PA.
President Obama needs to redirect funding to adult stem cell research which has proven and continues to prove so successful.
The administration’s decision to appeal the decision is additional proof of their anti-life positions. They are willing to target the most defenseless of all Americans – the unborn.
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