Stem-cell research ban temporarily lifted in appeals court

On Friday, an appeals court temporarily stayed a judge's ban on the federal government's funding of embryonic stem-cell research, the The Associated Press/The Philadelphia Inquirer reports. "The National Institutes of Health said it was resuming its own research and would again evaluate applications from scientists who are seeking taxpayer money to do the work, a process that has been frozen since late last month." The court will hear complete arguments in coming weeks to make a longer-term decision. What's at stake in the ban? "A 1996 law prohibits the use of taxpayer dollars in work that harms an embryo, so batches have been taken using private money. Those batches can reproduce in lab dishes indefinitely, and government policies say using tax money to work with the already-created batches is permissible." But, in August, a U.S. District Court judge decided the current policy on research violates that 1996 law (Neergard, 9/11).

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This article was reprinted from khn.org with permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent news service, is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care policy research organization unaffiliated with Kaiser Permanente.