Stem Cell Funding Wins Appeals Court Victory
In a very important win for the Obama administration, the court of appeals has sided with them and ruled that the president did have the authority to allow the federal government to fund stem cell research again, something that President Bush had made illegal by executive order when he took office. It was a 2-1 ruling.
The key issue in the case was whether a 1996 law, referred to amusingly as the Dickey-Wicker Amendment, forbid only the creation of new stem cell lines using federal money or whether it forbid all federal funding for any research on stem cell lines created with private funds. The court said: