Government to appeal ESCR decision

PUBLISHED ON

September 1, 2010

Well that didn’t take long:

The Obama administration on Tuesday asked a federal judge to lift a restraining order that it says could undercut federally funded embryonic stem cell research.

The Justice Department filed its request with U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth only days after he blocked government funding of embryonic stem cell research. . . .

Orthodox. Faithful. Free.

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Stopping the research could cause “irrevocable harm to the millions of extremely sick or injured people who stand to benefit” from continuing human embryonic stem cell research, the department said in court papers, “as well as to the defendants, the scientific community and the taxpayers who have already spent hundreds of millions of dollars on such research through public funding of projects which will now be forced to shut down and, in many cases, scrapped altogether.”

Two points here — first, I assume the government means “irrevocable potential harm.” As ESCR itself has been all potential, no result so far, I can’t imagine the harm will be all that great, either.

Also, since when is “We’ve already sunk millions in this project, we can’t stop now” a good argument for anything? But then again, this is the government we’re talking about.

Author

  • Margaret Cabaniss is the former managing editor of Crisis Magazine. She joined Crisis in 2002 after graduating from the University of the South with a degree in English Literature and currently lives in Baltimore, Maryland. She now blogs at SlowMama.com.

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