082310lamberthA federal judge on Monday temporarily blocked government rules on embryonic stem cell (ESC) research funding, a blow to the Obama administration which by executive order had lifted Bush-era restrictions and a victory for pro-lifers fighting to stop the destruction of human embryos.

U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth granted the preliminary injunction because he held opponents of Obama’s executive order had demonstrated they are likely to succeed at trial. Lamberth’s injunction is also important in that it rejects the government’s legal rationale for getting around federal law explicitly forbidding the use of taxpayer dollars to destroy a human embryo.

The case initially got hung up on a technical issue: whether those bringing the challenge had the legal right to do so. Initially, Judge Lamberth held that several plaintiffs — including a Christian adoption agency, the Christian Medical Association, and several individuals including two doctors who perform research on adult stem cells — lacked legal standing. A federal appeals court held that physicians James Sherley of the Boston Biomedical Research Institute and Theresa Deisher of AVM Biotechnology were entitled to sue, and that led Lamberth to move the case forward.

Sherley and Deisher demonstrated they were harmed by the guidelines that unfairly favor research on embryos over research on adult cells. The two claimed the Obama guidelines make it too difficult to compete successfully for National Institutes of Health stem cell research money. They also argued a 1996 federal law clearly prohibits funding of research that resulted from the destruction of embryos.

Those arguments persuaded Judge Lamberth. Significantly, his ruling suggests that the Clinton, Bush, and Obama administrations all wrongly assumed that because taxpayer dollars never funded actual human embryo destruction — the destruction was done privately — but rather research on the resulting stem cell lines, that they were in technical compliance with the law. Bush’s executive order allowed research on 21 lines created prior to 2001, but banned research on newly destroyed embryos. In his first two months in office, Obama lifted the restrictions altogether and has funded research on 75 lines so far.

Lamberth flatly rejected the government’s attempt to distinguish between the destruction of the embryo and research on the destroyed embryo as distinct “pieces of research” — one ineligible for funding and one eligible. They “cannot be separated,” the judge said.

“ESC research is clearly research in which an embryo is destroyed,” Lamberth wrote. “To conduct ESC research, ESCs must be derived from an embryo. The process of deriving ESCs from an embryo results in the destruction of the embryo. Thus, ESC research necessarily depends upon the destruction of a human embryo.”

The nonprofit group Nightlight Christian Adoptions and the Christian Medical Association (CMA) were among the original plaintiffs. CMA chief executive Dr. David Stevens told WORLD he is pleasantly surprised by Lamberth’s ruling. “We thought we had a great case, but you never know what the courts going to do in this day in time,” he said. “But they interpreted strictly on the facts in the case.”

Supporters of embryonic stem cell research claim their work has the potential to produce breakthroughs in treating life-threatening conditions — from spinal cord injury to diabetes to Parkinson’s — that have resisted traditional treatment. Scientists say they need to do research with embryonic stem cells as well as so-called adult ones because the former are more flexible.

Dr. Stevens noted that researchers have yet to begin to test the use of embryonic stem cells in humans. On the other hand, there are around 1,200 studies being conducted on adult stem cell research, he said, and this research has met with much greater success.

The adoption agency Nightlight contends that, unless reversed, the government’s guidelines will decrease the number of human embryos available for adoption. Nightlight helps individuals adopt human embryos that are being stored in fertilization clinics. The group provides domestic, international, and embryo adoption services to families in all 50 states.

Nightlight helps individuals adopt human embryos that are being stored in fertilization clinics. It began the program in 1997, using some of more than 400,000 frozen embryos.

The NIH declined to comment, referring calls to the Justice Department.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.