geekosystem

Here's a quick quiz of your media savvy: If you saw a press release titled "Fecal Incontinence Is Highly Underreported," what would be your first thought? Yes, after giggling for a little while. If you're like me, your first thought would be to look at the evidence presented that this embarrassing condition is actually affecting many more than the 18 million Americans estimated by the National Institutes of Health. In that search, you, like me, would be rather disappointed by the complete lack of data backing up that statement. Which is made even more frustrating by the fact that this misleading press release is actually about the really interesting nerve therapy.

Ready for a story in which the part about stem cell research is the least complicated thing happening? The U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia today upheld a lower court's decision to toss out a lawsuit that would have prevented the federal government from funding research on embryonic stem cells. The long and the short of that? Federal research dollars from the National Institutes of Health can fund research on embyronic stell cells.

Federal funding of human embryonic stem cell (hESC) research is now legal in the United States. Chief judge of the US District Court for the District of Columbia Royce Lamberth has ruled on the case Sherley et al. v. Sebelius, in favor of hESC research. This decision overturns an existing law that prohibits the government from funding research that destroys the embryo. While Lamberth's 38-page summary judgement may not be the final word in the case, it does put the plaintiffs, adult stem cell researchers James Sherley and Theresa Deisher, in a difficult position should they try to appeal to the US Court of Appeals or the Supreme Court. The case originated in August 2010, when US stem cell research was forced to a halt for 17 days before Lamberth ruled at that time for a preliminary injunction to temporarily suspend federal funding for hESC research. That decision was made on the grounds that existing law (the Dickey-Wicker amendment) prohibited it. In the new ruling Lamberth says that an intervening decision made in April by the Court of Appeals of the District of Columbia Circuit obliges him to find that the Dickey-Wicker amendment is ambiguous enough to allow the federal government's biomedical research institution the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to fund hESC research.