Posted on 03/13/2009 8:12:20 PM PDT by Between the Lines
On Wednesday, only two days after he lifted President Bush’s executive order banning federal funding of stem cell research that requires the destruction of human embryos, President Barack Obama signed a law that explicilty bans federal funding of any "research in which a human embryo or embryos are destroyed, discarded, or knowingly subjected to risk of injury or death."
The provision was buried in the 465-page omnibus appropriations bill that Obama signed Wednesday. Known as the Dickey-Wicker amendment, it has been included in the annual appropriations bill for the Department of Health and Human Services every fiscal year since 1996.
The amendment says, in part: "None of the funds made available in this Act may be used for—(1) the creation of a human embryo or embryos for research purposes; or (2) research in which a human embryo or embryos are destroyed, discarded, or knowingly subjected to risk of injury or death."
Found in Section 509 of Title V of the omnibus bill (at page 280 of the 465-page document), the federal funding ban not only prohibits the government from providing tax dollars to support research that kills or risks injury to a human embryo, it also mandates that the government use an all-inclusive definition of “human embryo” that encompasses any nascent human life from the moment that life comes into being, even if created in a laboratory through cloning, in vitro fertilization or any other means.
“For the purposes of this section,” says the law, “the term ‘human embryo or embryos’ includes any organism … that is derived by fertilization, parthenogenesis, cloning, or any other means from one or more human gametes or human diploid cells.” (The entire verbatim text of Section 509 of the omnibus spending law is reprinted at the bottom of this article.)
At a widely publicized White House ceremony on Monday, President Obama signed his own executive order lifting an executive order that President Bush had signed in 2001. While allowing federal funding of research involving embryonic stem cell lines that had already been created from embryos that had already been destroyed, Bush's 2001 order denied federal funding to research that required the killing of any additional embryos.
“For the past 8 years, the authority of the Department of Health and Human Services, including the National Institutes of Health (NIH), to fund and conduct human embryonic stem cell research has been limited by Presidential actions,” said the order that President Obama signed Monday. “The purpose of this order is to remove these limitations on scientific inquiry, to expand NIH support for the exploration of human stem cell research, and in so doing to enhance the contribution of America's scientists to important new discoveries and new therapies for the benefit of humankind.”
The order went on to say: “The Secretary of Health and Human Services (Secretary), through the Director of NIH, may support and conduct responsible, scientifically worthy human stem cell research, including human embryonic stem cell research, to the extent permitted by law.”
Thanks to the Dickey-Wicker language in Section 509 of the omnibus bill, the "extent permitted by law" will continue to forbid federal funding of research that even puts embryos at risk.
Close observers on both sides of the embryonic stem cell issue were well aware of the Dickey-Wicker amendment, and understood that it would pose a legal obstacle to federal funding of embryo-killing research even if President Obama issued an executive order reversing President Bush's administrative policy denying federal funding to that research.
Rep. Diana DeGette (D.-Colo.) sponsored the House version of a bill--vetoed by President Bush--that would have legalized federal funding of stem cell research that destroys so-called “spare” human embryos taken from in vitro fertilization clinics. On Monday, she told The New York Times she had already approached what she called “several pro-life Democrats” about the possibility of repealing Dickey-Wicker.
“Dickey-Wicker is 13 years old now, and I think we need to review these policies,'' The Times quoted DeGette as saying. “I’ve already talked to several pro-life Democrats about Dickey-Wicker, and they seemed open to the concept of reversing the policy if we could show that it was necessary to foster this research.”
Rep. Mike Castle (R.-Del.), who co-sponsored Rep. DeGette’s bill, similarly stated this week that Dickey-Wicker should be revisited.
"Certainly, the Dickey-Wicker amendment . . . is something we need to look at," Castle told Congressional Quarterly Today on Monday. "That was passed in 1996, before we realized the full potential of embryonic stem cell research. Some researchers are telling us now that that needs to be reversed."
Douglas Johnson, spokesman for the National Right to Life Committee, said in a press release Monday that President Obama’s executive order lifting the ban on federal funding for embryo-destroying stem cell research “set the stage” for an effort to repeal Dickey-Wicker.
“This sets the stage for an attack on the Dickey-Wicker law, which since 1995 has been a provision of the annual appropriations bills for federal health programs,” said Johnson. “Any member of Congress who votes for legislation to repeal this law is voting to allow federal funding of human embryo farms, created through the use of human cloning.”
In the remarks he made Monday when announcing the executive order, President Obama said he wanted to close the door to “the use” of cloning for human reproduction but not for other purposes.
“And we will ensure that our government never opens the door to the use of cloning for human reproduction. It is dangerous, profoundly wrong and has no place in our society, or any society,” said Obama.
A bill sponsored in the last Congress by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D.-Calif.) and Sen. Orrin Hatch (R- Utah) would specifically permit federal funding of research using human embryos that are created by cloning and kept alive for no more than 14 days so that their stem cells can be extracted. Federal funding of this type of research is prohibited by Dickey-Wicker.
Researchers are interested in cloning human embryos for prospective stem cell therapies because it might help overcome the problem posed by a patient's immune system, which rejects stem cells derived from another person but might accept stem cells if they are taken from an embryo cloned from the patient himself.
On Tuesday morning, The New York Times carried an editorial calling on Congress to repeal Dickey-Wicker.
“Other important embryonic research is still being hobbled by the so-called Dickey-Wicker amendment,” The Times editorialized. “The amendment, which is regularly attached to appropriations bills for the Department of Health and Human Services, prohibits the use of federal funds to support scientific work that involves the destruction of human embryos (as happens when stem cells are extracted) or the creation of embryos for research purposes.”
“Congress should follow Mr. Obama's lead and lift this prohibition so such important work can benefit from an infusion of federal dollars,” The Times said.
The next day, President Obama signed H.R. 1105, the “Omnibus Appropriations Act, 2009,” which includes the Dickey-Wicker language. Unless Congress passes and President Obama signs new legislation to repeal Dickey-Wicker, it will now be the law of the land at least through September 30, when this fiscal year ends.
The text of Section 509 of the Omnibus Appropriations Act, 2009, reads as follows:
SEC. 509. (a) None of the funds made available in this Act may be used for—(1) the creation of a human embryo or embryos for research purposes; or (2) research in which a human embryo or embryos are destroyed, discarded, or knowingly subjected to risk of injury or death greater than that allowed for research on fetuses in utero under 45 CFR 46.204(b) and section 498(b) of the Public Health Service Act (42 U.S.C. 289g(b)). (b) For purposes of this section, the term ‘‘human embryo or embryos’’ includes any organism, not protected as a human subject under 45 CFR 46 as of the date of the enactment of this Act, that is derived by fertilization, parthenogenesis, cloning, or any other means from one or more human gametes or human diploid cells.
If he signed it unknowingly, it just means full funding by October.
Looks like Malia and Sasha friends will not be going to school together. Obama says, private school for my family, not for thee!
Among the amendments rejected were measures to effectively ensure continued funding for the District of Columbia's school-voucher program,
Heh - Heh - Heh! Whoa - who paid for this duff’s education - no wonder his school records are in a lock box.
Then again - this guy is POTUS and his thugs are running his country?
You won’t hear this from the MSM like you would if Bush made an error like this. Just like if that was Bush who screwed up the welcome with Gordon Brown, the MSM would have been proudly proclaiming it loud and often.
if he were a woman, they’d be blaming it on his gender.
This is astonishing. I recall something about communications with Pope Benedict over the past week...maybe he spiritually galvanized Obama’s spine?
**I am Cracking Ribs With Laughter (CRWL).**
The way the “Little Fuhrer” is working... he’ll find out Monday Morning... I”d wager in Vegas... LF has NO IDEA what he did ... YET!!
Can’t wait..he gonna get so ANGRY , he gonna turn WHITE!!
"He hasn't a clue...He can't even buy one."
Is this not just simply socialist-style governance? Make everything, anything, unlawful. Prosecute violations selectively for any positive result for the regime. Claim one day that you are 'For X'; tomorrow, "Against X'.
Kerry and many others do it regularly on a much smaller scale.
I'm not persuaded this is a gaffe.
Well, by rescinding Bush's EO he did manage to stop federal funding for existing embryonic stem cell lines where the embryos had already been destroyed, and for non-embryonic stem cell research. So there's that. Orrin Hatch? You've got to be kidding. Orrin Hatch thinks it's ok to kill a 14 day old future human being in order to experiment on it? Utah Freepers, I hope you bombard his offices over this, then primary him. Time for him to find another line of work. Unbelievable.
CRWL - again
You got me thinkin'. Michael Jackson must have been perty angry one day.
From the same guy who said “This is the worst economy since the great depression” last week, and yesterday said, “The US economy is strong.”
Or did it? In January of 1999, Harriet Rabb, the top lawyer at the Department of Health and Human Services, released a legal opinion that would set the course for Clinton Administration policy. Federal funds, obviously, could not be used to derive stem cell lines (because derivation involves embryo destruction). However, she concluded that because human embryonic stem cells "are not a human embryo within the statutory definition," the Dickey-Wicker Amendment does not apply to them. The NIH was therefore free to give federal funding to experiments involving the cells themselves (what Republican Senator Sam Brownback, of Kansas, called a bit of "legal sophistry.")http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sciencenow/dispatches/050413.html Senator Brownback's assessment of "legal sophistry" was correct then, and I have no doubt that that sort of slick definition-crafting will be employed again by Obama.
Sorry, not used to posting links and such, the formatting’s a little off.
Elfman2, thank you for being a calm and intelligent reader who works to avoid biases that would cloud his comprehension.
This is why the Dickey-Wicket Amendmendment was changed since then to inculde this
Maybe it is a bit cynical, but they’ll just weasel their way around that as well.
So let it be written, so let it be done.
Only in the sense that the Dickey-Wicker prohibitions are still in force, although its language poses problems for induced pluripotent stem cells, IMHO, withholding comment on all of this executive and legislative legerdemain.
The text of Section 509 of the Omnibus Appropriations Act, 2009, reads as follows:
SEC. 509. (a) None of the funds made available in this Act may be used for—(1) the creation of a human embryo or embryos for research purposes; or (2) research in which a human embryo or embryos are destroyed, discarded, or knowingly subjected to risk of injury or death greater than that allowed for research on fetuses in utero under 45 CFR 46.204(b) and section 498(b) of the Public Health Service Act (42 U.S.C. 289g(b)). (b) For purposes of this section, the term ‘‘human embryo or embryos’’ includes any organism, not protected as a human subject under 45 CFR 46 as of the date of the enactment of this Act, that is derived by fertilization, parthenogenesis, cloning, or any other means from one or more human gametes or human diploid cells.
LOL!!
Good one!
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