Federal Funding for Embryonic Stem Cell Research : Is the NIH ’ s legal line between ES cell derivation and research ethically

Pluripotent Embryonic stem cells (ES cells) offer promising therapeutic potential for a number of fatal and otherwise untreatable diseases (National Institutes of Health, 1999). In 1998, privately funded research conducted at the University of Wisconsin by Dr. James Thomson yielded the first human stem cell line derived from early embryos donated by couples no longer needing them for procreative purposes (Thomson et al., 1998). Because the derivation of ES cells requires the destruction of a week-old embryo, the research and development of ES cell lines, such as Dr. Thomson’s, pose ethical and religious concerns for certain groups (National Bioethics Advisory Committee, 1999). Analogous to the abortion debate, these concerns stem from the belief that an embryo has sufficient moral status to make its destruction a wrongful act (Keeler, 1999). Under federal appropriations law, no funds from the federal government may be used for research in which an embryo is destroyed or created (United States Congress, 1998). In 2000, the National Institutes of Health, interpreting this ban to apply only to the actual isolation of ES cells, announced its intentions to fund research that uses ES cell lines as long as the cell lines were derived with private funds (National Institutes of Health, 2000a). This legal maneuver has drawn criticism from both sides of the ES cell research debate as being ethically unsound and inconsistent. This paper will assess the validity of the strongest of these arguments and elucidate National Institutes of Health's interpretation of the embryo research ban to be morally defensible.