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.