Up until the Clinton administration, each time human embryo experimentation had come up, it was not allowed. While Clinton was in office, the Republicans held the Senate and because of their pro-life agenda, were in opposition to the statements of the National Bioethics Advisory Commission (NBAC). The bioethics committee found that "scientists should be able to use donated human embryos for biomedical research." Basically what happened here was that the Republicans were fighting the Democrats. The Republicans slipped in legislation regarding human embryo experimentation by adding them into stop-gap spending bills. The NBAC report also recommended the use of federal funds and the changing of three laws to permit those funds to be used for the stem-cell research that we have today.
The Department of Health and Human Services decided on its own that stem cells were not governed by the Code of Federal Regulations because they were not embryos themselves, conveniently ignoring the fact that stem-cells are extracted from embryos. This sparked litigation in the Fourth circuit district court. The court (at the time rendered the hearing moot because no one had standing to bring a suit ) This was appealed with a Writ of Certiorari to which the Supreme Court has yet to respond; [Mary Doe and the National Association for the Advancement of Preborn Children and Petitioners vs. Tommy G. Thompson Secretary of Health and Human Services for the Department of Health and Human Research, Dr. Harold Varmus in his official capacity as director of National Institutes of Health and National Institutes of Health and Respondents.] This Writ is interesting in that if circumvents the appellate court for the district. Under the doctrine of an Instant Case. In this petition, they ask the supreme court to review whether or not the District Court erred in dismissing because the case was moot. They stopped trying the case because none of the people had interest in the case and so it was rendered moot.
The plaintiffs argue that moot does not apply, because in cases involving the government, you have to prove that "prior administration policy could not be reasonably expected to apply in the future." [Adarand Constructors Incorporated vs. Slater 588 US 222]. In order for moot to apply, the heavy burden of persuading the court to challenge conduct lies with the party asserting mootness. [supra]. The problem with this argument, however, is that future damages cannot occur to a stem-cell. If it is dead it can't sue. It isn't really related to anyone when it is given to science so no one has standing to sue on it's behalf. The district court found (rightfully in my opinion) agencies in the lawsuit do not have standing to sue.
Furthermore, if unborn fetuses are protected by the constitution, how can damages to embryos be proven when the embryos would have died, anyway? The "but for:" argument for suing fails here. If the embryos were not used for stem-cell research, there was a high probability that they would have simply been disposed of, but for the stem-cell research, would the embryos have died? Probably. There is a slight chance that one of the embryos could have been adopted, by an infertile mother who could afford to adopt,wanted in vitro versus a live birth, had the money to pay for it, was successfully implanted, carried the child to full term, had a child that was fully developed, and been born as a person. Assuming 5-10 eggs harvested for in vitro per procedure that's 10-20 million eggs to 2 million people (that being a very very generous estimate based on assuming that 80 percent of people involved in these steps move onto the next stage.I.E. 80 percent of the 6.1 million infertile women want to have children or are of childbearing age and want to adopt. 80 percent of those can qualify for adoption and so on...) Actual live birth rates for non-donated eggs peak at about 24 percent for under 35 years old mothers [http://www.nyufertilitycenter.org/pregnancy_rates.] that means that each egg has a 1-5 to 1-10 chance of survival. That's a 80-90 percent mortality rate for ANY egg harvested. This is discounting miscarriages. Chances are the embryo was going to die. The entire argument put forth here is ignoring the fact that the only funded research was on embryos donated for science. The entire pool of which was going to be a component of scientific experiments.
But this is all conjecture anyway. An embryo does not have standing to sue according to Roe V Wade The supreme court has defined person as not being applicable to unborn fetuses or embryos. [Roe Vs Wade 410 U.S. 113, 93 S. CT 705, 35 L.ED.2d147 (1973)]. Thus giving an embryo standing to sue would require overturning that decision. The judge in the previous case thought the same thing "[Philosophical and religious considerations aside, the Supreme Court has made it clear that the word "person as used in the Fourteenth amendment does not include the unborn." Supra. The plaintiffs argue that Roe vs. Wade does not apply, because these embryos exist independent of the mother and do not require the mother to survive this may be true but if embryos are a person a legal obligation as to their care is created. Unless the government is going to pay for their care this would place an unfair burden on adopting patents. Ultimately, the appeal was successful in that it was not proven that the government would not institute this in the future, which they did with Executive Order 13435.
In Mary Scott Doe vs. Kathleen Sebelius, the federal courts found that "for the purposes of a standing analysis, to satisfy the causation element, the plaintiff must show that the suffered injury is fairly traceable to the defendant and not the result of the independent acts of a third party who is not a party in the case. [USCA constitution article 3 section 2]. They also found that the plaintiff must demonstrate that harm will be remedied if the court grants the relief sought. [supra] This case was a repeat of Doe vs. Obama, involving the same parties and same claims in both cases. The only differences being that Nightlight Christian Adoption has not requested to be removed from this case as it did in Doe vs. Obama.
I think that in cases of donated embryos that federal funding should be allowed for research that develops stem cell knowledge. Stem cells are such a useful and promising discovery that not allowing their research would would retard the growth of humanity. Opponents of stem cell research may say that adult stem cells should be used but adult stem cells are limited in their ability to create any type of cell and in what they can teach us about the cellular ageing process. Ronald m Green (member of the National Institutes of Health's Human Embryo Research Panel the panel that convinced president Bush to allow the research to take place on existing stem cell lines.) had this to say about the medical use of stem cells " Research showed that the resulting cell lines produce the enzyme Telomerase, which resets the cells' chromosomal clocks and prevents the timed death suffered by most differentiated cells. This resetting allows the cells to be cultured indefinitely during repeated cell divisions (or passages). " (Ronald M. Green "The stem cell debate" http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/miracle/stemcells.html ) Telomerase is the chemical in cells that prevents their natural death sequence form occuring. (specifically it is a part of dna) When levels of Telomerase are low cell death begins. It also limits the number of times a cell can divide. Natural death, disease, and aging could eventually be overcome by research into telomerase and other similar chemicals and interactions only laid bare in embryonic stem cells. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telomerase] We will never find out though if the research is not allowed.
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