Study shows medical marijuana laws reduce traffic deaths

Leads to lower consumption of alcohol

DENVER (Nov. 29, 2011) – A groundbreaking new study shows that laws legalizing medical marijuana have resulted in a nearly nine percent drop in traffic deaths and a five percent reduction in beer sales.

"Our research suggests that the legalization of medical marijuana reduces traffic fatalities through reducing alcohol consumption by young adults," said Daniel Rees, professor of economics at the University of Colorado Denver who co-authored the study with D. Mark Anderson, assistant professor of economics at Montana State University.

The researchers collected data from a variety of sources including the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, and the Fatality Analysis Reporting System.

The study is the first to examine the relationship between the legalization of medical marijuana and traffic deaths.

"We were astounded by how little is known about the effects of legalizing medical marijuana," Rees said. "We looked into traffic fatalities because there is good data, and the data allow us to test whether alcohol was a factor."

Anderson noted that traffic deaths are significant from a policy standpoint.

"Traffic fatalities are an important outcome from a policy perspective because they represent the leading cause of death among Americans ages five to 34," he said.

The economists analyzed traffic fatalities nationwide, including the 13 states that legalized medical marijuana between 1990 and 2009. In those states, they found evidence that alcohol consumption by 20- through 29-year-olds went down, resulting in fewer deaths on the road.

The economists noted that simulator studies conducted by previous researchers suggest that drivers under the influence of alcohol tend to underestimate how badly their skills are impaired. They drive faster and take more risks. In contrast, these studies show that drivers under the influence of marijuana tend to avoid risks. However, Rees and Anderson cautioned that legalization of medical marijuana may result in fewer traffic deaths because it's typically used in private, while alcohol is often consumed at bars and restaurants.

"I think this is a very timely study given all the medical marijuana laws being passed or under consideration," Anderson said. "These policies have not been research-based thus far and our research shows some of the social effects of these laws. Our results suggest a direct link between marijuana and alcohol consumption."

The study also examined marijuana use in three states that legalized medical marijuana in the mid-2000s, Montana, Rhode Island, and Vermont. Marijuana use by adults increased after legalization in Montana and Rhode Island, but not in Vermont. There was no evidence that marijuana use by minors increased.

Opponents of medical marijuana believe that legalization leads to increased use of marijuana by minors.

According to Rees and Anderson, the majority of registered medical marijuana patients in Arizona and Colorado are male. In Arizona, 75 percent of registered patients are male; in Colorado, 68 percent are male. Many are under the age of 40. For instance, 48 percent of registered patients in Montana are under 40.

"Although we make no policy recommendations, it certainly appears as though medical marijuana laws are making our highways safer," Rees said.

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The study is entitled, "Medical Marijuana Laws, Traffic Fatalities, and Alcohol Consumption." It can be found at:http://www.iza.org/en/webcontent/personnel/photos/index_html?key=4915

Source: Eureka Alert!

Molecules to Medicine: Should pepper spray be put on (clinical) trial?

Pepper spray is all over the news, following the Occupy Wall Street protests, particularly following the widely disseminated images and videos of protestors being sprayed in NY, Portland, andUCDavis.
Before that, I knew and occasionally used its main ingredient, capsaicin, as a treatment for my patients with shingles, an extremely painful Herpes zoster infection. And I knew about the many of the serious side effects of pepper spray, well-described by Deborah Blum.
Recently though, other questions arose, like “How was this learned?”. So off I went, looking for clinical trials to see what, if anything, had been studied, beyond the individual patient, poison control, and toxicology reports. Here’s what I learned:

There are reports of the efficacy of capsaicin in crowd control, but little regarding trials of exposures. Perhaps this is because pepper spray is regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency, as a pesticide and not by the FDA.

The concentration of capsaicin in bear spray is 1-2%; it is 10-30% in “personal defense sprays.”

While the police might feel reassured by the study, “The effect of oleoresin capsicum “pepper” spray inhalation on respiratory function,” I was not. This study met the “gold standard” of clinical trials, in that it was a “randomized, cross-over controlled trial to assess the effect of Oleoresin capsicum (OC) spray inhalation on respiratory function by itself and combined with restraint.” However, while the OC exposure showed no ill effect, only 34 volunteers were exposed to only 1 sec of Cap-Stun 5.5%OC spray by inhalation “from 5 ft away as they might in the field setting (as recommended by both manufacturer and local police policies).”

By contrast, an ACLU report, “Pepper Spray Update: More Fatalities, More Questions” found, in just two years, 26 deaths after OC spraying, noting that death was more likely if the victim was also restrained. This translated to 1 death per 600 times police used spray. (The cause of death was not firmly linked to the OC). According to the ACLU, “an internal memorandum produced by the largest supplier of pepper spray to the California police and civilian markets” concludes that there may be serious risks with more than a 1 sec spray. A subsequent Department of Justice study examined another 63 deaths after pepper spray during arrests; the spray was felt to be a “contributing factor” in several.

A review in 1996 by the Division of Epidemiology of the NC DHHS and OSHA concluded that exposure to OC spray during police training constituted an unacceptable health risk.

Surveillance into crowd control agents examined reports to the British National Poisons Information Service, finding more late (>6 hour) adverse events than had been previously noted, especially skin reactions (blistering, rashes).

Studies have, understandably, more looked at treatment than at systematically exploring toxic effects of pepper spray. An uncontrolled California Poison Control study of 64 patients with exposure to capsaicin (as spray or topically as a cream) showed benefit with topically applied antacids, especially if applied soon after exposure.

In a randomized clinical trial, 47 subjects were assigned to a placebo, a topical nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory agent, or a topical anesthetic. The only group with significant symptomatic improvement in pain received proparacaine hydrochloride 0.5%–and only 55% had decreased pain with treatment.

Another randomized controlled trial looked at 49 volunteers who were treated with one of five treatment groups(aluminum hydroxide–magnesium hydroxide [Maalox], 2% lidocaine gel, baby shampoo, milk, or water). There was a significant difference in pain with more rapid treatment, but not between the groups.

I was most impressed with the efforts of the Black Cross Health Collective in Portland, Oregon. These activists have been thoughtfully approaching studying treatments for pepper spray exposures with published clinical trial protocols, where each volunteer also serves as their own control. Capsaicin is applied to each arm; a “subject-blinded” treatment is applied to one arm, and differences in pain responses are recorded. I love that they are looking for evidenced based solutions.

So far, antacids have been the most effective.

Suggestions for further study

Pepper spray causes inflammation and swelling—particularly a danger for those with underlying asthma or emphysema. In fact, the Department of Justice report notes that in two of 63 clearly documented deaths, the subjects were asthmatic. If they don’t already, police need to have protocols in place to identify and treat “sprayees” who have these pre-existing conditions that predispose them to serious harm from the spray. This particularly holds true for people also at risk for respiratory compromise from being restrained, on other drugs, or with obesity. The study of restrained healthy volunteers exposed to small amounts of capsaicin is simply not applicable to the general population. Also, given that these compounds appear to have delayed effects, there should be legally required medical monitoring of “sprayees” at regular and frequent intervals for at least 24 hours—by someone competent. (Iraq war veteran Kayvan Sabehgi could easily have died from the lacerated spleen sustained in his beating by police. It was 18 hours before he was taken to the hospital, after the jail’s nurse reportedly only offered him a suppository for his abdominal pain. There is also an, as yet unconfirmed report, of a miscarriage after the Portland, Oregon OWS protest last week).

Unfortunately, there is an urgent need for clinical trials in this area—both retrospective assessments of “sprayees” health outcomes, and prospective randomized trials [like the trial done on subjects' arms] to elucidate the effects of various capsaicin concentrations, carrier solvents and propellents and to identify the most effective treatments for each mixture. Until those can be done, there should be a thorough outcomes registry kept, with standardized data being obtained on all those subsequent to being pepper-sprayed.

Sadly, I’m sure the Black Cross and others in the Occupy Wall Street movement will have too many opportunities to test therapies against painful crowd-control chemicals. Studies will be difficult because the settings are largely uncontrolled and because the sprays have different concentrations of capsaicin, carrier solvents, and propellants.

Until then, there should be a moratorium on the use of pepper spray or other “non-lethal” chemicals by police, except in clearly life-threatening confrontations, due to the high number of associated deaths until the risks are better understood?

Perhaps Kamran Loghman, who helped the FBI weaponize pepper spray, will be dismayed enough at the “inappropriate and improper use of chemical agents” to help the Black Cross develop effective antidotes…One can only hope.

Courtesy of Scientific American guest blogger Judy Stone

How serious is son preference in China?

Why are female foetuses aborted in China? Does an increase in the number of abortions of female foetuses reflect an increase in son preference? Sociologist Lisa Eklund from Lund University in Sweden has studied why families in China have a preference for sons.

At the time of the census in 2005, almost 121 boys were born for every 100 girls. Last year's census showed that sex ratio at birth (SRB) had improved somewhat. But it is still too early to celebrate, in Eklund's view: the narrowing of the gap does not necessarily mean that girls are valued more highly.

Because of the high SRB, there has been a tendency to picture China as a country where son preference is strong and possibly increasing since the 1980s. However, Eklund argues in her PhD thesis that using SRB as a proxy indicator for son preference is problematic. She has therefore developed a model to estimate what she calls "son compulsion", where data on SRB and total fertility rate are used to estimate the proportion of couples who wants to give birth to at least one son and who take action to achieve that goal. When looking at variation in son compulsion over time and between regions, Eklund finds that new patterns emerge that do not surface when using SRB as a proxy indicator. Contrary to popular belief, son compulsion remained steady in rural China (at around 10 per cent) while it increased in urban China in the 1990s (from 2.8 per cent to 4.5 per cent).

"This doubling concurred in time with cuts in the state welfare system in the cities, which meant that adult sons were given a more important role in providing for the social and financial security of the elderly", she says. Her findings call into question the assumption that son preference is essentially a rural issue. They also have implications for comparative perspectives and her findings suggest that son compulsion may be higher in other countries even though they expose lower SRB.

When it emerged that far more boys than girls were being born in China, the Chinese government launched the Care for Girls Campaign to improve the value of the girl child and to prevent sex-selective abortion. Nonetheless, the imbalance between the sexes continued to increase. Eklund's findings suggest that the campaign may actually have done more harm than good. Families receive extra support if they have girls and in rural areas exceptions are made from the one-child policy if the first child is a girl.
"By compensating parents of girls in various ways, the government reinforces the idea that girls are not as valuable as boys", says Eklund.
Eklund further challenges the notion that families in rural areas want sons because sons are expected to take over the farming.

"That is a weak argument", says Eklund. "Young people, both men and women, are moving away from rural areas. Of those who stay, women provide just as much help as men. In fact, it is the elderly who end up taking greater responsibility for the agriculture."
However, there are also other reasons why sons are seen as more important for families. Traditionally, a girl moves in with her husband's family when she gets married and she thus cannot look after her own parents when they grow old. Boys also play an important role in ancestor worship, and they ensure that the family name lives on.

Eklund further finds that there is a stubbornness in both popular and official discourses to view son preference as a matter of parents and grandparents without looking at structural factors that help underpin the institution of son preference.

Source  EurekaAlert!

Lawmakers tour MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center

MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center (PSFC) hosted two senators earlier this week, both of whose independent visits were directed at learning more about fusion as a source of clean energy.

Senior Research Scientist Martin Greenwald (right) discusses the importance of fusion research with Florida Sen. Bill Nelson in front of a port in the Alcator C-Mod tokamak. Photo: Paul Rivenberg

U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) toured the PSFC on Monday, May 16. Led by PSFC Senior Research Scientist Martin Greenwald, Nelson viewed the Alcator C-Mod tokamak — a device that uses a magnetic field to confine plasma into a determined shape, allowing for the production of controlled fusion power. A member of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, Nelson was familiar with the basics of plasma research and open to learning about fusion's potential as a future source of clean energy.

Then, Tuesday, the PSFC welcomed Sen. Benjamin Downing of the Massachusetts Senate, who also visited Alcator C-Mod. As chair of the Joint Committee on Telecommunications, Utilities and Energy, Downing was interested in learning about the steps necessary to progress toward the goal of fusion-powered energy. The tour, led by Greenwald and Alcator Project Head Earl Marmar, allowed a close-up look at the tokamak, which is currently undergoing maintenance.

Both senators were accompanied by members of their staff and MIT alumnus Reinier Beeuwkes ’67, who facilitated the tours.

Source MIT News

Potentially toxic flame retardants detected in baby products

Scientists are reporting detection of potentially toxic flame retardants in car seats, bassinet mattresses, nursing pillows, high chairs, strollers, and other products that contain polyurethane foam and are designed for newborns, infants and toddlers. In a study in ACS' journal Environmental Science & Technology, they describe hints that one flame retardant, banned years ago in some areas, actually remains in use. "To the authors knowledge, this is the first study to report on flame retardants in baby products," the report states.

Heather M. Stapleton and colleagues point out that health concerns led to a phase-out in use of penta brominated diphenyl ethers (pentaBDE), once the most popular flame retardant, prior to 2004. Flame retardants are added during manufacture to reduce the risk of polyurethane foam catching fire and to slow down burning if it does. Seeking to meet government flammability standards, manufacturers then turned to other flame retardants, which in many cases, have less health data available. The situation left gaps in knowledge about exactly which flame retardants were being used in polyurethane foam products, and at what concentrations. Stapleton's group set out to fill those gaps.

They detected potentially toxic flame retardants in 80 percent of the polyurethane foam samples collected from 101 common baby products. Among them were compounds associated with pentaBDE, suggesting that the substance - banned in 172 countries and 12 U.S. states - still remains in use, as well as two potential carcinogens, TCEP and TDCPP. "Future studies are therefore warranted to specifically measure infants exposure to these flame retardants from intimate contact with these products, and to determine if there are any associated health concerns," the report states.

Source EurekaAlert!

Is the 'smell of death' strong enough evidence?

In a case that is gripping the American public, young mother Casey Anthony has been accused of murdering her 2-year-old daughter. As jury selection for the case continues, speculation is growing as to whether the judge will allow a sample of air, collected from the trunk of her car, to be presented as evidence of the "smell of death".

 Casey Anthony on trial.

The prosecution want to submit a report, prepared by Arpad Vass, from Oakridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, which concludes that the air sample contains the key chemical compounds of human decomposition, as well as a large concentration of chloroform. Some media reports are even suggesting that the jury might be asked to smell a can of the air in court.

If the evidence is accepted, it will be the first time an expert witness has been called upon to identify the smell of a decomposing body, although other odour samples have been used in trials in the past, says Christopher Slobogin from Vanderbilt University Law School in Nashville, Tennessee.

Whether or not an air sample can reveal the presence of a corpse in a car trunk relies on a number of factors, says James Covington from the University of Warwick, UK, in particular how long the corpse was in there and whether the chemicals given off had time to seep into the upholstery. If enough of these chemicals are absorbed, they could continue to be released for some time after the corpse is removed. These chemicals might be detected through analysis of an air sample taken directly from the trunk, or obtained by heating a sample of the boot's interior. In this case, both types of sample were submitted to Vass for analysis.

Frye test

It is the first time the smell of a human body will have been presented as evidence in court, so it needs to pass the Frye standard – a test to check that new scientific evidence stands up to scrutiny. "The Frye test says that the scientific evidence is admissible if the relevant community generally accept it," says David Moran, clinical professor of law at the University of Michigan Law School in Ann Arbor.

Vass has long been on the hunt for a molecular signature given off by a decomposing body that could be used to identify the time of death or to track down clandestine graves.

While most research into decay is done on pigs, Vass has been working with real cadavers at Tennessee's Body Farm, a research centre where researchers study the effects of decomposition on real bodies.

He has been working with the FBI to create a database of the chemical compounds that make up the smell of decomposing human remains. In one study Vass buried four human bodies and analysed the gases given off over a period of four years. He identified eight major classes of chemicals. This means he now has a database of chemicals found in the smell of a dead body against which to compare the air from Casey Anthony's trunk.

Pizza leftovers

Vass identified five of these chemical classes in the trunk of Anthony's car. He also compared the chemicals in the sample with those given off by decomposing animals to check that the smell came from human remains. He also conducted a number of control tests to compare against the sample, including the smell given off by a decomposing pizza. Anthony's mother claimed the smell in the car trunk could have been caused by pizza leftovers.

The question now is whether the judge will accept that this evidence passes the Frye test. As this is a specialist field, it could be hard for the prosecution to convince the judge that Vass's work is backed by a community of peers.

However, the judge could reject the evidence on different grounds, says Moran. In cases where the prosecution's case seems especially strong – as in high-profile cases like this one – the judge might elect not to introduce questionable evidence because that could make it easier for the verdict to be reversed in a court of appeal.

As to whether the jury will be asked to smell the sample, "that would be shocking", says Moran.

Source New Scientist

Abortions generate $95 million a year for Polish doctors as women use illegal private sector

Amsterdam, 17 May, 2011 - New analysis published by the UK journal Reproductive Health Matters shows that the criminalisation of abortion in Poland has led to the development of a vast illegal private sector with no controls on price, quality of care or accountability. Since abortion became illegal in the late 1980s the number of abortions carried out in hospitals has fallen by 99%. The private trade in abortions is, however, flourishing, with abortion providers advertising openly in newspapers.

Women have been the biggest losers during this push of abortion provision into the clandestine private sector. The least privileged have been hardest hit: in 2009 the cost of a surgical abortion in Poland was greater than the average monthly income of a Polish citizen. Low-income groups are less able to protest against discrimination due to lack of political influence. Better-off women can pay for abortions generating millions in unregistered, tax-free income for doctors. Some women seek safe, legal abortions abroad in countries such as the UK and Germany.

"In the private sector, illegal abortion must be cautiously arranged and paid for out of pocket," says Agata Chełstowska, the author of the research and a PhD student at the University of Warsaw. "When a woman enters that sphere, her sin turns into gold. Her private worries become somebody else's private gain". The Catholic Church, highly influential in predominantly Catholic Poland, leads the opposition to legal abortion.
Since illegality has monetised abortion, doctors have incentives to keep it clandestine, "Doctors do not want to perform abortions in public hospitals," says Wanda Nowicka, Executive Director of the Federation for Women and Family Planning. "They are ready, however, to take that risk when a woman comes to their private practice. We are talking about a vast, untaxed source of income. That is why the medical profession is not interested in changing the abortion law."
In several high profile cases, women and girls have been denied legal abortions following rape or because of serious health conditions and have been hounded by the media for seeking them. The 2004 case of a young pregnant woman who died after being denied medical treatment is currently under consideration at the European Court of Human Rights.

Other articles in this issue of Reproductive Health Matters focus on many aspects of health privatisation worldwide and includes studies from Bangladesh, Turkey, Malawi, India, Madagascar and South Africa.

Source  EurekaAlert!

Google Lobbies Nevada To Allow Self-Driving Cars

Google, a pioneer of self-driving cars, is quietly lobbying for legislation that would make Nevada the first state where they could be legally operated on public roads.

And yes, the proposed legislation would include an exemption from the ban on distracted driving to allow occupants to send text messages while sitting behind the wheel.
The two bills, which have received little attention outside Nevada’s Capitol, are being introduced less than a year after the giant search engine company acknowledged that it was developing cars that could be safely driven without human intervention.

Last year, in response to a reporter’s query about its then-secret research and development program, Google said it had test-driven robotic hybrid vehicles more than 140,000 miles on California roads — including Highway 1 between Los Angeles and San Francisco.
More than 1,000 miles had been driven entirely autonomously at that point; one of the company’s engineers was testing some of the car’s autonomous features on his 50-mile commute from Berkeley to Google’s headquarters in Mountain View.

At the time, Google gave little indication what its commercial intent might be. The company confirmed on Tuesday that it has lobbied on behalf of the legislation, though executives declined to say why they want the robotic cars’ maiden state to be Nevada. Jay Nancarrow, a company spokesman, said the project was still very much in the testing phase.
Google hired David Goldwater, a lobbyist based in Las Vegas, to promote the two measures, which are expected to come to a vote before the Legislature’s session ends in June. One is an amendment to an electric-vehicle bill providing for the licensing and testing of autonomous vehicles, and the other is the exemption that would permit texting.

In testimony before the State Assembly on April 7, Mr. Goldwater argued that the autonomous technology would be safer than human drivers, offer more fuel-efficient cars and promote economic development.
Although safety systems based on artificial intelligence are rapidly making their way into today’s cars, completely autonomous systems raise thorny questions about safety and liability.
Policy makers and regulators have warned that the technology is now advancing so quickly that it is in danger of outstripping existing law, some of which dates back to the era of horse-drawn carriages. New laws will be required, they argue, if autonomous vehicles are to become a reality.
Policy analysts say Nevada is the first state to consider the commercial deployment of a generation of vehicles that may park themselves, perform automatic deliveries or even act as automated taxis on the Las Vegas casino strip.

“In some respects this is a great template and a great model,” said Ryan Calo, a legal scholar at the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School. “It recognizes a need to create a process to test these vehicles and set aside an area of Nevada where testing can take place.”
Google’s fleet of six autonomous Toyota Priuses and an Audi TT are easily identifiable by a distinctive laser range finder mounted on the roof. The cars also have a variety of radar and camera sensors and a trunkful of computer equipment.

In the testing program, each vehicle is overseen by a driver and a second Google employee who monitors the equipment from the passenger seat. Because of the human oversight, the company has avoided legal action against reckless — or, in this case, driverless — driving.
The project is being guided by the artificial-intelligence researcher Sebastian Thrun, who as a Stanford professor in 2005 led a team of students and engineers that designed the first winning entry in an autonomous vehicle contest organized by the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.
Since then, Dr. Thrun has focused more of his activities at Google, giving up tenure at Stanford and hiring a growing array of experts to help with the development project.
In frequent public statements, he has said robotic vehicles would increase energy efficiency while reducing road injuries and deaths. And he has called for sophisticated systems for car sharing that, he says, could cut the number of cars in the United States in half.

“What if I could take out my phone and say, ‘Zipcar, come here,’ ” he asked an industry conference last year, “and a moment later the Zipcar came around the corner?”
Google’s autonomous vehicle ambitions hint at an emerging vehicle-industrial complex in Silicon Valley. Mercedes, Volkswagen and other carmakers have laboratories in the region, I.B.M. has a battery development initiative, and the Nummi plant in Fremont, once a joint venture of General Motors and Toyota, has been reopened by Tesla.

Source New York Times

Circumcision ban will go to vote in San Francisco

Sujata Gupta, contributor
San Franciscans will be given the chance in November to vote on whether to ban male circumcision - pitting evidence that circumcising boys is the best way to reduce the spread of HIV against concerns that the process is a form of culturally accepted genital mutilation.

For several weeks, a group of individuals who call themselves "intactivists" have fanned out across San Francisco, clipboards in hand. Their goal: to collect enough signatures to get a measure to ban circumcisions in the city on a November ballot. The intactivists surpassed their goal this week, collecting more than 12,000 signatures - 4000 more than the minimum required to make the ballot.

Intactivists say circumcision is a form of torture and liken the practice to female genital mutilation. They also point to studies showing that the foreskin enhances sexual sensitivity and may protect against infections.
"The US is the only developed country in the world to routinely practice circumcisions for non-religious reasons," says Jonathon Conte, one of the signature gatherers.

The ballot measure has raised the ire of public health professionals, who say that a large body of research suggests that circumcising boys is crucial to preventing the spread of HIV. Intactivists respond by pointing out that some in the medical community question the importance of circumcision for HIV prevention.
If voters approve the measure in November, any city resident who circumcises a boy under the age of 18 could be subject to a $1000 fine and imprisoned for up to a year.

Jews and Muslims communities, who routinely circumcise baby boys for religious reasons, say that banning circumcision violates religious freedoms guaranteed by the first amendment to the US constitution.
But even without a ban, the number of circumcisions in the US has been dropping. Part of that decline is due to monetary reasons. Several states have stopped directing Medicaid funds to circumcisions to save money. California is on that list and today only 10 per cent of the boys born in San Francisco leave the hospital circumcised. "We hope to protect that last 10 per cent," Conte says.

Original New Scientist article

Court Lets U.S. Resume Paying for Embryo Study

By GARDINER HARRIS

WASHINGTON — Government financing of human embryonic stem cell research can continue, a federal appeals court ruled Friday. The decision was an important victory for the Obama administration in a legal battle that is far from over.

The 2-to-1 ruling, by a panel of judges from the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, blocks a lower-court decision last August holding that such research is illegal under a law that bans public spending on research in which human embryos are damaged or destroyed.
The stem cells are derived from donated human embryos left over from fertility treatments; the embryos are destroyed in the process, leading some opponents of abortion to liken the research to murder.
But the appellate court said Friday that because the law is written in the present tense, “it does not extend to past actions.”

Samuel B. Casey, a lawyer for two scientists who sued the government to stop paying for research into human embryonic stem cells, said that he was “a little disappointed” but also pleased that the appeals court kept his suit alive, and that he was considering an appeal.

Representative Diana DeGette, Democrat of Colorado, said she was “extremely pleased with this decision.” But she promised to push for unambiguous legislation that would allow such research to continue.
The ruling sends the case back to Chief Judge Royce C. Lamberth of Federal District Court in Washington, who concluded in August that the Obama administration was so unlikely to win the case that he issued an immediate ban on any federal spending on human embryonic research.

That decision shocked government scientists, who said it would force the cancellation of dozens of experiments on an array of diseases, from diabetes to Parkinson’s. The government appealed, and the appeals court stopped the ban from going into effect while it heard arguments in the case. Friday’s ruling is the end of the first phase of the litigation.

“This is a momentous day not only for science but for the hopes of thousands of patients and their families who are relying on N.I.H.-funded scientists to pursue life-saving discoveries and therapies that could come from stem cell research,” said Dr. Francis S. Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health.
David A. Prentice of the Family Research Council, an anti-abortion group, said he was disappointed. “Federal taxpayer funds should go towards helping patients first, not unethical experiments,” he said.

The research potential for embryonic stem cells, which were discovered in 1998, arises from their ability to morph into any cell in the body and possibly form new organs.
President George W. Bush was the first to allow federal financing of human embryonic stem cell research, but he limited the research to 21 cell lines already in existence to discourage further destruction of embryos.
President Obama promised in his campaign to expand the research and ordered the health institutes soon after his inauguration to do just that.

Judge Lamberth’s ruling was so sweeping that the Obama administration interpreted it as a ban on all stem cell research, including projects that passed muster under his predecessor.
Dr. George Q. Daley, director of the stem cell transplant program at Children’s Hospital Boston, said he was happy with the ruling. “But it’s tempered by the fact that there’s a court case that is still pending,” he added.
Dr. Daley’s laboratory is using embryonic stem cells to research cures into bone marrow failure, a rare genetic condition sometimes called “bubble boy disease” because it forces children to live in sterile environments.

His lab is also comparing the relative properties of embryonic stem cells and so-called pluripotent stem cells derived from adult tissue; some anti-abortion activists say the pluripotent cells, which have the potential to turn into the many kinds of specialized cells in the body, are an ethical alternative to the embryonic kind.
The plaintiffs in the case are two scientists, Theresa Deisher and Dr. James L. Sherley, who use only adult stem cells in their research. They argue that the administration’s policy puts their own research at a disadvantage in the competition for government financing.

Judge Karen LeCraft Henderson, the dissenter in Friday’s appeals court ruling, wrote that her colleagues “perform linguistic jujitsu” to arrive at their conclusion.
The plain language of the law bars financing for all research that follows the destruction of embryos, she wrote, and it is meaningless to try to separate the process of destruction from the use of the stem cells that result from that destruction.
Mr. Casey, the lawyer for the plaintiffs, said Judge Henderson’s dissent might lead him to ask the full Court of Appeals to reconsider the case.
“But my mother told me to always sleep on these things, so that’s what we’re going to do,” he said.

Courtesy New York Times

Court reverses US funding ban on embryonic stem cells

Peter Aldhous, San Francisco bureau chief

US government cash for research on human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) is safe for now, thanks to a ruling by judges sitting in the US Court of Appeals in Washington DC.
Last August, a lower court granted an injunction blocking new grants to hESC research. The ruling came in response to a suit brought by two scientists who claim that President Barack Obama's policy to widen funding for the research is illegal.
The injunction caught scientists and the US National Institutes of Health by surprise, and was based on a controversial interpretation of a law called the temporarily lifted the injunction back in September. Today's appeals court decision, made by a 2-1 majority, overturns the injunction. On behalf of the majority, Justice Douglas Ginsburg wrote:

"We conclude the plaintiffs are unlikely to prevail because Dickey-Wicker is ambiguous and the NIH seems reasonably to have concluded that, although Dickey-Wicker bars funding for the destructive act of deriving an ESC from an embryo, it does not prohibit funding a research project in which an ESC will be used. We therefore vacate the preliminary injunction."

However the case brought by the two scientists, James Sherley of the Boston Biomedical Research Institute in Watertown, Massachusetts, and Theresa Deisher of AVM Biotechnology in Seattle, is not over and could go all the way to the Supreme Court. Both scientists oppose research on hESCs on moral grounds and argue that an expansion of funding for this work threatens their own ability to obtain grants for research on adult stem cells.
Rounding up reactions to today's news, USA Today led with Lisa Hughes, president of the Coalition for the Advancement of Medical Research:

"This is a victory for patients all across America, and sends a message that frivolous attacks on important biomedical research will not be tolerated."

NIH director Francis Collins was similarly pleased, releasing the following statement:

"I am delighted and relieved to learn of the decision of the Court of Appeals. This is a momentous day – not only for science, but for the hopes of thousands of patients and their families who are relying on NIH-funded scientists to pursue life-saving discoveries and therapies that could come from stem cell research."

However, in a statement emailed to reporters, Alan Trounson, president of the San Francisco-based California Institute for Regenerative Medicine – itself a major funder of research on hESCs – warned supporters of the research not to get carried away:

"The fight for embryonic stem cell research in the United States is not over. While this recent Court of Appeals decision is very welcome, it is simply one step towards US researchers being able to feel that they can proceed with this groundbreaking research."

On the other side of the debate, David Prentice of the Family Research Council vowed to continue its opposition:

"We believe that further court decisions will support Congressional protections of young human life and divert federal funds toward lifesaving adult stem cells."

 Courtesy of New Scientist