A pro-life group has sued the National Institutes of Health and the U. S. Department of Health and Human services for performing research on human embryos. Last year, the Clinton administration utilized a loophole in the ban against using federal funds for research on human embryos, by allowing research on embryos that are obtained from private researchers, and that embryonic cells could not be created or destroyed using government money. Some researchers are looking into using adult stem cells to study potential therapies, which groups like the CMA would rather see pursued. Stem cells are the basis for every type of cell in the body, and many scientists say their powers of renewal are the only hope for people with certain debilitating diseases and injuries such as Parkinson's disease and Alzheimer's disease.
Many researchers think stem cells taken from embryos are the most powerful kind.
But critics believe using them is unethical and immoral. Stevens compared experiments using human embryonic cells to the Tuskegee syphilis experiments where infected patients were denied treatment so that doctors could study the disease's progression. Stevens said researchers have been harvesting embryonic stem cells in the hope of getting grant money from the NIH since the Clinton administration's announcement last year. Stevens sent a letter to Health and Human Services secretary Tommy Thompson, who the groups named as a defendant in the lawsuit, along with Dr. Ruth Kirschstein, acting director of the National Institutes of Health . Embryonic stem cell researchers see Thompson as a glimmer of hope in an administration that is mostly opposed to the practice.