A U.S. district court issued a preliminary injunction on Monday stopping federal funding of human embryonic stem cell research, in a slap to the Obama administration's new guidelines on the sensitive issue.
There's a growing conflict between liberalism and progress in the country and the courts go either way, almost at random. An appeals court can overturn state constitutional amendments so they can certainly shut down a controversial government policy - but it isn't that controversial, it isn't even much different from the Bush policy ...
The new guidelines do not allow the use of federal dollars to create the stem cells but do allow researchers to work with them if they are made by another lab.
This is in the Reuters politics section because hESC research is a political issue. When Bush restricted funding for research to only existing lines, hESC creation was very new but it got blown up into a huge issue by militants in science who were using it for political gain so unfortunately now it remains there. Lesson to scientists and especially journalists: When you become advocates rather than trusted guides, it will haunt science for a long time.
