The Summer 2010 issue of the Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics includes the papers delivered at the “Law, Science, and Innovation: The Embryonic Stem Cell Controversy” conference, held at the Law School in May 2009. Professor John A. Robertson, holder of the Vinson & Elkins Chair, served as guest editor for the issue.
“The volume offers an overview of where embryonic stem cell research has been and is likely to go over the next few years as it moves out of the laboratory and into clinical testing,” Roberston said. “It also presents a model for scholars and policymakers of the many factors—from ethics to patent policy—that affect cutting-edge innovation in the biosciences and its translation into actual treatments.”
Among the authors are such experts as Dan W. Brock of Harvard University and Medical School; Bernard Lo of the University of California, San Francisco; David Magnus of Stanford University; Lawrence Goldstein of the University of California, San Diego, Medical School; Rebecca Dresser of Washington University; and William Sage of the University of Texas School of Law.
The volume, which was just published but is not yet available online, will prove to be a timely and important resource. Federal funding of embryonic stem cell research has recently been put on hold by Judge Royce Lamberth, ’67, a district court judge in Washington, D.C., who issued an injunction recently based on congressional limitation on federal funding of “research in which human embryos are destroyed.” Federal funding had been provided only for research with the embryonic stem cells after they had been derived from embryos. Lamberth ruled that the congressional limitation applied regardless of who funded the actual destruction that made the cells available for research.