The US Justice Department has requested District Judge Royce Lamberth to delay the implementation of his decision banning federal funding for human embryonic stem cell research until it is appealed to a higher court. White House spokesman Reid Cherlin says that hESC research is important for the Obama Administration. “We’re going to do everything possible to make sure to avoid the potentially catastrophic consequences of this injunction.”

The director of the National Institutes of Health, Francis S. Collins, says that the decision will waste a colossal amount of money and work expended since 2001. The NIH has invested more than $546 million and the "anticipated financial loss to NIH and the taxpaying public is enormous and would include the hundreds of millions already spent on interrupted projects and the administrative costs of shutting down and restarting the NIH funding,” a spokesman declared.

Dr Collins also pointed out that adult stem cell research has numerous drawbacks despite its successes, research expertise will be lost, and young scientists will go overseas. “The momentum that has finally been established in the hESC field will be lost,” he said in a statement to the court. He lamented that “the greatest loss, however, will be for the millions of Americans suffering from diseases current under study with hESC.” ~ Washington Post, Aug 31