US Supreme Court Dismisses Attempts  to Stymie Federal Government Support of Human Embryonic Stem Cell Research. (January 10, 2013)

By denying certiorari, i.e. refusing to hear a case claiming funding of research by the National Institutes of Health (NIH)  of human embryonic stem cell research the US Supreme Court, the highest court in the United States, has closed the last avenue of appeal for the case Sherley v. Sebelius first brought three years ago by two adult stem cell researchers.

It is the court's normal practice when declining to hear a case not give its reasons.

Douglas Melton, the co-scientific director of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts told Nature: "We couldn't be happier that this frivolous, but at the same time potentially devastating distraction is behind us," while the lead plaintive James Sherley of the Boston Biomedical Research Institute in Watertown, Massachusetts, told the journal he would continue his efforts "to emancipate human embryos from research slavery sponsored by the NIH."

The ruling by Judge Royce Lamberth of the US District Court for the District of Columbia in August, 2010 in favour of the plaintives James Sherley and Theresa Deisher shut down all NIH-funded experiments for 17 days, until a higher appeals court stayed the injunction while the case moved through the courts.

In August 2012 the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, ruled against the plaintiffs which caused them to bring the matter to the US Supreme Court.