Bush's Compassionless Conservatism

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A lawsuit was filed May 29, 2001, in the U.S. District Court of the District of Columbia against Tommy G. Thompson, in his capacity as Secretary of Health and Human Services, and Dr. Ruth Kirschstein, in her capacity as acting director of the National Institutes of Health, charging the Bush administration with illegally withholding funds from research that could lead to a cure for paralysis and other devastating conditions and diseases. The lawsuit, brought by actor Christopher Reeve and seven scientists, argues that Thompson and Kirschstein have violated the NIH Revitalization Act of 1993, which "prohibits the executive branch from withholding funding for human pluripotent stem cell research and contravenes the defendants' statutory duty to fund scientifically meritorious research projects."

The lawsuit points out that "there is a long tradition in biomedical research of utilizing fetal tissue to …