Judge: Stem-cell endorsement amendment problematic for life science research grant law

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. -- A Missouri trial judge said Tuesday that a state constitutional amendment endorsing stem-cell research likely creates problems for a law set up to award life science research grants.

At issue in the case before Cole County Circuit Judge Richard Callahan is whether state grants for life sciences research may be spent on stem-cell research. Critics of embryonic stem-cell research have filed suit seeking to block $21 million from going toward the research grants over fears of how the money will be used.

The money is to flow from the Life Sciences Research Trust Fund to the Life Sciences Research Board, which distributes the money as research grants.

The trust fund was created in 2003 to spend one-quarter of Missouri's annual proceeds from a legal settlement between states and tobacco companies. The law that created the trust fund specifically bars use of the money for abortion services and human cloning.

The suit contends those restrictions were trumped by a 2006 voter-approved amendment to the Missouri Constitution guaranteeing any stem-cell research legal under federal law is also legal in the state. That allows scientists to clone embryos in labs and remove stem cells -- a procedure some critics contend creates and destroys human life.

During a hearing Tuesday, Callahan said the ban on using the funds for abortion and human cloning is likely unconstitutional, at least because it restricts future lawmakers and also possibly because of the stem cell amendment.

"I think it's unconstitutional, but I thought it was unconstitutional the day it was proposed, the day it was passed," Callahan said. "It was void from the very beginning, it was meaningless."

But Callahan said that doesn't mean he agrees with those bringing the suit, who argue that without the spending restrictions it's impossible to issue any research grants.

Stephen Clark, an attorney for the plaintiff group Missouri Roundtable for Life, said the spending limits are an integral part of the law allowing the life science grants to exist.

Clark argued that without the restrictions, lawmakers never would have approved the 2003 legislation creating the method for issuing research grants. That would mean that if the limits are unconstitutional, the entire law should be invalidated because a key element has been removed.

Heidi Doerhoff Vollet, from the attorney general's office, disputed that. Vollet said the stem cell amendment is an evolution of the law that came after lawmakers decided to allow for the research grants, so it doesn't matter whether the Legislature would have passed the bill without the cloning and abortion bans.