The last scheduled document was filed today before pivotal court arguments next month on the legality of US government funding for human embryonic stem cell research.

Attorneys for the US government, in this 26-page brief filed with the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, rebutted earlier arguments by lawyers for the plaintiffs, who contend that US funding for the controversial research contravenes existing law. That law, renewed annually as the Dickey-Wicker amendment to the spending bill that funds the National Institutes of Health (NIH), says that the government may not support research in which embryos are destroyed. In August, a district court judge agreed, and issued a preliminary injunction (which has since been temporarily stayed by the appeals court), blocking NIH funding for the research. In the case being heard by the appeals court on 6 December, the government is appealing the lower court decision.

(For full background on the case, brought by adult stem cell researchers James Sherley and Theresa Deisher, see Nature’s Stem Cell Injunction Special.)

The government argues in its new rebuttal brief that Sherley and Deisher failed to demonstrate the “irreparable harm” to their livelihoods that is part of the legal standard necessary to justify the injunction. Deisher and Sherley’s lawyers have contended that the two adult stem cell researchers were hurt by competition from embryonic stem cell researchers for a limited pot of NIH funding. The government argues, in part:

“Dr. Deisher has never applied for an NIH grant, and four of Dr. Sherley’s recent applications for NIH funding were not scored in the peer review process – meaning that they did not pass the first level of scientific peer review and thus were not given further consideration for funding. Dr. Sherley’s applications were therefore not funded because of lack of scientific merit, not because of any alleged competition from human embryonic stem cell projects.”

For the plaintiffs’ most recent arguments, which were filed with the appeals court last week, see here.