Obama to Open Federal Funding for Embryonic Stem Cell Research
by azmanam on Mar 08 2009 (3259 Views)President Obama will announce tomorrowMonday that he is reversing President Bush's ban on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research (AP, Bloomberg). With the announcement, President Obama will become the second American President to allow the use of federal funding for embryonic stem cell research. The first, of course, was President Bush. Bush's 2001 announcement declared that federal funding would be available for the 21 lines created before the announcement, but no others. The ban - and President Obama's lifting of the ban - does not change the policy for privately-funded research.
One of the President's advisors is quoted as saying Obama plans to “use sound, scientific practice and evidence, instead of dogma” to guide his policy, rebuking the previous administration.
The announcement indicates the NIH will have 3 months to write new rules governing the research.
The announcement comes three years after Japanese researchers have shown they can transform skin cells into cells with embryonic stem cell properties. Last February, those results were confirmed by scientists at UCLA. With the announcement, researchers can apply for funds for stem cell lines outside the original 21 just like they would apply for any other research grant.
Adult stem cells are currently used in the treatment of some 75 diseases. With the current success of adult stem cells and the ability to turn cells into embryonic stem cells, I wonder if opening up funding is really necessary.
What do you think?
As with any new technique, I assume the Japanese transformation is probably very laborious. If all of us could skip a key intermediate step in our synthesis to our final products, I'm sure we would seize that opportunity.
I suppose 2 quick replies to that would be, 1) Using your own cells alleviates some risk of tissue rejection, and 2) If skipping a key step meant homogenizing hundreds of kilos of coral to get a limited amount of material, I don't think I would. That's one of the reasons we do natural product research - to eliminate the need to round up all the coral in the world.
I'm against abortion, with few exceptions, but while it's around we might as well make use of a result of it. I don't think this is a slippery slope to fetus harvesting, or any such thing.
Though there are pros and cons about Stem cell research (and even a biggest fraud by a Korean Scientist is still in memory..), if its in the interest of mankind let us hope something good will happen. But only thing I m scared abt., bogus claims of many hospitals already claiming so many achievements. In my opinion, the international authority (as it has already has some guidelines), should monitor strictly and should be given more authority..