Overnight the President of the United States overturned former President Bush’s restrictions on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research.
Under President Bush, federal funding could not be used to fund research on human embryonic stem cell lines created after 2001. These restrictions meant that scientists wanting to do research on newer lines had to seek funding from alternative sources such as the States and philanthropic funds.
Reversing the ban means that researchers will be able to take advantage of funds in the economic recovery package and use it for stem cell research. Researchers will now be able to use hundreds of newer stem cell lines created since 2001 and lines not yet created.
However researchers are still unable to use existing federal funds, outside of the new economic recovery package, to derive or create lines. This is because of the so-called Dickey-Wicker amendment, which specifically bans the use of tax dollars to create human embryos, or for research in which embryos are destroyed, discarded or knowingly subjected to risk of injury. It first became law in 1996, and has been renewed by Congress every year since.
For more on Obama’s announcement see the official
Whitehouse announcement.