Rethink Stem Cells? Science Already Has

[groovedaddy]

With soaring oratory, President Obama on Monday removed a substantial practical nuisance that has long made life difficult for stem cell researchers. He freed biomedical researchers using federal money (a vast majority) to work on more than the small number of human embryonic stem cell lines that were established before Aug. 9, 2001.

In practical terms, federally financed researchers will now find it easier to do a particular category of stem cell experiments that, though still important, has been somewhat eclipsed by new advances.

Until now, to study unapproved stem cell lines, researchers had to set up separate, privately financed labs and follow laborious accounting procedures to make sure not a cent of federal grant money was used on that research. No longer. The lifting of such requirements “is just a major boon for the research here and elsewhere,” said Dr. Arnold Kriegstein, a stem cell researcher at the University of California, San Francisco.

Dr. George Q. Daley, who studies blood diseases at Children’s Hospital in Boston, said that he had derived 15 human embryonic stem cell lines using private money, and that for the first time he could now apply for grants from the National Institutes of Health to study these cells. In the last eight years, his lab has moved from 90 percent N.I.H. support to half N.I.H., half private financing. But private money is now drying up, he said, and new N.I.H. support will be particularly welcome.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/10/science/10lab.html?th&emc=th

[pokerfan]

1. PZ Myers checks in

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/03/a_major_change_in_stem_cell_po.php">A major change in stem cell policy

[VermeerLives]

2. Obama Signs Law Banning Federal Embryo Research Two Days After

Here's the link to the article:

http://www.cnsnews.com/public/content/article.aspx?RsrcID=44943