Does the federal government support stem cell research?
The government funds adult stem cell research, which has far less promise than embryonic stem cell research. However, limited federal funding is available for embryonic stem cell research. President Bush declared that federal money could only be used to study stem cell lines that existed as of August 9, 2001. There are several problems with this: • There are only 22 lines that qualify for this and less than twelve of these are easily available to scientists. • These cell lines are not diverse. They are derived from embryos of a certain profile of individuals (typically of similar ethnicity, educational background, income level, etc.) Diversity in the cells would help scientists better understand and treat many more diseases and individuals than they can with these limited cell lines. • These cell lines got their nutrients from animal cells and will never be safe to use in treatments for people. • Some of these cell lines aren’t stable enough to be used in experiments. The lack of resou
