About six weeks ago, in my blog article titled "The Media Have No Clue," I reviewed the hullabaloo surrounding Obama's "reversal" of the G. W. Bush Executive Order banning use of federal funds for embryonic stem cell research. What Obama actually did was tell the NIH to draw up some guidelines. Two things have happened since.
1. The NIH has published Draft Guidelines for Human Stem Cell Research, and,
2. The 2009 Appropriations Act became law including, once again, the Dickey-Weiker Amendment.
The bottom line is that the Dickey-Weiker Amendment continues the ban on creation of new embryonic stem cell lines and the NIH guidelines, while extremely strict about just how those embryos can be donated, reaffirms that so long as there is a ban in the law, no federal funds may be used.
The Executive Order repeal is just as meaningless as the original Executive Order, because the Dickey-Weiker Amendment has been part of every federal funding bill since 1995. What has really happened is that the political pressure has increased to get Dickey-Weiker repealed and Obama got out of the line of fire.
The ban remains in place.
Monday, April 20, 2009
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