In California Stem Cell Advocates Seek Research Freedom
Related News: Stem Cells and GovernmentAdvocates of embryonic stem cell research urged the Bush administration Monday to loosen federal policy to allow new colonies of stem cells to be created with federal grant money.
A study released over the weekend confirmed the widely held assumption among scientists that the handful of older stem cell lines now eligible for federal research grants had taken up animal proteins, which almost certainly makes the cell lines unsuitable for use in human medicine.
The finding was hardly surprising -- but in the politically supercharged context of human embryonic stem cell research, it was more than enough to provoke a new round of policy debates.
House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco, called on Bush to expand the number of cell lines eligible for federal grants.
But White House spokesman Scott McClellan insisted that no change was needed in federal rules, despite the new evidence of contamination in the federally sanctioned cell lines.
He told reporters during a news briefing Monday that officials had known all along that the federally approved lines probably couldn't be used as ingredients in actual treatments, but he said they were still good enough to allow basic research to move ahead.
Posted on January 26, 2005 10:17 AM
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