is all the money congress is spending a fraud?
Is the 'fraud' spending all the money a congress?
1. Obama says that the NIH is to prepare guidelines for funding embryonic stem cell research "to the extent permitted by law." No other guidance is presented except for his rescinding of the Bush policy. And any guidelines are to be consistent with this order.
That means NIH is allowed (and some may say, REQUIRED) to go to the full extent of what is permitted by law, including funding for research on stem cells obtained by specially creating human embryos for research and then destroying them. Funding of such stem cell research is not blocked by the Dickey amendment, as long as the creating and destroying of embryos is itself done with non-federal funds.
Even the legislation passed by the last Congress and vetoed by President Bush did not go this far, but was very specific in restricting the funding to "excess" embryos created originally for reproduction.
The last time the NIH had an opportunity to say what policy it would really like, in 1994, it wanted funding for the full gamut of embryo (an ethical line that even President Clinton was not willing to cross). Now President Obama seems to have given the NIH carte blanche.
2. Obama has gratuitously revoked the Executive Order of 2007 that encourages the NIH to explore sources of pluripotent stem cells that do NOT involve destroying human embryos. There was not a need in the world to do this, as the order was entirely positive and did not place any additional restrictions on embryonic stem cell research. That order led to funding for new alternative techniques, one of which -- the reprogramming of ordinary adult cells into "induced pluripotent stem cells" -- has just been hailed by the journal Science as the greatest scientific breakthrough of last year.
(Remember that one of the two groundbreaking studies making this advance, by Dr. James Thomson, was funded by the NIH, as were some later studies refining the technique and showing its benefits.)
The scientists have been saying that these iPS cells have very distinct SCIENTIFIC advantages over stem cells from destroying embryos, besides resolving the ethical problem -- and the order that gave this avenue attention and funding has been revoked, by an Administration claiming to advance "science."