Stem Cells

In scientific news today, I read that President Obama's new policy on Stem Cells will (if not changed before it is passed) ban almost all current stem cell lines from being used. Nice work, Barack.

Here's the deal. In 2001, George Bush made an executive order that banned government funding of stem cell research on new cell lines. Most people think that this means he banned stem cell research, but that is not the case. What that means is that any scientist could do basically any stem cell research he wanted in the United States, as long as somebody other than Uncle Sam funded it. California even used state funds for a huge stem cell research institution. Just not federal funds. In addition to anybody being allowed to do any stem cell research they wanted under Bush, there was a list of about 20 stem cell lines that the federal government was willing to fund research on. So those ones became somewhat standard for lab use.

Standards in cell lines are very useful. It means that a researcher in Hong Kong and a researcher in Alaska and a researcher in New York could all do the same experiment and reliably get the same results. That standardization of results allows collaboration. It's a great system that works pretty well. But then Barack decided to "help."

In March of this year, he came out and said:

Today, with the Executive Order I am about to sign, we will bring the change that so many scientists and researchers; doctors and innovators; patients and loved ones have hoped for, and fought for, these past eight years: we will lift the ban on federal funding for promising embryonic stem cell research.

Sounds nice, right? Lifting bans, giving hope, and that change that our dear President is so fond of talking about. But here's the problem. The policy that is now starting to come out for how to apply these nice words includes very tight regulations on which cell lines can be used. And almost none of the ones used in the past fit the regulations.

Not only does this policy try to enforce retroactive ethics (it says these old lines were generated without really informing the donors of all possible uses of the cells, so we shouldn't be allowed to use them), but it also bans research on artificially created stem cells. As in, created without aborting a naturally conceived fetus. This isn't just a ban on funding, but an actual ban on research.

What that means is that the United States is no longer allowed to use the cell lines that other researchers are using. We cannot collaborate with anyone from other countries unless they switch to our lines, which would be much more expensive and impractical for them than just finding someone else to collaborate with. Our researchers will have to throw years of research down the drain, because they are not allowed to continue using the cells they have worked with.

In the end it's just another case of sweet, sweet words doing more harm than good. Thank you, Mr. President, for creating change we can believe in.

[edit- I just realized I never posted the article- here it is, but you need a subscription to Nature to read it.]