BARACK OBAMA’S election victory is putting a smile back on the faces of American stem cell researchers. They foresee a quick end to the restrictions on their work introduced in August 2001 by President George W. Bush.
Bush used an executive order to limit federally funded researchers to working on embryonic stem cells from just a few sources. ESCs are seen as having huge potential for repairing organs and tissues. Now those restrictions are likely to be among the first of Bush’s executive orders to be swept away.
The news emerged on 9 November on Fox News with John Podesta, head of the transition team managing the White House switch-over. “There’s a lot that the president can do using his executive authority without waiting for congressional action, and I think we’ll see the president do that,” said Podesta, who was chief of staff to President Bill Clinton and founder in 2003 of the think tank.
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Obama spokeswoman Stephanie Cutter said this week that a decision to scrap the current stem cell policy had not been finalised but confirmed that all Bush’s executive orders would be reviewed.
The aim is to quickly dismantle the legacies of the Bush era that Obama judges to be holding back progress. Bush’s opposition to stem cell research has been widely seen as a concession to conservative Christians who oppose all research on embryos.
The prospect is being greeted with delight by many researchers. “Hallelujah – at last,” says Robert Lanza, chief scientist at Advanced Cell Technology in Worcester, Massachusetts. “This represents the end of a sad chapter in American scientific history… We’ve been operating for the past decade with one hand tied behind our back.”
“This will end a sad chapter in American scientific history… We’ve been operating with one hand tied behind our back”
Biomedical scientists have also welcomed two “pro-research” victories in state ballots on 4 November. Michigan voters passed by 53 to 47 per cent a proposal allowing researchers there to derive new ESC lines from embryos left over after fertility treatment. “This outcome means that critical medical research can proceed in Michigan without political or ideological interference,” says George Daley of the Children’s Hospital in Boston, a past president of the based in Deerfield, Illinois.
In Colorado, voters rejected by 73 to 27 per cent a proposal to endow newly fertilised embryos with the rights of a person. If the proposal had been approved, any researchers flouting the law to derive ESCs could have been “charged with murder and possibly locked away for life”, says Lanza.