Not Over Just Yet

While a recent court decision preserved federal funding for stem cell research, work on these cells could be "upended" if one of the GOP candidates were to defeat US President Barack Obama in the 2012 election. As the Boston Globe's Tracy Jan reports, nearly all of the Republican presidential candidates have said they would curtail President Obama's increased federal spending on embryonic stem cell research, which many researchers believe would jeopardize the future of the field. Stem cell scientists recently hailed an appeals court's decision to overturn an injunction on federal spending for embryonic stem cell research, but some say they are "alarmed" at the thought of going back to Bush-era restrictions on their work should a Republican take the White House next year, Jan says. "All this stopping and starting makes it very difficult for research projects to proceed," bioethics attorney Michael Werner tells Jan. "Ultimately, it makes it harder for drug developers to turn this research into new therapies for patients."