Still Hanging On to Relevancy

After President Obama announced that he would lift the stem cell restrictions put in place by President Bush, 10 members from The President's Council on Bioethics, appointed by President Bush with terms lasting until September, wrote on the Hasting Center's blog that Obama's characterization of his action "to lift the ban" was not accurate as "the policy announced by President Bush on August 9, 2001, did not ban federal funding of embryonic stem cell research." Obama gave the NIH 120 days to figure out guidelines for embryonic stem cell research and any new guidelines are thought to adhere to the Dickey-Wicker amendment, which outlaws the destruction of human embryos by federally-funded studies.