Draft Stem Cell Guidelines Threaten Research

Death Metal suggests we peruse a piece up at Wired on how the Obama administration's draft guidelines for stem cell research could invalidate hundreds of cell lines. "Under the Obama administration's proposed rules for funding embryonic stem cell research, hundreds of existing cell lines could be ineligible, even those that qualified under President Bush. The guidelines were written by the National Institutes of Health and are currently in draft form and expected to be finalized in July. But in their current state, they restrict funding to stem cell lines produced according to new rules that are only now being established. Few existing cell lines will meet those requirements. 'The so-called Presidential lines aren't suitable for actual medical application,' said Patrick Taylor, deputy counsel at Children's Hospital Boston, who criticized the NIH guidelines in a paper published Thursday in Cell Stem Cell. 'But we're talking about many, many more lines. The new lines were created with extensive ethical oversight. They're at stake here.'"

Comments

Re:Silly question

[quantaman]

Pushing embryonic stem cells is more about justifying abortion than actual stem cell treatments. Adult stem cells have shown the best treatment options while embryonic stem cells would have the same issues as organ transplants. Cord blood would likely be as effective as embryonic but does not help the abortion stance. Pharmaceuticals benefits as well in making drugs to prevent rejection from treatments made with embryonic sources.

It is more about politics and money at the cost of ethics and good science.

Yeah, funny how they've found more treatments using the types of stem cells they're allowed to study as opposed to the stem cells they're not allowed to study.

It must be that all the researchers are lying about the potential because harvesting stem cells from extra embryos that would be discarded regardless will help push forward their plans to kill babies.