To the cheers of scientists packed inside the White House and watching intently nationwide, President Obama signed orders on Monday reversing an eight-year-old federal restriction on experimentation with human embryonic stem cells and putting in place a science policy “based on facts, not ideology.”
Mr. Obama, overturning one of the most far-reaching obstacles to scientific exploration imposed by the Bush administration, said he recognized the ethical concerns raised by research involving an embryo, which is the cluster of cells that grows immediately after conception.
“But after much discussion, debate, and reflection, the proper course has become clear,” the president told an audience packed with stem-cell researchers and advocates, including 10 Nobel laureates. “The majority of Americans—from across the political spectrum, and from all backgrounds and beliefs—have come to a consensus that we should pursue this research.”
“The potential it offers is great,” he said, “and with proper guidelines and strict oversight, the perils can be avoided.”
The president then went a step further and signed a second presidential order for developing new governmentwide guidelines designed to ensure that any future federal decision making or hiring is done without politics or ideology taking precedence over “sound science.”
Reduced Pressure in Labs
Researchers walking out of the White House said they expected the stem-cell order to have immediate effects, starting with the ability to end costly duplications and divisions in their laboratories that were designed to keep federally supported work separate from stem-cell work done with private funds.
“We can tear apart that bureaucracy,” Irving L. Weissman, director of Stanford University’s Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine Institute, said after listening to Mr. Obama. One of the biggest benefits, he said, will be the end to “second-guessing yourself every step of the way about what you could do, what you couldn’t do.”
Others joined Dr. Weissman in celebration. Mr. Obama’s order ends Bush administration rules that left American researchers at a competitive disadvantage, said Robert M. Berdahl, president of the Association of American Universities. “Today those shackles come off,” Mr. Berdahl said in a written statement, “and for that, we thank President Obama and his administration.”
“Our scientific opportunity is much, much greater now,” said Joshua M. Hare, director of the Interdisciplinary Stem Cell Institute at the University of Miami, where he and other doctors now expect to use embryonic stem cells to investigate ways of helping patients recover from heart attacks, spinal-cord injuries, and diabetes.
Stock-Market Gains
Private companies also expected benefits. The Geron Corporation, which won federal approval in January to conduct the first human trial using a stem-cell therapy, saw its stock value rise nearly 17 percent on Monday. StemCells Inc. had a 43-percent gain.
Embryonic stem cells, because of their very early stage of development, have the potential to grow into any of more than 200 types of tissue in the body. That raises the possibility of cures for a range of ailments that include cancers, diabetes, and heart disease.
But former President George W. Bush took a cautious approach, siding with those who believe any potential human life form should be preserved. Mr. Bush announced on August 9, 2001, that federal money could not be involved with any projects using embryonic stem cells created after that date, thus allowing work with embryos only “where the life-and-death decision has already been made.”
The limited number of stem cells derived from those embryos, and their deteriorating quality, made stem-cell research increasingly off-limits to researchers, most of whom rely on federal money for at least some of their work.
Researchers have found some alternatives over the past eight years. Cells taken from a patient or other donor can be engineered to resemble stem cells. Some states and private companies have stepped in with funds for stem-cell research. But such efforts fall far short of what could be done with greater support from the federal government and its National Institutes of Health, which distributes about $30-billion a year in medical research.
An Agency at the Ready
In his announcement Monday, Mr. Obama avoided almost any mention of specific ethical guidelines, saying he wanted NIH scientists to spend the next 120 days developing standards for federal support of such studies.
NIH officials, in a subsequent briefing with reporters, said they could meet the request, even though the timetable needs to include periods for drafting, public comment, revision, and crafting of final regulations.
That speed is possible because “there’s been a lot of groundwork that’s been done before,” said Story C. Landis, director of the NIH’s National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. “So we expect to take advantage of that.”
The NIH may even begin accepting research applications before the guidelines are formally completed, Ms. Landis said, as the agency begins spending more than $10-billion that it received from the economic-stimulus measure signed last month by Mr. Obama.
Ms. Landis and other NIH officials did not give specific ideas, however, of what types of stem-cell projects might be allowed or disallowed. Before Mr. Bush acted in 2001, the Clinton administration had limits that include a ban on the use of embryos that hadn’t been frozen, so that couples would not be encouraged to create embryos just for scientific purposes.
Stand on Cloning
Mr. Obama repeatedly emphasized in his speech his belief that government decisions on science should be “based on facts, not ideology.” Yet he also said science must be “responsibly conducted,” and specifically mentioned the possible use of cellular cloning techniques for human reproduction as an avenue of exploration that is “dangerous, profoundly wrong, and has no place in our society, or any society.”
A top presidential science adviser, Harold E. Varmus, president of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, expressed uncertainty when asked after the White House ceremony whether Mr. Obama’s opposition to such cloning had more scientific basis than Mr. Bush’s opposition to embryonic-stem-cell research.
“All the scientists can do is provide advice to the administration, and the administration then has to make a policy determination,” Mr. Varmus, co-chairman of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, said in response. “And that determination is going to be based on scientific advice and any other considerations.
“That’s the way it’s always worked and the way it will work,” he said. “I’m not sure what the conflict is.”
Mr. Varmus also dismissed suggestions that the president’s order establishing “scientific integrity” in governmental hiring and decision making might have its own political implications for the acceptability of disparate points of view. The president’s order, he said, means that hiring decisions should weigh the candidate’s “scientific contributions and scientific credibility.”
“The intent,” Mr. Varmus said, “is to prevent anything bad from happening.”
