Embryonic Education

摘要

When US President Barack Obama lifted the funding ban for research on human embryonic stem cells earlier this month, he did not mention the Dickey-Wicker amendment - legislation that forbids the use of federal funds for research that destroys or creates embryos. It was a missed opportunity to begin a necessary conversation.rnBecause of this law, worthy projects will still be barred from federal funding despite Obama's action. Stanford University, for example, collaborates with fertility clinics that work with couples who have their embryos screened for genetic diseases. If pre-implantation embryos are identified with genetic mutations, the prospective parents can donate them to the research project, allowing stem-cell lines to be derived from them. This way, embryos unsuitable for implantation would become cell lines for studying diseases afflicting the donors' families. Although the programme has California state funding, this does not cover the costs of deriving lines from all the embryos donated, which in turn restricts the research.