NIH: Few Stem Cell Colonies Likely Available for Research

NIH: Few Stem Cell Colonies Likely Available for Research

The Washington Post today has an article by Justin Gillis and Rick Weiss suggesting that there are very few lines of stem cells available to researchers in the United States as a result of policies implemented by the Bush Administration. When President Bush announced the policy, he said there would be 60 acceptable cell lines. The number was later increased to 78 by Administration officials.

The article suggests that there are now only 15 approved cell lines, and several of them are "going bad -- developing severe genetic abnormalities that could make them useless as therapies and, in some cases, impractical even for research."

This seems a case in which religious ideology is interfering with scientific knowledge creation in a serious way, and in which there has been a distressing lack of candor in the way that the decision was portrayed to the public.