NIH action will allow wider use of stem-cell lines
WASHINGTON - Hundreds of embryonic stem-cell lines, whose use in the United States had effectively been curtailed by the Bush administration, can be used to study disorders and develop cures if researchers can show the cells were derived using ethical procedures, according to new rules issued yesterday.
President Obama pledged during last year's campaign to ease restrictions on the use of stem cells in research, and has cited the promise of the research in finding cures for disorders that have proved intractable.
The use of embryonic stem cells was not prohibited under the Bush administration, but federal funds were limited to a very small number of stem-cell lines, which choked off most study. The new guidelines, issued yesterday by the National Institutes of Health, permit federal funding for research using many of the 700 or so embryonic stem-cell lines believed to exist.
In a move that drew praise from advocates of stem-cell research and bitter criticism from opponents, the NIH said it would allow the use of any existing stem-cell line that followed broad ethical principles. Acting NIH Director Raynard Kington said an agency committee made up of scientists, ethicists, and advocates would evaluate older stem-cell lines to assess how each was derived.
He said all embryonic stem-cell lines that qualified for federal funding would have to meet a series of ethical requirements: The embryo that was destroyed to create a stem-cell line must have been discarded by couples after an in-vitro fertilization procedure, and the donors must have been informed that the embryo would be destroyed for stem-cell research and made fully cognizant of their choices, including donating the embryo to another couple who want a baby. No donors could have been paid for an embryo, and no threats or inducements could have been used to nudge couples toward donating an embryo.
The guidelines achieve Obama's vision to simultaneously expand stem-cell research while also strengthening ethical standards in conducting the research, Kington said.
Kington indicated that once the NIH committee established that the procedure for any one stem-cell line matched the new ethics requirements, all the lines that used similar procedures could see expedited approval. He said the NIH would set up a Web site that would list all the approved stem-cell lines.
"I think it is a huge step forward," said R. Alta Charo, an ethicist at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. "They are making it absolutely possible to move this field forward and fund the research in a responsible way."
But Richard Doerflinger, associate director of pro-life activities at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, said: "For the first time in history, the federal government will encourage the destruction of human life at a very early stage for federally funded research. . . . These guidelines encourage researchers to go out and destroy embryos for taxpayer-funded research."
