The NAS Steps Up for Stem Cells

The New York Times reports that the National Academy of Sciences is creating a panel to monitor embryonic stem cell research.

"Our very strong feeling was that some sort of oversight was vastly preferable to the vacuum we have now," said Richard L. Sprott, executive director of the foundation. Dr. Sprott said he hoped the academy's committee would "fill the gap in federal oversight and make sure the private sector does not call all the shots."

The gap exists becasue National Institutes of Health, which would typically guide controversial research (like it very effectively did with recombinant DNA technology), essentially has its hands tied by the Bush administration. The president declared in August 2001 that only stem cell lines created before that date could receive federal funding. That makes it difficult for the the NIH, which distributes said funds, to issue general guidelines that would ostensibly cover embryonic stem cell lines that the agency is barred from dealing with.