CGS-authored
IN MASSACHUSETTS, state lawmakers have vowed to pass a bill to pay for embryonic stem cell research, despite the governor's threat to veto it. Legislators in Connecticut, Wisconsin and Illinois have also called for the creation of state stem cell research institutes, and New Jersey's acting governor has backed a similar plan. It's hardly surprising, then, that in Maryland, home of the National Institutes of Health, Johns Hopkins University and a thriving biotech industry, legislators held hearings last week on a bill that would use tobacco settlement money to create a relatively modest $25 million annual fund for embryonic stem cell research.
This unusual state interest in research funding -- normally a federal responsibility -- has emotional and political sources. President Bush's complicated policy, which allows federal funding for research on only a limited number of existing stem cell lines, has sparked a backlash from scientists, who loathe the restrictions, and from patient advocates, who believe that their relatives' conditions -- whether paralysis or Type 1 diabetes, could be cured by therapies derived from this kind of research. The movement...
This unusual state interest in research funding -- normally a federal responsibility -- has emotional and political sources. President Bush's complicated policy, which allows federal funding for research on only a limited number of existing stem cell lines, has sparked a backlash from scientists, who loathe the restrictions, and from patient advocates, who believe that their relatives' conditions -- whether paralysis or Type 1 diabetes, could be cured by therapies derived from this kind of research. The movement...