Simon Smith at Betterhumans tells us that "Bush's flimsy funding policy is hurting promising research and real people. All the ban has really done is slowed research, reduced government oversight, given private companies a nice gift, diminished information sharing and transparency and all but guaranteed that the US won't be a leader in stem cell treatments." While Simon is mostly right, I have to disagree with his anti-corporate sentiments: most research is not publicly funded. Private sector research has suffered greatly, as uncertainty and threatened criminalization have scared away investors and philanthropists. This is what is truly holding back stem cell medicine.
Link: http://www.betterhumans.com/Features/Columns/Forward_Thinking/column.aspx?articleID=2004-04-02-4