July 13th, 2004
No US Senate Stem Cell Vote This Year
(From the Seattle Post-Intelligencer). As expected, the US Senate will not vote on easing restrictions on stem cell research this year; cynics like myself will no doubt link this to the nearness of the November election and the expectation of a close result. Playing politics is what politicians do while not busy lying, after all. As before, I'll note that Federal restrictions on government funding are nowhere near as important an issue as ongoing efforts to ban therapeutic cloning. These efforts have scared away vast amounts of private funding for stem cell research in the US, and this is far worse for the future of regenerative medicine than the games being played with public funding.