“California, New York and other states that funded human embryonic stem cell research after federal money was restricted in 2001 may be first to benefit from the end to those limits, experts said today. President Barack Obama signed an executive order reversing former president George W. Bush’s policy that virtually froze federal funding for such research, saying it was time to ‘make up for lost ground’. Mr Obama’s action paves the way for the National Institutes of Health, the government agency that funds biomedical research, to begin awarding grants to scientists who propose studies using human embryonic stem cells. States such as California, New York, Connecticut, Maryland, Illinois, Massachusetts and New Jersey acted on their own to fund this research during the years of the Bush restrictions. California’s program was by far the biggest …” (more)
[Irish Times, 9 March]