Current Federal Law and Policy 
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involve life and death questions of principle, for instance in 
waging wars that some citizens deeply oppose. The existence 
of strong moral opposition to some policy is not in itself a 
decisive argument against proceeding with that policy. 
These concerns give the question of funding its own crucial 
ethical significance, even apart from the more fundamental 
question of the legitimacy and propriety of the act being 
funded. This matter of funding broadly understood, together 
with the moral and prudential aims apparently motivating the 
administration’s policy, as well as the legal context created by 
the Dickey Amendment, are the essential prerequisites for 
thinking about the underlying logic of the current policy. The 
combination of these elements gives form not only to the spe- 
cific rules set forth in the administration’s funding policy, but 
also to the implementation of that policy, to which subject we 
now turn. 
V. IMPLEMENTATION OF THE PRESENT POLICY 
'The complex and critical task of implementing the funding 
policy falls largely to the National Institutes of Health, which 
administers most federal funding of biomedical research. As 
noted, the administration’s policy attempts to advance stem 
cell research within the bounds already laid out regarding 
further destruction of human embryos. Thus, while the funding 
criteria of the policy set the bounds, the NIH, in its ongoing 
work, is expected to advance the goal of maximally effective 
funding and support within those bounds. 
To this end, the NIH has worked to “jump-start” this field of 
research through a series of coordinated activities. To plan 
and oversee these activities, the NIH has established a Stem 
Cell Task Force charged with determining the best uses for 
public funds in the field and with putting in place the re- 
sources required to make effective use of those funds. 
'The most basic material resources in question are the hu- 
man embryonic stem cell lines themselves. In August 2001, 
President Bush announced that “more than sixty genetically 
diverse stem cell lines” (or stem cell preparations) already 
existed, and so would be eligible for funding under his policy 
PRE -PUBLICATION VERSION 
