Monitoring Stem Cell Research 
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duct research, which they believe is the principle by which 
federal policy ought to be governed. They regard government 
restraints on scientific research as inherently offensive and 
generally unjustifiable.^^ The cherished ideals of freedom of 
thought, freedom of conscience, and — specifically in this con- 
text — ^freedom of inquiry, trump concerns over the moral status 
of human embryos, they contend.^® 
The most common claim advanced for protecting research 
as a basic right (employed, among others, by the American Bar 
Association) involves some form of an appeal to the First 
Amendment’s protection of free speech, interpreted through 
the years by the Supreme Court to encompass free expression 
and perhaps freedom of inquiry and thought.^® Some argue that 
research is a form of expression, particularly when it is politi- 
cally or socially controversial, and when restraints upon it are 
imposed for moral reasons.^° “One could make the case that 
research is expressive activity and that the search for knowl- 
edge is intrinsically within the First Amendment’s protection 
for freedom of thought,’’ says one ethicist.^' 
Others, however, contend that this claim, never tested in 
the courts, seems far-fetched. Most currently controversial bio- 
logical research involves experimental manipulation of living 
matter, rather than theoretical exploration or mere observation 
of natural objects. It is therefore as much action as expression, 
as much creation as inquiry. It is difficult to see, they argue, 
how such activity (as opposed to the reporting of the results of 
such activity) could be classified as a form of expression. “Sci- 
entists may have the right to pursue knowledge in any way 
they want cognitively, intellectually,’’ argues one observer, 
“but when it comes to concrete action in the lab, that becomes 
conduct and the First Amendment protection for that is far, far 
weaker. 
Moreover, argues at least one commentator, even if one did 
stipulate that research activity is to be protected from gov- 
ernmental proscription or restriction, it is far from clear that 
failure to provide federal funding would constitute such a re- 
striction.^® Indeed, legislative and judicial precedents suggest 
it would not. The government routinely refrains from funding 
activities it otherwise permits or even guards as constitution- 
ally protected. A line of Supreme Court decisions stretching 
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