64 
Ethical and Policy Developments 
permit funding for all cell lines derived on either side of the 
date, provided they are otherwise eligible?^® If, on the contrary, 
federal funding of embryo research is unacceptable, then it 
should simply not be allowed at all, regardless of when cell 
lines were first derived.^® “It is difficult to see,” writes one 
critic, “what ethical reasoning would commend a policy that 
takes as its central distinction the time chosen for political 
convenience to deliver a presidential address.”®® 
In response, some supporters of the policy contend that 
while the cut-off date (August 9, 2001) certainly has no inher- 
ent moral significance, it acquires moral meaning by the sim- 
ple fact that it was the operative date of a newly annoimced 
policy that turned on a crucial distinction between the “up- 
until-now” and the “from-now-on, " between past (irrevocable) 
deeds and future (preventable) ones. That date of announce- 
ment was the line between past embryo-destruction, which 
could no longer be undone, and future embryo destruction, 
which could still be influenced by the federal government’s 
funding rules. If the policy sought to avoid encouraging or of- 
fering incentives for any future destruction of human embryos, 
they argue, then drawing a hard line between past and future 
would be indispensable. That line could only reasonably be 
drawn at the moment of the decision’s announcement* (or be- 
fore it), since drawing it at some point in the future would cre- 
ate a powerful incentive to quicken the pace of work until the 
cut-off date arrived. The date, they say, is therefore not a mor- 
ally arbitrary marker in the context of the policy, but is rather a 
crucial and unavoidable element of the policy’s logic.®^ 
B. Unsustainable 
A further, and more common, critique of the current policy 
suggests that its approach cannot be expected to hold over 
time and that it will fairly quickly prove imsustainable. 
One form of this argument suggests that the policy has cre- 
ated a situation in which scientists may make some progress 
using existing stem cell lines but would then be prohibited 
from capitalizing on what they have learned and making fur- 
* Only “the now,” created by an act of speaking, defines the difference be- 
tween past and future (tenses and deeds). 
PRE-PUBLICATION VERSION 
