Current Federal Law and Policy 
31 
struction of embryos is not inherently or necessarily unethical, 
or so disconcerting as to be denied any federal support. The 
Clinton-era NIH Embryo Research Panel put succinctly one 
form of this view in stating that “the preimplantation human 
embryo warrants serious moral consideration as a developing 
form of human life, but it does not have the same moral status 
as infants and children."^® If there is sufficient promise or 
reason to support research, the claim of a human embryo to 
“serious moral consideration” (or, as others, including some of 
us, have put it, to “special respect”^®) could be outweighed by 
other moral aims or principles. 
This (at least implicit) understanding of the moral status of 
human embryos might be seen to have put the Clinton admini- 
stration at odds with the principle animating the operative law 
on this subject (the Dickey Amendment). But given its respon- 
sibility to carry out the laws as they are enacted, the admini- 
stration sought a way to advance research within the limita- 
tions set by the statute. Its approach to the funding of embry- 
onic stem cell research, therefore, seems to have sought an 
answer to this question: How can embryonic stem cell research, 
conducted in accordance with standeurds of informed consent 
and free donation, be maximally aided within the limits of the 
law? The NIH guidelines published in 2000 represent the 
answer the Clinton administration foimd: funding research on 
present and future embryonic stem cell lines, so long as the 
embryo destruction itself is done with private funds. 
The Bush administration appears to have been motivated 
by a somewhat different question, arising from what seems to 
be a different view of the morality of research that destroys 
human embryos. President Bush put the matter this way, in 
discussing his newly annoimced policy in August of 2001: 
Stem cell research is still at an early, uncertain stage, but 
the hope it offers is amazing: infinitely adaptable human 
cells to replace damaged or defective tissue and treat a 
wide variety of diseases. Yet the ethics of medicine are 
not infinitely adaptable. There is at least one bright line: 
We do not end some lives for the medical benefit of oth- 
ers. For me, this is a matter of conviction: a belief that 
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