30 
Monitoring Stem Cell Research 
elements of the policy itself as clearly and distinctly as possi- 
ble. 
m. MORAL FOUNDATION OF THE POLICY 
In articulating its proposed funding policy in 1999 and 2000, 
the Clinton administration expressed a firm determination that 
funded research could use only those human embryos that had 
been left over from IVF procedures aimed at reproduction and 
that had been donated in accordance with the standards of 
informed consent and in circumstances free of financial in- 
ducements. Provided that these crucial conditions were met, 
the administration argued that the potential benefits of stem 
cell research were so great that publicly funded research 
should go forward. In August of 2000, reflecting on the guide- 
lines put forward by his administration. President Clinton 
remarked. 
Human embryo research [as approved for funding by the 
NIH guidelines] deals only with those embryos that 
were, in effect, collected for in-vitro fertilization that 
never will be used for that. So I think that the protec- 
tions are there; the most rigorous scientific standards 
have been met. But if you just — ^just in the last couple of 
weeks we’ve had story after story after story of the po- 
tential of stem cell research to deal with these health 
challenges. And I think we cannot walk away from the 
potential to save lives and improve lives, to help people 
literally to get up and walk, to do all kinds of things we 
could never have imagined, as long as we meet rigorous 
ethical standards. 
Given the promise of embryonic stem cell research, the exis- 
tence of many embryos frozen in IVF clinics and unlikely ever 
to be transferred and brought to term, and the willingness of 
some IVF patients to donate such embryos for research, the 
Clinton administration reasoned that research using cell lines 
derived from these embryos could ethically be supported by 
federal funds. That position implies, of course, that the de- 
PRE -PUBLICATION VERSION 
