Current Federal Law and Policy 
29 
Bush put it: “the life and death decision had already been 
made.”^^ 
The administration’s policy made it possible to use taxpayer 
funding for research conducted on those preexisting lines, but 
it refused in advance to support research on any lines created 
after the date of the announcement. In addition, to be eligible 
for funding, those preexisting lines would have had to have 
been derived from excess embryos created solely for reproduc- 
tive purposes, made available v\hth the informed consent of the 
donors, and without any financial inducements to the donors — 
standard research-ethics conditions that had been attached to 
the previous administration’s short-lived funding guidelines, 
as well as to earlier attempts to formulate rules for federal 
funding of human embryo research. The policy denies federal 
funding not only for research conducted on stem cell lines 
derived from embryos destroyed after August 9, 2001 (or that 
fail to meet the above criteria), but also (as the proposed Clin- 
ton-era policy would have) for the creation of any human em- 
bryos for research purposes and for the cloning of human 
embryos for any purpose.* 
The moral, legal, and political grounds of this policy have 
been hotly contested from the moment of its announcement. 
Debates have continued regarding its aims, its character, its 
implementation, and its underlying principles, as well as the 
significance of federal funding in this area of research. For 
example, many scientists, physicians, and patient advocacy 
groups contend that the policy is too restrictive and thwarts 
the growTth of a crucial area of research. On the other side, 
some opponents of embryo research believe the policy is too 
liberal and legitimates and rewards (after the fact) the destruc- 
tion of nascent human life. Some ethicists argue that there is a 
moral imperative to remove all restrictions upon potentially 
life-saving research; other ethicists argue that there is a moral 
imperative to protect the lives of human beings in their earliest 
and most vulnerable stages. These and similar arguments are 
reviewed in the next chapter. But before one can enter into 
these debates, it is essential first to understand the relevant 
* The official NIH statement of this policy is provided in Appendix C. 
PRE -PUBLICATION VERSION 
