Current Federal Law and Policy 
25 
embryos. The following year, the NIH convened a Human 
Embryo Research Panel to consider the issues surrounding 
such research and to propose guidelines for potential funding 
applications. The panel recommended that some areas of 
human embryo research be deemed eligible for federal funding 
within a framework of recognized ethical safeguards. It further 
concluded that the creation of human embryos with the ex- 
plicit intention of using them only for research purposes should 
be supported under some circumstances.® President Clinton 
overruled the panel on the latter point, ordering that embryo 
creation for research not be funded, but he accepted the 
panel’s other recommendations and permitted the NIH to 
consider applications for funding of research using embryos 
left over from IVF procedures.^ 
Congress, however, did not endorse this course of action. In 
1995, before any funding proposal had ever been approved by 
the NIH, Congress attached language to the 1996 Departments 
of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, and 
Related Agencies Appropriations Act (the budget bill that 
funds DHHS and the NIH) prohibiting the use of any federal 
funds for research that destroys or seriously endangers human 
embryos, or creates them for research purposes. 
This provision, known as the “Dickey Amendment" (after its 
original author, former Representative Jay Dickey of Arkansas), 
has been attached to the Health and Human Services appro- 
priations bill each year since 1996. Everything about the sub- 
sequent debate over federal funding of embryonic stem cell 
research must be understood in the context of this legal re- 
striction. The provision reads as follows: 
None of the funds made available in this Act may be 
used for — 
(1) the creation of a human embryo or embryos for re- 
search purposes; or 
(2) research in which a human embryo or embryos are 
destroyed, discarded, or knowingly subjected to risk of 
injury or death greater than that allowed for research on 
fetuses in utero under 45 CFR 46.204 and 46.207, and 
PRE -PUBLICATION VERSION 
