22 
Monitoring Stem Cell Research 
an overview of arguments on all sides of the question. Here we 
mean only to clarify, as far as we are able, the original mean- 
ing and purpose of the policy, so as to be better able to moni- 
tor its impact. 
I. A BRIEF fflSTORY OF THE EMBRYO RESEARCH 
FUNDING DEBATE 
The federal government makes significant public resources 
available to biomedical researchers each year — over $20 billion 
in fiscal year 2003 alone — in the form of research grants offered 
largely through the National Institutes of Health (NIH). This 
level of public expenditure reflects the great esteem in which 
Americans hold the biomedical enterprise and the value we 
place on the development of treatments and cures for those 
who are suffering. But such support is not offered indiscrimi- 
nately. Researchers who accept federal funds must abide by 
ethically based rules and regulations governing, among other 
things, the use of human subjects in research. And some poli- 
cymakers and citizens have always insisted that taxpayer 
dollars not be put toward specific sorts of research that violate 
the moral convictions and sensibilities of some portion of the 
American public. This has meant that controversies surround- 
ing the morality of some forms of scientific research have at 
times given rise to disputes over federal funding policy. 
Among the most prominent examples has been the three- 
decade-long public and political debate about whether tax- 
payer funds should be used to support research that involves 
opponents in the debate, and indeed to all human beings. No human being 
and no human society can afford to be callous to the needs of suffering 
humanity, cavalier regarding the treatment of nascent human life, or indiffer- 
ent to the social effects of adopting in these matters one course of action 
rather than another." {Human Cloning and Human Dignity, p 121.) Thus, 
whatever we think of the current funding policy, we recognize that this is a 
genuine ethical dilemma and that reasonable people of good will may come 
to different conclusions about where the best ethical or policy position lies. 
We therefore also believe that not only results but also reasons matter, and 
that it behooves us to understand the principled or prudential reasons for the 
current policy (as well as for any alternative policy that might be offered to 
replace it). 
PRE -PUBLICATION VERSION 
