Braving Medicine’s Frontier

August 3, 2005 | Source: Technology Review

Bush’s apparently simple decision to withhold federal money for stem-cell research inadvertently created an enormous regulatory maze that few scientists have managed to escape.

With a few exceptions, private funding sources–philanthropies and businesses–have not stepped into the gap left by Washington’s withdrawal. Nor have research groups been able to capitalize on federal funding for the study of existing stem cell lines, partly because they are fewer in number than Bush thought, and partly because of unexpected patent restrictions.