IT鈥橲 two steps forward for US stem cell science, as an expected step backwards has not materialised.
In April, the National Institutes of Health issued draft guidelines on expanding funding for projects involving human embryonic stem cells. This led to concern that some of the ESC lines currently eligible for government grants might be shut down as they would not meet the guidelines鈥� strict rules on informed consent by couples whose embryos were used to create them.
They need not have worried. The , issued on 6 July, give a special working group the discretion to make these older lines eligible for funding, after considering the ethics involved. 鈥淚 expect that most of them will be found to have been ethically derived,鈥� says of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
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