Will someone please explain this one to me? Do we now Consider an embryo a child? Aren’t we getting just a little carried away on this one?

With the active encouragement of the Bush administration, U.S. scientists in the past year have developed several methods for creating embryonic stem cells without having to destroy human embryos.

But some who now wish to test their alternatively derived cells have found themselves stymied by an unexpected barrier: President Bush’s stem cell policy.

The 2001 policy says that federal funds may not be used to study embryonic stem cells created after Aug. 9 of that year. It is based on the assumption that the only way to make the cells is by destroying human embryos — a truism in 2001 but not any longer.

As a result, the National Institutes of Health recently refused to consider a grant application for what would have been the first federal study to compare several of the new, less politically contentious stem cell lines.

“This is not the way to make good health policy,” said Robert Lanza, the frustrated vice president for research and scientific development at Advanced Cell Technology (ACT) in Worcester, Mass. Lanza submitted the study proposal with stem cell experts from several major research labs.

Upcoming changes in the NIH’s stem cell funding rules may eventually help resolve that problem. But agency officials and others say the policy tangle is more complicated than that. Although Lanza’s technique and other new approaches do not destroy embryos, they may run afoul of a long-standing congressional ban on studies that “harm” human embryos.

That vague language raises the perplexing question of how one would know whether an embryo had been harmed.

At the center of the debate is a new technique, pioneered by ACT, that obtains stem cells from human embryos while leaving the embryos functionally intact. A single cell, called a blastomere, is removed from an eight-cell human embryo, then coaxed to multiply into a colony of stem cells in a dish.

Fertility doctors have been performing these blastomere biopsies for years to identify embryos that harbor genetic defects. Since a single cell is representative of the entire embryo, doctors transfer to a mother-to-be’s womb only those embryos whose plucked cells pass genetic muster. The loss of a single cell — or even two — at that stage is not known to cause developmental problems in children born by this procedure, doctors say.

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According to this Washington Times column President Bush would sign a bill that would allow federal funding on embryonic stem cell research on embryos that have no chance of surviving.

The legislation, authored by Sen. Johnny Isakson, Georgia Republican, seeks a middle ground in the highly charged debate over stem-cell research. His bill skirts moral concerns over using embryonic stem cells while ensuring federal funding for the breakthrough science.

Mr. Isakson’s bill would allow scientists to conduct research on embryos they determine are incapable of surviving in the womb but whose stem cells are still viable for research. The bill would also allow funding for research on stem cells from embryos that have died during fertility treatments.

“This legislation threads the ethical needle,” Mr. Isakson said yesterday. “I’m very optimistic it will be looked on favorably, especially with the White House’s endorsement.”

White House officials have met with Mr. Isakson to discuss his bill several times since January.

“We are very supportive” of the legislation, said Tony Fratto, a White House spokesman. “By intensifying support for non-destructive alternatives, we can advance medical research in valuable ways while respecting ethical boundaries.”

This is the first I’ve heard of this and I don’t have an opinion on it yet. I do have some ethical questions of my own, but just because it would be supported by this president and is a piece of proposed legislation written by a Republican doesn’t mean I embrace it.

If embryonic stem cell research were so promising I just wonder why the private companies that are doing stem cell research have not done embryonic stem cell research. Nothing has held the private sector back—it’s only been federal funding that has been held back, so if there were as much promise as some hope why aren’t the big companies working on it? After all, if they could succeed they would make a fortune in their success.