On Monday President Bush in his State of the Union address called on Congress to institute a ban on human cloning and increase funding for “ethical” stem cell research that does not involve the destruction of human embryos. Bush is asking for an unspecified but, almost assuredly huge amount of funding for research that uses human adult skin cells to create embryonic-like stem cells.

Bush commented on recent reports that researchers have reprogrammed mature adult human skin cells to produce embryonic-like stem cells by saying, “This breakthrough has the potential to move us beyond the divisive debates of the past by extending the frontiers of medicine without the destruction of human life.”He added, “So we are expanding funding for this type of ethical medical research”
Bush twice has vetoed bills that would have allowed federal funding for research using stem cells derived from human embryos originally created for fertility treatments and willingly donated by patients.Currently Federal funding for embryonic stem cell research is allowed only for research using embryonic stem cell lines created on or before Aug. 9, 2001, under a policy announced by Bush on that date.

Please check out the C-SPAN video coverage of the complete State of the Union address is available online.

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