And What About The Science?

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In other areas of research, however, the door hasn't been closed to latecomers the way it has with stem cells, and that has the scientific community worried. In order to maximize the medical payoff from stem-cell research, researchers prefer to work with the most robust population of cell lines possible. No one knows, after all, if some lines are more viable than others and if some lend themselves to many uses while others to only a few. If too many of the lines dead-end or die off, research could stagnate. "Some stem-cell uses," says Krause, "will require diversity greater than 60 cell lines."

Here, too, the Administration is sanguine, pointing out that the wide range of countries from which the available cell lines hail--including India, Israel, Singapore and Australia--helps ensure that they will be as diverse as possible. Some researchers even insist that the precise number of cell lines isn't important at all because none of them will actually wind up in the body. At this early stage, investigators aren't so much developing cures as creating research and manufacturing techniques. For that, the specific cell lines aren't important. "This will enable the biomedical community to iron out the molecular biology of these cells," says Dr. Thomas Okarma, CEO of the biotech firm Geron, which finances stem-cell pioneer James Thomson as well as John Gearhart, "and that doesn't turn on one cell line vs. another."

Other people are troubled not by what the Bush ruling may do to the science but by what it may do to America's standing in the world. The U.S. was embarrassed once this summer when stem-cell researcher Roger Pederson of the University of California, San Francisco--fed up with all the hand-wringing and rulemaking--was seduced overseas by Cambridge University in England. This, of course, may be just an isolated defection rather than the start of a national brain drain. "I'm not packing," quips Thomson, who pronounced himself pleased that the feds would finally make some money available. But in the wake of Bush's decision, other countries may certainly be tempted to bid for more of America's best and brightest. "Overall," says Chris Higgins, director of the Medical Research Council Clinical Sciences Centre in London, "[the decision] adds to a general uncertainty as to where research can go in the U.S."

There are, to be sure, ways around the federal rules. Nothing prevents scientists who are working with forbidden stem cells from talking to--and sharing information with--those working with approved lines. And when scientists publish their work, anyone can read it. Institutions that receive federal funds are not absolutely limited in the work they can do as long as work that falls outside the White House ban is conducted independently, with no commingling of funds or facilities or--more important--cell lines.