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Obama opens up stem cell work, science inquiries
(Agencies)
Updated: 2009-03-10 09:29

But Rep. Tom Price, R-Ga., chairman of the Republican study committee, said the president's new policy would "force taxpayers to subsidize research that will destroy human embryos." De Gette and Castle said their legislation tries to minimize destruction of embryos.

Stem cells are typically derived from fertility clinic surplus, destined for destruction.

Obama also said the stem cell policy is designed so that it "never opens the door to the use of cloning for human reproduction." Such cloning, he said, "is dangerous, profoundly wrong, and has no place in our society or any society."


microscopic view shows a colony of human embryonic stem cells (light blue) growing on fibroblasts (dark blue) in this handout photo released to Reuters by the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, March 9, 2009. [Agencies] 

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In addition to the stem cell order, Obama issued a memo designed to ensure openness about scientific research and give whistleblower protection to scientists.

Promoting science "is about letting scientists like those here today do their jobs, free from manipulation or coercion, and listening to what they tell us, even when it's inconvenient -- especially when it's inconvenient," Obama said.

Science and politics often conflict, said Granger Morgan, professor of engineering and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University and a former science advisory board chairman for the US Environmental Protection Agency. Perhaps illustrated no more wildly than in 1897 when the Indiana legislature attempted to change the mathematical concept of pi to 3.2. Science should provide the facts that politicians use for their decisions, Morgan and Leshner said.

Many scientists and environmental activists complained that the Bush administration had censored and marginalized science. That's a perception that Bush science adviser John Marburger repeatedly called untrue and unfair.

In 2006, the White House edited out congressional testimony about public health effects of global warming by Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Julie Gerberding. A 2003 EPA global warming document was edited by nonscientists at the White House. A NASA political appointee tried -- and failed -- to silence the agency's top climate scientist.

Former Surgeon General Richard Carmona resigned in 2006, complaining about White House interference on global health issues: "The problem with this approach is that in public health, as in democracy, there is nothing worse than ignoring science or marginalizing the voice of science for reasons driven by changing political winds."

Obama advisers contend that all has changed. The government has already put on hold rules about scientific input on endangered species, reinstating advice that had been excised during the Bush administration.

Public policy must "be guided by sound scientific advice," said Dr. Harold Varmus, the Nobel Prize-winning co-chairman of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. The new memo Obama signed is "mainly a way of trying to prevent tampering with any advice," Varmus told MSNBC.