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While lifting the Bush administration’s restrictions on federally financed human embryonic stem cell research, President Obama intends to avoid the thorniest question in the debate: whether taxpayer dollars should be used to experiment on embryos themselves, two senior administration officials said Sunday.
The officials, who provided details of the announcement Mr. Obama will make Monday at the White House, said the president would leave it to Congress to determine whether the long-standing legislative ban on federal financing for human embryo experiments should also be overturned.
Yet, people on both sides of the stem cell debate say Mr. Obama’s announcement could lead to a reconsideration of the ban on Capitol Hill, an idea so controversial and fraught with ethical implications that the mere discussion of it would have been unthinkable just a few months ago, when President George W. Bush was in office.
The ban, known as the Dickey-Wicker amendment, first became law in 1996, and has been renewed by Congress every year since. It specifically bans the use of tax dollars to create human embryos — a practice that is...
The officials, who provided details of the announcement Mr. Obama will make Monday at the White House, said the president would leave it to Congress to determine whether the long-standing legislative ban on federal financing for human embryo experiments should also be overturned.
Yet, people on both sides of the stem cell debate say Mr. Obama’s announcement could lead to a reconsideration of the ban on Capitol Hill, an idea so controversial and fraught with ethical implications that the mere discussion of it would have been unthinkable just a few months ago, when President George W. Bush was in office.
The ban, known as the Dickey-Wicker amendment, first became law in 1996, and has been renewed by Congress every year since. It specifically bans the use of tax dollars to create human embryos — a practice that is...