In the near future, President Barack Obama is widely expected to lift the ban on federal funding for human embryonic stem cell research, which has been in place since 2001 and has limited federal funding to only 21 existing lines. Lifting the ban is an important first step - but it is mostly symbolic. Unless it leads to a significant increase in funding for rebuilding the infrastructure this field needs to mature, it is likely to have little tangible effect. This would be very unfortunate, because the field of regenerative medicine - which utilizes stem cells, among other tools, to understand disease processes and to repair damaged organs - is ripe for development.
Little federal research has been conducted on human embryonic stem cells over the past eight years. In 2007, for example, the federal government allocated a mere $41 million to this research, compared with approximately $400 million invested by the states last year. The federal funding ban made it extremely difficult to attract young or new researchers to stem cell research, while prompting many established investigators to look elsewhere to conduct their work. The lack of progress in embryonic stem cell research has held back venture capital investment in this field as well.
