Decision Point: Political Stem Cells --- Obama Failed Stem Cell Policy

Among President Obama promised changes, his policy on stem cell research probably is the biggest disappointment. In part, the President’s scientific advisories surrounding him may be responsible, if simply check who he invited to white house and who are among those he gave medals to. Democrats have been known as the supporters of human embryonic stem cell (hESC) research, which is crucial to driving the advance of medicine to provide treatment options for many major world-wide incurable diseases, such as Alzheimer disease, Parkinson’s disease, ALS, diabetes, heart disease, to relieve health care burden and budget deficit. For supporters of hESC research, we all were very excited to see a Democrat President come to office in 2009. President Obama acted very quickly to relax the National Institutes of Health (NIH) policy on hESC research in March, 2009, and set up 6 month deadline for NIH to meet that we would expect NIH to come up with a new guideline and to increase funding on hESC research. However, 3 years later, the bureaucratic NIH has made little progress, still has not met the President’s deadline to come up with a new guideline, even cut the NIH funding for hESC research to a level worse than previous administration reigned by a Republican President. During Obama administration led by a Democrat President, crucial hESC research and advances cannot proceed, and existing national hESC research labs and resources that had been open for research progress even in Bush administration have been shut down due to lack of funding. It has become a major concern when we come to this year’s big decision point if he will be the President who can keep his promises or the President incapable of getting anything done.