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Scientists Await Action on Stem Cells Some Proponents Had Expected Obama to Immediately Reverse Bush Policies By Rob Stein Washington Post Staff Writer Thursday, February 19, 2009; A02 At the National Institutes of Health, officials have started drafting guidelines they will need to start funding human embryonic stem cell research that has been off-limits for nearly eight years. At the University of California at San Francisco, scientists are poised to dismantle the cumbersome bureaucracy they created to segregate experiments that were acceptable under the federal restrictions from studies that were not. At the Harvard Stem Cell Institute in Cambridge, Mass., graduate students and other scientists paid with federal grants are eagerly awaiting the day when they can contribute their eureka moments to projects that are forbidden under the current policy. But in the month since Inauguration Day, the moment they have been awaiting has not come, prompting some to ask: When will President Obama deliver on his campaign promise to lift one of the most contentious policies imposed by his predecessor? "Everyone is waiting with bated breath," said George Daley, a leading stem cell scientist at Children's Hospital in Boston. "We're all waiting to breathe a huge sigh of relief." ..."Proponents expected Obama to lift the restriction in his first week in office, when he issued a flurry of executive orders to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, make government less secretive and lift a ban on funding international family planning groups that support abortion, among other things. "We were surprised and disappointed it wasn't in there," said Amy Comstock Rick of the Coalition for the Advancement of Medical Research, which has been leading the lobbying effort to lift the restriction. "We're wondering why it's taking so long." full article at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...l?hpid=topnews ---------------------------------------------------------------------- To sign-off Parkinsn send a message to: mailto:[log in to unmask] In the body of the message put: signoff parkinsn