Although the change in policy may permit some funding of embryonic stem cell research, the more important effect will be that it will permit privately funded research in the facilities best equipped for it.

As the Federal ban was written, if anyone worked on research of this kind it was necessary to have strict and absolute separation between the entire facility where the research was done and any facility doing any government funded work (research or otherwise). The ban included the requirement for completely separate equipment and personnel, right down to the janitors and the ones who mowed the lawn out front.

This generally meant that anyone wishing to do this research was required to construct a new and separate facility, and to recruit and hire an entirely separate set of personnel. Even consultation with a stem cell expert working on "adult stem cells" under a government supported project was prohibited.

IFF the lifting of the ban is suitably implemented it will once again be possible for the few who actually did continue working on embryonic cells, with private funding, to share findings and methods (in both directions) with others working under the old conditions.

There have been some promising results from both kinds of research, but since the number of researchers able to get private funding for separate and independent labs has been very small, and journals and symposia were forced to exclude them to avoid "contaminating" others working on governemt funded research, little has been heard of the results from the few working with embryonic cells (except that the cells from the "existing lines" permitted are old and tired and mostly contaminated, and don't perform as well as would be expected from fresh ones, or from ones newly cultivated to be specific to the research intended).

John