1. Science Over Politics
- Author
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Melvin Schwartz, Donald A. Glaser, Joseph L. Goldstein, Richard J. Roberts, Julius Axelrod, Herbert C. Brown, Leroy Hood, Joseph E. Murray, Phillip A. Sharp, Roger Guillemin, George A. Olah, Arthur Kornberg, Robert E. Lucas, Sheldon L. Glashow, Richard E. Smalley, Nicolaas Bloembergen, Torsten N. Wiesel, Thomas H. Weller, Daniel Nathans, Walter Kohn, Jerome I. Friedman, Mario J. Molina, Kenneth J. Arrow, Baruj Benacerraf, Michael S. Brown, David M. Lee, Michael D. West, Steven Weinberg, G E Palade, Eric F. Wieschaus, Kary B. Mullis, Rudolph A. Marcus, Lawrence R. Klein, Burton Richter, Roald Hoffman, Stephen Jay Gould, Joshua Lederberg, Robert Lanza, Douglass C. North, Jose B. Cibelli, David Baltimore, Herbert A. Hauptman, Henry Taube, Dudley R. Herschbach, Hamilton O. Smith, Walter Gilbert, Stanley N. Cohen, Paul A. Samuelson, E. J. Corey, Edmond H. Fischer, Leon M. Lederman, James M. Robl, James D. Watson, Jerome Karle, David H. Hubel, Konrad Bloch, Robert W. Wilson, Franco Modigliani, Edwin G. Krebs, Robert F. Furchgott, V. L. Fitch, Leon N. Cooper, Marshall W. Nirenberg, Ferid Murad, Robert M. Solow, Milton J. Friedman, Reneto Dulbecco, Murray Gell-Mann, Martin J. Perl, Merton H. Miller, Norman F. Ramsey, R. Bruce Merrifield, and Susumu Tonegawa
- Subjects
Biomedical Research ,Memorandum ,media_common.quotation_subject ,Federal Government ,Risk Assessment ,Federal law ,Politics ,State (polity) ,Research Support as Topic ,Political science ,Humans ,health care economics and organizations ,Human services ,media_common ,Government ,Multidisciplinary ,Research ,Stem Cells ,Bioethics ,Embryo, Mammalian ,United States ,humanities ,Embryo Research ,Law ,Government Regulation ,Rabb ,United States Dept. of Health and Human Services ,Administration (government) - Abstract
Last month, 70 members of the U.S. Congress, including Henry Hyde, Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, and J. C. Watts Jr. Republican Conference Chairman, signed a letter urging the federal government to ban all research on stem cells obtained from human embryos and fetuses. The letter calls upon the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) to reverse National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director Harold Varmus's decision to allow funding of pluripotent stem cell research. The lawmakers object “in the strongest possible terms” to Varmus's decision, as well as to the memorandum issued in January by DHHS General Counsel Harriet Rabb, which served as the legal basis for Varmus's position. In their letter, the members of Congress state, “Any NIH action to initiate funding of such research would violate both the letter and spirit of the federal law banning federal support for research in which human embryos are harmed or destroyed.” Federal laws and regulations, they claim, have protected human embryos and fetuses “from harmful experimentation at the hands of the Federal government” for more than two decades. “This area of law has provided a bulwark against government's misuse and exploitation of human beings in the name of medical progress. It would he a travesty for this Administration to attempt to unravel this accepted ethical standard.”
- Published
- 1999
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