Fed guidelines clarify stem cells research

WASHINGTON -- In a little-noticed ruling this spring, the Bush administration made it a bit easier for federally funded researchers to use embryonic stem cells that do not meet the president's strict test for federal funding .

Researchers do not have to set up separate laboratories for research on stem cells that do not qualify for funding, the National Institutes of Health said in March.

A year ago, President Bush ruled that federal dollars could support limited research using stem cells that are derived from human embryos. It was a controversial matter: The research holds enormous promise to treat and cure disease, but in order to get the cells, days-old human embryos must be destroyed.

Bush said he would allow federal funding only on stem cell lines that were already in existence on Aug. 9, the night of his nationally televised speech on the issue. That way, he said, the government would not be providing an incentive for researchers to destroy more embryos to gather new stem cells.

Researchers have always been free, however, to use private dollars to pay for their work. There is no law banning any of this research; the only issue was who pays for it.

Still, until March, some researchers believed they had to physically separate their work using embryonic stem cells that do not qualify for federal funding from the rest of their taxpayer-subsidized lab work. Some established privately funded, separate laboratories to conduct the stem cell work.

In March, the administration told researchers that this is not necessary as long as they keep their private money separate from their government funding. In a question-and-answer document, the National Institutes of Health explained that researchers who plan to derive new stem cell lines do not need to work in separate labs.

"You may do the derivation in your university supported laboratory as long as: 1) you carefully and consistently allocate all costs of doing the derivation a non-federal funding source; and 2) your university or research center has in place a method of separating the costs of supporting your laboratory so that any of the facilities and administrative (F&A) costs allocable to your new stem cell line work are excluded from the federal share of the organized research cost base," the document said.