An Executive Order and Memorandum by US President Barack Obama are Expected to Have Far Reaching Consequences. (March 10, 2009)

On March 9 US President Barack Obama signed an executive order dealing with overturning former president George W. Bush's restrictions on embryonic stem cell funding. The memorandum deals with protecting the scientific process from political intervention.

ScienceInsider reports: "Kyoto University researcher Shinya Yamanaka, famous for developing so-called induced pluripotent stem cells, flew in for the signing [of the executive order], which ended with a standing ovation from the crowd." And while the Dickey-Wicker amendment remains in force, federally funded researchers would still be unable to create their own stem cell lines. However, they will be able to use such lines if they are developed without federal funding.

In regard to the memorandum Mr Obama sent to his scientific advisor to "restore scientific integrity to government decision-making" it is a response against the policies of the administration of George W Bush.

Kurt Gottfried, chair of the Union of Concerned Scientists and a physicist at Cornell University told ScienceInsider: "We took for granted that there was a code of behaviour under which science operates, but what we've seen for the past 8 years is a breaking of that unwritten code. Even his father [George H. W. Bush] ran a very clean shop. There have always been problems, but it was never systematic until the [George W.] Bush Administration."

Here we reprint the executive order and the memorandum in their entirety.

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