No Ethics Considered/No Reversal

Yuval Levin:

Even for those of us who expected the worst from the Obama stem cell policy, the actual text of his Executive Order is a bit of a shock. It describes no particular ethical restraints whatsoever—not against funding the use of embryos created for research, or cloned embryos, or anything else. And it offers not even a mention of an ethical debate. The only case for the policy it makes is that “advances over the past decade in this promising scientific field have been encouraging, leading to broad agreement in the scientific community that the research should be supported by Federal funds.” Agreement in the scientific community seems to be all that matters in making federal funding policy. And it then leaves it up to NIH to make all the rules. It’s all science and no ethics, and doesn't even bother to pretend otherwise.

On a related note, the President has made it nearly impossible to overturn his decision; from Congressional Quarterly (italics mine):

Codifying the Obama administration’s position would enable stem cell researchers to tap some of the $10 billion in funding for National Institutes of Health biomedical research contained in the recently enacted economic stimulus package (PL 111-5).

It also would block any of Obama’s successors from overturning his support through similar executive actions.

“Congress is likely to cement this policy so it would take a majority of the House and Senate to overturn it,” said Michael Rugnetta, a bioethics researcher at the Center for American Progress, a left-leaning think tank that advised the administration on the issue.

HT: KJL