Skip to Content
Uncategorized

Senate to Vote on Stem Cell Bill

It could lead to a major change in the ability of U.S. scientists to do stem cell research.
July 17, 2006

The U.S. Senate is finally slated to vote today on a bill that would expand federal funding for embryonic stem cell research. If passed, the bill would lift a presidential mandate set in 2001 that severely limited federal funding of stem cell research. This reversal would be a huge boon to stem cell scientists, who have been forced to turn to private or state sources for funding.

President Bush has repeatedly vowed to veto the bill, though, which the Senate is expected to pass on Tuesday. Its more optimistic proponents hope the bill will garner the 67 votes needed to override a veto. However, the bill fell 50 votes short of a veto-proof margin when it was passed in the House last year.

An article in the New York Times gives an informative outline of the bill, its supporters, and its opponents. Here’s the bill. For more on this field, check out Technology Review’s special report on stem cell science, and especially TR correspondent Charles Mann’s feature “Braving Medicine’s Frontier(September 2005,) which takes a look at how President Bush’s 2001 mandate crippled the field.  – By Emily Singer

Keep Reading

Most Popular

Large language models can do jaw-dropping things. But nobody knows exactly why.

And that's a problem. Figuring it out is one of the biggest scientific puzzles of our time and a crucial step towards controlling more powerful future models.

OpenAI teases an amazing new generative video model called Sora

The firm is sharing Sora with a small group of safety testers but the rest of us will have to wait to learn more.

Google’s Gemini is now in everything. Here’s how you can try it out.

Gmail, Docs, and more will now come with Gemini baked in. But Europeans will have to wait before they can download the app.

This baby with a head camera helped teach an AI how kids learn language

A neural network trained on the experiences of a single young child managed to learn one of the core components of language: how to match words to the objects they represent.

Stay connected

Illustration by Rose Wong

Get the latest updates from
MIT Technology Review

Discover special offers, top stories, upcoming events, and more.

Thank you for submitting your email!

Explore more newsletters

It looks like something went wrong.

We’re having trouble saving your preferences. Try refreshing this page and updating them one more time. If you continue to get this message, reach out to us at customer-service@technologyreview.com with a list of newsletters you’d like to receive.