FOX News reports on a provision of the omnibus budget bill that passed Congress last week:
President Obama may have abolished contentious Bush-era restraints on federal funding of stem cell research on Monday, but a legislative obstacle still remains for scientists seeking more money.
A spending bill that Obama signed on Wednesday explicitly bans federal funding of any “research in which a human embryo or embryos are destroyed, discarded, or knowingly subjected to risk of injury or death,” language that pertains to creation of new stem cell lines.
This provision, known as the Dickey-Wicker amendment, was included in the 465-page omnibus spending bill that will fund government agencies through September. The amendment is a measure Congress has included in spending bills in every fiscal year since 1996.
Glenn Reynolds wonders what else was in that bill that appears to have passed unread. Is it possible that there are any other pleasant surprises hidden in the interstices? And shouldn’t President Obama continue his purported campaign on behalf of science over ideology and veto that bill?
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