On March 9, 2009, Obama issued an executive order extending federal funding, through the National Institutes for Health, for research on stem-cells derived from human embryos. Where President Bush had opened federal funding only for stem-cells that had already been harvested from embryos (and those stem cells can be used to create new stem cells), Obama was allowing scientists who harvest stem cells from healthy embryos (thus killing the embryos) to get NIH funding for the research on those new stem cells.
Obama’s executive order went into effect July 7, 2009. A week earlier, GE had announced that GE Healthcare and embryonic stem-cell giant Geron “have entered into a global exclusive license and alliance agreement to develop and commercialize cellular assay products derived from human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) for use in drug discovery, development and toxicity screening. Geron described itself as having “core expertise in telomerase and human embryonic stem cells.”
No small irony that GE will be offing human lives under the "GE Healthcare" brand, eh?
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