Abstract

The United States is a federal union with separate state jurisdictions. In part owing to the sometimes heated debate about public support for human embryonic stem-cell (ESC) research, there has been restricted federal support and little central regulation of this research to date. Instead, guidelines developed by scientific organizations have set principles for oversight and good practice for this research. These guidelines are functioning well, have influenced developing state regulations and, one hopes, will affect any future federal regulation.

Author affiliations

1. Richard Hynes is at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, David H. Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139-4307, USA.
   Email: rohynes@mit.edu

Published online 9 October 2008

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