White House Press Secretary Tony Snow Holds White House Regular News Briefing

WHITE HOUSE REGULAR NEWS BRIEFING

JUNE 20, 2007

SPEAKER: WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY TONY SNOW

[*] SNOW: Hello. Questions?

QUESTION: Tony, does the executive order allow researchers to do anything -- do anything they couldn't do under current guidelines? SNOW: Well, what it does, the stem cell guidelines expand the range of pluripotent cells. I think what it does is it acknowledges that there have been some changes within embryonic stem cell science.

In the past, if you were looking for pluripotent cells, the one and only acknowledged source were human embryos, and that obviously raised ethical questions which led the president to promulgate guidelines back in 2001.

More recently, there seem to be some indications, based on research, that one can derive these pluripotent cells -- that is, a cell that can transform itself into any other kind of cell within the body -- not necessarily from embryos, but from other sources, including skin cells.

What this does is provide a basis for trying to enhance the number of pluripotent cell lines available to researchers using the NIH.

Now, the NIH is going to have 90 days to put together requests for proposals and try to set up a -- establish a procedure where you have peer-reviewed science based on the likelihood of clinical benefit and running through, sort of, the normal trap.

So what this really does is acknowledge that there has been, at least based on the literature, some indication that we may be on the verge of some pretty extraordinary breakthroughs in medicine.

Obviously, at this early juncture you cannot be definitive about it, but this, at least, creates the space for which there can be federal funding and also a competition for federal funding for such projects.

QUESTION: How much federal funding are we talking about?

SNOW: Wha...

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