Misplaced Priorities on Stem Cell Research

Sigrid Fry-Revere has a post over at The Hill Blog questioning the merits of federal funding for embryonic stem cell research. As her new CEI paper co-written with Molly Elgin, Public Stem Cell Research Funding: Boon or Boondoggle?, points out, “It is impossible to know how successful [stem cell] research will be or whether any individual projects will produce genuine medical treatments, and it is not the place of government to gamble with taxpayers’ money.”

Over at The Hill Blog, she writes:

“Furthermore, politicizing stem cell research funding may produce the opposite effect of what stem cell research advocates intend, namely less not more funding and more rather than fewer restriction on the research itself.”

The inherent politicization of government funding — and inefficient overhead expenses of dealing with that reality — has already delayed state-level public funding programs like that established under California’s Proposition 71. Whether or not you support human embryonic stem cell research, government funding for it is decidedly the wrong approach.