Director of the NIH[1] (National Institute of Health), Francis Collins, has reaffirmed the Institute’s consistent position against the public financing of research involving the handling of human embryos.
In a public declaration on 29 April, Francis Collins shared his concerns about the Chinese announcement published in Protein & Cell on 18 April 2015. As far as he is concerned, the handling of human embryos “is universally considered as a line not to be crossed”.
In 1996, he drafted the bill known as the Dickey-Wicker amendment, banning the public financing of any studies involving the destruction of human embryos or the creation of human embryos for research purposes [2].
[1] The National Institute of Health is a United States governmental institution focusing on medical and biomedical research. It is attached to the United States’ Department of Health.
[2] Subsequent bills have authorised research on human embryo stem cells.
Nature (Sara Reardon) 19/04/2015