President Bush sidesteps critics in stem cell debate

President George Bush took the unusual move of using a nationally televised address last week to announce that he would allow government supported research on existing embryonic cell lines only, not on any new lines that may be developed.

At the same time he announced that he would create a presidential advisory body to oversee the medical and ethical ramifications. It would not review research proposals.

His decision came two days after the US National Academy of Sciences meeting in Washington, where infertility specialists Panayiotis Zavos and Severino Antinori put their case for reproductive cloning to help childless couples to conceive.

The president's statement, however, was specifically about therapeutic cloning, …