Ten members of the President’s Council on Bioethics have issued a statement raising concerns about Obama’s policy to liberalize federal funding for embryonic stem cell research. They point out that, contrary to Obama’s remarks, President Bush never banned embryonic stem cell research; alternative methods of deriving pluripotent stem cells have eclipsed embryonic research; and Obama has now opened the door to cloning human embryos that must, by law, be destroyed.

The entire statement is an important contribution to the stem cell debate. If Obama truly believes it’s “very important for us to have strong moral guidelines, ethical guidelines when it comes to stem cell research,” then why didn't he establish his own bioethics council to help draw those lines, instead of outsourcing ethical decisions to the National Institutes of Health?