sea-maid submitted, created time 5 months 1 week (www.nature.com)

Some researchers in Stanford University are told that around one-quarter of the human embryonic stem-cell lines eligible for U.S. government funding are now off-limits because of ethical concerns. The university is concerned that some of the women who donated the embyros that were used to generate the line might not have been fully informed of how they would be used.

The consent forms that the women signed were retrieved and it was found that none of them met Standford's guidelines exactly and some of them were way off the mark. After long deliberation, it was determined that five of the twenty-one eligible lines will now not be used at Stanford. This process is expected to be repeated at universities across the U.S.

Keywords: stem cell research stem-cell transplantation stem cells bioethics ethics embryonic stem cells stem cell lines