On March 9, President Barack Obama signed into law an executive order that removed barriers to responsible scientific stem cell research, effectively reversing President George W. Bush's 2001 presidential statement and 2007 executive order limiting federal funding for research involving human embryonic stem cells.

Obama's order mandates that human embryonic stem cells have a great potential health benefit and should be supported by federal funds, as well as that prior limitations are removed. According to Susan Wente, professor and chair of cell and developmental biology on campus, Obama's order has heightened the debate between those in favor of stem cell research, primarily Patients and Patient Advocacy groups, and those in opposition to stem cell research, which includes religious groups and pro-life activists.

Father John Sims Baker, Chaplain of the Vanderbilt Catholic Church, represents a member of the religious community who is not satisfied with President Obama's executive order and believes that it only offers a threat to the dignity of human life.

"It will be a cause for sorrow and a call to repentance for the coarsening of our culture in respect to the dignity of life. Vanderbilt as a whole will likewise be affected by the treatment of human life as a means to be used and destroyed rather than as a being to be protected and nurtured," said Father John Sims Baker, Chaplain of Vanderbilt Catholic.

However, Wente feels that the order will positively affect the Vanderbilt community in terms of being able to conduct research on all the available human embryonic stem cell lines. Furthermore, Wente is excited about the prospects of generating new grant opportunities, new collaborative interactions and accelerate the pace of discoveries on campus.

The most significant part of Obama's order is that it increases the amount of stem cell lines available to researchers. Stem cell lines are cell cultures that can be grown indefinitely in the laboratory, or, cells may be frozen for storage or distribution to other researchers. Stem cell lines grown in the lab provide scientists with the opportunity to "engineer" them for use in transplantation or treatment of diseases. "The original 21 lines approved for use in 2001 were developed using ǃÚold' technology that required culturing the human embryonic cells in the presence of mouse cells to help ǃÚfeed' the human cells. This means that these lines are contaminated with mouse cells, and although can be used for some experiments in laboratories, they can never be used in patients for therapeutic purposes. Also, for experimental use, these 21 original cell lines have many problems. There are currently less than a dozen (approximately) that are usable and grow reproducibly. In addition, each are limited in their ability to be induced to differentiate into different cell types (brain cells, pancreas cells, etc)."Although Wente is not directly involved in stem-cell research on campus because she primarily studies the cellular machinery that allows the movement of protein and RNA between the nucleus and cytoplasm, she will remain involved with stem cell research as a result of her leadership roles as department chair and as an assistant vice chancellor for research.

Of course, in light of the recent outbreak in research possibility, the debate over the ethics of stem cell research rages on. As a catholic, Father John disagrees with the manipulation of stem cells.

"Since a human embryo is a human life, it cannot morally be killed to serve another purpose, such as speculative research. A human embryo is not a part of a human life, it is a human life in its entirety. I was once, for example, a human embryo. A human embryo needs nothing other than the right environment to develop into a mature human being, much as I need the right environment to continue living."