biomedical research
methods
This research has been explicitly banned by Congress since 1995, when antiabortion legislators appended to the labor-health and human services–education appropriation (Labor-HHS) bill language barring funding for “the creation of a human embryo or embryos for research purposes; or research in which a human embryo or embryos are destroyed, discarded, or knowingly subjected to risk of injury or death greater than that allowed for research on fetuses in utero.” Before that, embryo research was largely banned by default, as part of a broader ban on research using human fetuses. (See fetal tissue research.) Regulations promulgated in 1975 theoretically allowed such research if approved by an ethics advisory board, but no board was ever able to convene, largely because of controversies related to abortion. [Source: Health Care Policy and Politics A to Z; Embryo Research]
embryo research
investigative techniques
research embryo creation