Stem cell laws and policy in the United States
In 1973, Roe v. Wade legalized abortion in the United States. Five years later, the first successful human "in vitro" fertilization resulted in the birth of Louise Brown in England. These developments prompted the federal government to create regulations barring the use of federal funds for research that experimented on human embryos. In 1995, the NIH Human Embryo Research Panel advised the administration of President Bill Clinton to permit federal funding for research on embryos left over from "in vitro" fertility treatments and also recommended federal funding of research on embryos specifically created for experimentation. In response to the panel's recommendations, the Clinton administration, citing moral and ethical concerns, declined to fund research on embryos created solely for research purposes, but did agree to fund research on left-over embryos created by "in vitro" fertility treatments. At this point, the Congress intervened and passed the Dickey-Wicker Amendment in 1995 (the final bill, which included the Dickey Amendment, was signed into law by Bill Clinton) which prohibited any federal funding for the Department of Health and Human Services be used for research that resulted in the destruction of an embryo regardless of the source of that embryo. In 1998, privately funded research led to the breakthrough discovery of human Embryonic stem cells (hESC).
Stem cell laws
China prohibits human reproductive cloning but allows the creation of human embryos for research and therapeutic purposes. India banned in 2004 reproductive cloning, permitted therapeutic cloning. In 2004, Japan’s Council for Science and Technology Policy voted to allow scientists to conduct stem cell research for therapeutic purposes, though formal guidelines have yet to be released. The South Korean government promotes therapeutic cloning, but forbids cloning. The Philippines prohibits human embryonic and aborted human fetal stem cells and their derivatives for human treatment
and research. In 1999, Israel passed legislation banning reproductive, but not therapeutic, cloning. Saudi Arabia religious officials issued a decree that sanctions the use of embryos for therapeutic and research purposes. According to the Royan Institute for Reproductive Biomedicine, Iran has some of the most liberal laws on stem cell research and cloning. Laws and regulations in Jordan allow stem-cell research. A center for stem cell research has acquired a license to begin operating in April 2017 at the University of Jordan.