Embryonic Stem Cell Research Oversight Committees
The National Academies called for the establishment of Embryonic Stem Cell Research Oversight (ESCRO) Committees in its 2005 "Guidelines for Human Embryonic Stem Cell Research" to manage the ethical and legal concerns in human embryonic stem cell research. Because of the complexity and novelty of many of the issues involved in that research, the Guidelines committee believes that all research institutions engaged in human embryonic stem cell research should create and maintain these committees at the local level.
Bernard Siegel (attorney)
In both 2003 and 2004, Siegel played a pivotal role in protecting a form of stem cell research in the United Nations, which was under the threat of being banned by world treaty. In 2003, he brought some of the world’s most prominent stem cell research scientists together at a meeting at the U.N. to educate delegates about the need to ban human reproductive cloning (the cloning of a whole person) while keeping nuclear transfer research (for the cloning of stem cells) legal throughout the world. That very year, the U.N. avoided the passage of a treaty that would have banned nuclear transfer research worldwide by a single vote. In 2004, the treaty was downgraded to a nonbinding resolution that left the matter of whether or not to allow nuclear transfer up to the various nations.