Shares of Stem Cells (STEM) Rally on Obama news

Shares of StemCells, Inc. (Public, NASDAQ:STEM) are up 43% today - we told you it was coming in our article titled Obama puts the smack down on Stem Cell law back in February.

Here's the story:

Pledging that his administration will “make scientific decisions based on facts, not ideology,” President Obama on Monday lifted the Bush administration’s strict limits on human embryonic stem cell research.

At a ceremony in the East Room of the White House, before an audience that included lawmakers, scientists and patients, several of them in wheelchairs, Mr. Obama announced that he was issuing an executive order intended to advance the research. He said he hoped Congress would follow with bipartisan legislation that would ease the existing restrictions even more.

The president acknowledged that studying stem cells extracted from human embryos, which are destroyed in the process, is deeply divisive.

“Many thoughtful and decent people are conflicted about, or strongly oppose, this research,” the president said. “I understand their concerns, and we must respect their point of view.”
But Mr. Obama went on to say that the majority of Americans “have come to a consensus that we should pursue this research; that the potential it offers is great, and with proper guidelines and strict oversight the perils can be avoided.”

In making his announcement, Mr. Obama drew a strict line against human cloning, an issue that over the years has become entangled with the debate over human embryonic stem cell research.

He said that he would ensure that his administration “never opens the door” to cloning for human reproduction, adding, “It is dangerous, profoundly wrong and has no place in our society or any society.”

Mr. Obama paired his executive order with another document, a presidential memorandum directing the head of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy to “develop a strategy for restoring scientific integrity to government decision-making.”

Taken together, the two actions are the latest in a series of rebukes by Mr. Obama to his predecessor, former President George W. Bush.

Many Democrats criticized the Bush administration for politicizing science on a range of issues, from climate change to protecting endangered species to family planning.

Mr. Obama pledged during his campaign to chart a different course.

Already, abortion opponents are bracing for a battle over the stem-cell policy.

“The administration now steps onto a very steep, very slippery slope,” Douglas Johnson, legislative director for the National Right to Life Committee, said in anticipation of Mr. Obama’s action. “Many researchers will never be satisfied only with the so-called leftover embryos.”

One Republican lawmaker, Representative Christopher Smith of New Jersey, called Mr. Obama “the abortion president,” and planned an event to protest the new stem-cell policy later on Monday. The event was to include some so-called snowflake children, born after a couple that underwent in-vitro fertilization released leftover embryos for use by other couples.

Mr. Smith said Sunday that he did not think lawmakers would go along with overturning the embryo-experiment ban.

“I don’t think it will fly, because the movement in the country is in favor of life,” he said. “For Congress to say that the new guinea pig will be human embryos, most Americans will find that highly offensive.”

The Bush administration, in a careful compromise eight years ago, allowed tax dollars to support studies on a small number of existing lines, or colonies, of stem cells that had already been derived from embryos, though not on creating new lines. That meant that a provision renewed by Congress every year since 1996, banning research in which embryos are destroyed, no longer stood as an absolute barrier to the stem cell work.

Mr. Obama’s new executive order will open the door wider, but not as wide as Congress would if it were to remove its legislative restrictions.