The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has posted draft guidelines for implementation of President Obama's March 9 Executive Order removing barriers to responsible scientific research involving human stem cells.

The proposed guidelines allow research only on stem cells derived from embryos donated at fertility clinics when they are no longer needed for in vitro fertilization (IVF) procedures. Such embryos would otherwise be discarded as medical waste.

Under the proposed guidelines, federal financing would still not support the creation of embryos solely for the purposes of research or embryos created by therapeutic cloning.