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The work was ineligible for public funding because of a ban placed by Congress on NIH-funded human embryo research. In 1995, Congress attached the ban to the bill appropriating funds for NIH. It has been retained in each successive appropriations bill (appropriations bills are passed annually), and until 2001, no public funding was ever provided for hESC research in the United States. The following is the text of the ban, originally authored in 1995 by then-Rep. Jay Dickey (R-AR), as it appeared in NIH's fiscal year 2006 appropriations bill (H.R. 3010, Sec. 509):
(a) None of the funds made available in this Act may be used for—
(1) the creation of a human embryo or embryos for research purposes; or
(2) 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 under 45 CFR 46.204(b) and section 498(b) of the Public Health Service Act (42 U.S.C. 289g(b)).
(b) For purposes of this section, the term 'human embryo or embryos' includes any organism, not protected as a human subject under 45 CFR 46 as of the date of the enactment of this Act, that is derived by fertilization, parthenogenesis, cloning, or any other means from one or more human gametes or human diploid cells.