The National Institute of Health ’s guidelines follow President Barack Obama’s original lift of the Bush Administration’s research restrictions in March. The stipulations of the new guidelines say creation of new embryonic stem cell lines cannot be federally funded. A cell line must be derived through private or corporate funding, or in other countries. But after this first step further research can be federally funded, said Dan Kaufman , associate director of the University’s Stem Cell Institute.

Families using pre-implantation genetic diagnosis , a technology that screens embryos to determine a healthy donor for an ill child, do not choose diseased embryos for implantation, Kaufman said. Those embryos can then be used for federally funded research.