San Francisco

A plan to set up a national embryonic stem-cell bank in the United States has met with a decidedly mixed response. Some are calling it a political move that does nothing to address what they see as real problems with the Bush administration's policy on stem-cell research. But others hope it will prepare the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for possible future changes in policy.

The proposal, announced by Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson on 14 July, would bring all the embryonic stem-cell lines currently available to US researchers under one roof. This includes 19 current cell lines, along with a handful that are not yet ready for distribution.

Embryonic stem cells can theoretically be coaxed to generate any tissue in the body, and could one day provide treatments for diseases such as diabetes and Parkinson's. The bank would grow the cell lines in standardized conditions, aiming for uniform quality, lower costs and easier access for researchers.

“I think this is just the right kind of organization and service that the NIH should provide to the community,” says Fred Gage, a stem-cell researcher at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California.

But critics point out that the bank does nothing to address the fact that there are currently so few stem-cell lines available for study. The Coalition for the Advancement of Medical Research (CAMR), a Washington-based pressure group, says the move is a worthless attempt by the Bush administration to appear active in stem-cell research. “It's a bit like giving a new paint job to a car without an engine. It's still not going to take you where you need to go,” said CAMR spokesman Sean Tipton in a statement released last week.

Strangely, current distributors of stem cells do not seem to have been consulted before the announcement. Meri Firpo, who runs the distribution centre at the University of California, San Francisco, only heard the news when contacted by Nature.

And Andy Cohn, a spokesman for the WiCell Research Institute in Madison, Wisconsin, which distributes 5 of the 19 approved lines, said he did not yet know how the bank would affect his organization's work. “We don't know what the plan is,” he says.