March 8 (Bloomberg) -- President Barack Obama will reverse the government’s ban on stem-cell funding tomorrow and announce he plans to “use sound, scientific practice and evidence, instead of dogma” to guide federal policy, an adviser said.

Harold Varmus, co-chair of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, said Obama asked the group to suggest guidelines that would help U.S. agencies use science as a basis for their decisions in a bid to “restore integrity” to the U.S. government.

The stem-cell order will reverse a decision by former President George W. Bush to ban federal support for all but 21 stem cell colonies created before 2001. Bush said that destroying embryos to develop stem cells was morally wrong. Stem cell researchers say that policy held back scientific advances and the development of cures.

“We view what happened with stem-cell research in the last administration as one manifestation of the failure to think carefully about how government use of scientific advice occurs,” said Varmus, who is president of the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York, in a conference call with reporters today. “Public policy must be guided by sound, scientific advice.”

The elevation of science will extend beyond stem cell research and into policies on health, energy and environmental programs, including global warming, said Melody C. Barnes, director of the White House Domestic Policy Council, who joined Varmus on the call with reporters.

120 Days

The National Institutes of Health, the government’s chief health-research agency, will have 120 days to develop new rules on stem cells, the White House said. Officials of the NIH have said they can prepare the guidelines more quickly than that.

Stem cells derived from days-old human embryos have the potential to form any of the body’s 200 or so cell types, such as nerve cells or brain cells, and to repair or replace damaged tissue or organs. Adult stem cells, found in living tissue, have a more limited potential to become other cell types.

Opponents of the research consider embryos to be human life and research that destroys them to be immoral. They say stem cells from adult tissue and umbilical cord blood are available without harming embryos and already in clinical use, while treatments from embryonic cells are years off.

First Address

Bush used the first televised address of his presidency, on August 9, 2001, to announce his policy banning the use of federal funds to support research on cell colonies, or lines, created after that date. Hundreds of newer lines can be used only by researchers funded from private sources.

Congress voted twice to overturn the Bush restrictions and Bush vetoed the measures both times.

A three-year-old advance allowed researchers to turn ordinary skin cells into powerful stem cells similar to those made from embryos. These cells, known as induced pluripotent stem cells, or IPS cells, were first created by Shinya Yamanaka, a researcher at Kyoto University in Japan.

Yamanaka left Japan on Saturday to fly to Washington to attend the signing ceremony tomorrow. Reached by telephone during a stopover in San Francisco this afternoon, he said he supported President Obama’s decision.

“I thought I should accept this invitation because many people seem to think that because of IPS cells, embryonic stem cells are longer required,” he said. “But that is not the case.”

‘Signing Hope’

For Lauren Stanford, a 17-year-old high school student who was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes at the age of 6, Obama’s order was the culmination of years of personal lobbying that has included testifying before the U.S. Senate and speaking at last summer’s Democratic National Convention.

“It’s like he’s signing hope for people with diabetes and other diseases into law,” Stanford said in a telephone interview yesterday. “I think hope can be a medicine too, it goes a long way in helping a kid whose life is very difficult to just feel a little better.”

Like most people with the Type 1 form of diabetes, Stanford must continuously monitor her blood sugar level and inject herself with insulin several times a day to control her sugar levels. Type I diabetics don’t produce insulin, a naturally occurring hormone, and researchers have reported progress in their efforts to turn stem cells into insulin-producing cells that could be transplanted into the body.

The issue has become a lighting rod for some pro-life supporters.

‘Destruction of Life’

“Taxpayer dollars should not aid destruction of innocent human life,” said House Republican leader John Boehner.

In Rome, the Vatican’s newspaper deplored Obama’s reversal, repeating Catholic doctrine that such research in the eyes of the church is “deeply immoral,” the Associated Press reported.

Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, called Obama’s planned reversal “a slap in the face” to Americans opposed to the destruction of human embryos.

“I believe it is unethical to use human life, even young embryonic life, to advance science,” Perkins said in a statement March 6. “While such research is unfortunately legal, taxpayers should not have to foot the bill for experiments that require the destruction of human life.

Shares of stem cell companies, which rallied March 6 when news began to leak, may gain further in tomorrow’s trading.

Geron, based in Menlo Park, California, gained $1.51, or 39 percent, to $5.38. Cytori Therapeutics Inc. of San Diego, gained 14 cents, or 6 percent, to $2.31. StemCells Inc. of Palo Alto, California, rose 92 cents, or 66 percent, to $2.30 in extended trading on the Nasdaq Stock Market.

To contact the reporters on this story: Rob Waters in San Francisco at rwaters5@bloomberg.net; Roger Runningen in Washington at rrunningen@bloomberg.net or

Last Updated: March 8, 2009 19:14 EDT