Lifting a ban on progress

About 8 years ago I moved to the US to work on science-related fields. It came as a very cold shower to hear the president Bush announce the world that the US government was cutting federal funding to Embryonic Stem Cell Research, and would only award funding for the atrins already obtained. time proved that those strains didn't produce major scientific breakthroughs.
It is well known that the US is no longer the major contributor of scientific breakthroughs in the world. That has several causes and implications, decreased number of undergraduate and graduate scientific research projects, ultra expensive college and university tuition costs, etc.
It is in Europe and Asia, where science has been bubbling for the last decade. Well, not all has been true, as is the case of some asian scientists reporting false information, but apart from that, research in stem cells has been in a better position in those latitudes.
Banning Stem Cell research funding was a religious-motivated decision, and let's not summon up all the backwards effects that the church has had over science and knowledge in human history.
It is not the dangers of the evil characters investigating and designing negative effects over stem cell research or any other scientific endeavor, it is the great advancement in knowledge and understanding in life and its origins that should prompt us to promote investigation in science.
Any activity has goods and bads, and banning an activity because it mat have negative effects, may have banned thousands of current and legal activities in our daily lives.
Stem cell research is not the panacea, but it's a great way to determine what we can get from the understanding of timing and programming.
I salute President Obama's decision on lifting the ban, as a citizen of the world and as a biologist.