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From
TIME Magazine |
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May
23,
2006 |
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Why Bush's Ban Could Be Reversed
As states push ahead with new research
that the public seems to want, Congress is
poised to expand the uses of federal funding
beyond what the President's order allows
By Karen Tumulty
It was the toughest call of his young
presidency, and George Bush chose an event no
less momentous than his first prime-time address
to announce that he had found a thin ridge of
moral high ground on which to perch. The
wrenching decision: whether to lend federal
support to embryonic-stem-cell research,
unleashing potential cures for horrific
illnesses and life-shattering injuries, but at
the cost of giving government sanction to the
destruction of human embryos. Bush had searched
both his soul and his 3-in.-thick briefing book.
He had quizzed experts and ethicists and even
the doctors in the White House medical unit. In
that 11-min. speech, set not in the Oval Office
but against an expanse of Texas prairie, the
President talked about the dream of wiping out
Alzheimer's disease and childhood diabetes but
also of the nightmarish "hatcheries" of Aldous
Huxley's Brave New World. The issue, Bush
declared, "lies at a difficult moral
intersection, juxtaposing the need to protect
life in all its phases with the prospect of
saving and improving life in all its stages."
The government would move forward carefully, he
promised, providing federal money for research
on cell colonies that had already been created
by that point, August 2001, but not edging one
inch further down the slope of destroying
additional human embryos. "I spent a lot of time
on the subject," he later told reporters. "I
laid out the policy I think is right for
America, and I'm not going to change my mind."
Now, the once solid ground that Bush staked out
almost four years ago is crumbling beneath him,
and he will probably soon find himself once
again in the middle of an argument that he had
declared settled. As early as next week, the
Republican-controlled House--the same House that
held a Palm Sunday session so that it could
deliver a lifeline to Terri Schiavo--is expected
to consider legislation that could dramatically
expand the number of stem-cell "lines" available
to federally funded research by making
accessible tens of thousands of embryos that
have been created through in vitro
fertilization. The bill contains a number of
safeguards aimed at ensuring that it would apply
only to embryos that would otherwise have been
discarded. It stipulates that the embryos must
have been created by individuals seeking
fertility treatment and who then discovered that
they had produced "in excess of the clinical
need." It also requires that those donors give
permission for the embryos to be used in
stem-cell research, and forbids them from
receiving any compensation.
As things look now, the bill has a good shot.
By the end of last week, 200 members of the
House--nearly half--had signed on as co-sponsors
to the legislation authored by Delaware
Republican Mike Castle and Colorado Democrat
Diana DeGette. And the number of supporters is
expected to grow when it is put to a vote.
Predictions are that as many as 50 Republicans
could join Democrats in favor of it. While the
legislation presents Republican moderates a rare
opportunity for victory on Capitol Hill, it has
also attracted the interest and support of some
conservatives who say they discern a growing
pro- life case for what embryonic-stem-cell
research has to offer.
House passage, all sides agree, would spur
action in the Senate, where prospects for an
identical bill are just as good, with 58
co-sponsors--just short of a filibuster-proof
majority. It helps that the bill's backers are
led by Republican Orrin Hatch of Utah, a lion of
the pro-life movement. From the Senate, barring
some kind of a procedural snag, the bill would
wind up on Bush's desk.
That's an excruciating prospect for the White
House, made all the more so by the fact that a
rejection of the stem-cell legislation would be
Bush's first veto ever. Opponents of
embryonic-stem-cell research say they have
received private assurances from the White House
that the President will stay true to his word,
and they are working to get enough votes on
their side so that the veto cannot be
overturned. Meanwhile, White House aides are
huddling with some congressional leaders to come
up with an alternative measure of some kind
that, in the words of one, would "reflect the
President's priorities"--and give Republicans
political cover for voting against a popular
cause. But they say there should be no mistake
about where Bush stands. "When the time comes,
if it is necessary, we will make it clear that
this violates the President's position," says a
senior official. "The wall is firm. No question
about it."
If so, the President's stance is one of the
few markers on the field of embryonic- stem-cell
research that hasn't moved over the past four
years. When Bush announced his Executive Order
limiting federal funding to studies on existing
stem-cell lines, he declared that private
research had produced more than 60 genetically
diverse lines that would be eligible.
Researchers now say the number is more like 22,
and even those are contaminated with mouse DNA,
making them ill-suited for use on humans.
Meanwhile, research is moving ahead without
Washington's sanction--not only in places like
Britain and Singapore but also in a number of
states, led by California. The latest TIME poll
found that 53% of respondents said they would
like to see other states follow California's
lead. And in a number of states, legislators are
doing just that. (See box.)
That may be in part because they are
beginning to see the consequences for those that
lag. Scientists who depend on federal funding,
traditionally some of the brightest minds, now
find themselves at a disadvantage, and so many
are looking elsewhere. G.O.P. Congressman Mark
Kirk, a leading backer of the bill, says
universities and research institutions in his
Chicago-area district are complaining that some
of their top talent is leaving for places that
offer stem-cell-research programs. At the same
time, the diffusion of this work across the
nation also raises ethical questions, as each
state gets to set its own standards. "One of the
fears here is that you are going to have a
potpourri of different approaches to this--some
of them stretches," says Senator Hatch. "It's a
favor to the world to do this right."
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What
excites scientists about the
unspecialized stem cells is their
potential to develop into any type of
tissue, from bone and muscle to skin and
blood and nerve. Although there are
several kinds of stem cells--including
ones found in adult bone marrow and
umbilical-cord blood--the most
versatile, researchers say, are the ones
that come from embryos, because they
haven't yet developed enough to
specialize at all. Those are the ones
that scientists believe hold the
greatest potential for treatment of a
wide range of diseases, as well as for
repairing damaged nerves and organs.
Backers of expanded stem-cell research
say public opinion is swinging their
way, thanks in no small part to such
high-profile advocates as Nancy Reagan,
who has made her late husband's struggle
with Alzheimer's an emblem of the
campaign for stem-cell research. Support
is solid even among Republicans, says
G.O.P. pollster David Winston, who
conducted a poll released last week by
New Models, a Republican communication
research organization. Surveying 13
Republican congressional districts
across the country, Winston found that
voters in those areas favored
embryonic-stem-cell research an overall
66% to 27%, while Republicans supported
it 53% to 37%. This week backers of the
bill will try to gin up additional
momentum with the launch of a
seven-figure television ad campaign.
It also helps that the legislation
may be coming to a vote at a politically
opportune time for a measure that can
rightfully claim to be a truly
bipartisan endeavor. Public approval of
Congress in the latest Gallup poll stood
at an abysmally low 35%, its worst in
eight years. Congress hasn't helped its
case much by tying itself up in battles,
like the one over the filibuster, that
touch the concerns mainly of those
within the ideological extremes of both
parties.
What brought the expansion of
embryonic-stem-cell research to a
congressional vote was not a public
groundswell, however, but an
uncharacteristically deft inside move by
a group of Republican moderates who call
themselves the House Tuesday Group. For
months, they had been looking for an
opportunity to get around the House's
rigid procedures and force it to take up
the measure, which probably could never
have got to the floor through the usual
process of committee deliberation. When
House Speaker Dennis Hastert needed
their votes in what turned out to be a
squeaker on the budget last month, the
lawmakers, led by Castle, extracted a
guarantee that the Speaker would bring
the stem-cell measure to a vote. That
concession marked one of the few
instances in which the tightly
disciplined House leadership has agreed
to allow consideration of a bill that it
does not explicitly support. And yet,
says Illinois Congressman Kirk, who was
involved in the negotiations with the
House leadership, "it was like pushing
on an open door. In a lot of people's
heart of hearts, they agree with us."
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Whatever
the inner impulses of members, a vote is
certain to bring a backlash from
right-to-life groups that constitute a
major part of the Republican base. So
supporters of the measure have been
quietly working the House chamber in
what is becoming an intensely personal
effort to build a majority one vote at a
time. Some lawmakers with pro-life
voting records say the vote will be an
agonizing choice. "The most difficult
moral questions aren't between right and
wrong," says New Mexico's Heather
Wilson, who says she is still undecided.
"They are between right and right."
Wilson has been visited by lobbyists for
universities and groups who advocate for
sufferers of various diseases. Fellow
Republican lawmaker Charles Bass of New
Hampshire gave her a chapter from
Hatch's 2002 memoir Square Peg, in which
the Senator explained his own conversion
on the stem-cell issue. But the most
compelling appeal, Wilson says, has come
from a House Democrat--James Langevin of
Rhode Island, an abortion foe who is
also a quadriplegic as a result of an
accidental gunshot wound suffered when
he was a teenager. "When Jim Langevin
talks to you about this," says Wilson,
"he speaks with a certain understanding
that the rest of us don't have."
Opponents are not without their own
emotionally charged arguments, one of
which is that if the bill becomes law,
it would only be the beginning of a
slide toward human reproduction through
cloning. Foes say they also plan to
point out that embryonic-stem-cell
research has yet to produce a cure for
anything. Researchers, they say, should
first explore the potential of stem-cell
research that does not require the
destruction of embryos, including use of
adult stem cells and stem cells from
umbilical-cord blood. "This is not a
debate between pro-science forces and
religious zealots," says Pennsylvania
Republican Joseph Pitts. "This is a
debate about saving lives."
Officially, the House Republican
leadership has pledged not to pressure
its members on the bill, having deemed
it a matter of conscience. But majority
leader Tom DeLay had been quietly
looking for ways to stall it or
complicate its progress through the
legislative machinery. House sources say
he stepped back from that effort after
moderate Republicans reminded Speaker
Hastert that he had promised them a
clean shot at passage. Meanwhile, an
alternative strategy is being discussed
that would give House members the
opportunity to also vote on an
additional piece of stem-cell
legislation, possibly a bill by
Congressman Chris Smith of New Jersey
that would establish a national bank to
store and distribute stem cells from the
blood of umbilical cords. The idea is to
take off some of the political heat by
giving both lawmakers and Bush a
stem-cell bill to support, in addition
to the one they have vowed to kill.
Whatever the outcome, if there's
anything that politicians have learned
about embryonic-stem-cell research, it
is that the science has a way of always
moving forward. The question now is how
far Washington is ready to move with it.
--With reporting by John F.
Dickerson/Washington |
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