WASHINGTON – Lawmakers in favor of accelerating stem cell research gathered Wednesday in an 11th-hour effort to shore up support for legislation, pending in the Senate, that would relax restrictions on federal funding for research on human embryos.
Sens. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, and Arlen Specter, R-Pa., the bill’s chief sponsors, chided Republicans who oppose the legislation for “muddying the waters” with last-minute proposals promoting alternative research methods.
The Harkin-Specter legislation would make it legal for fertility clinics to donate excess embryos that would otherwise be discarded to research institutions, which would then use the embryos to derive lines of stem cells.
The House has already approved the bill and the Senate is expected to vote before Congress recesses in August.
Standing alongside the two senators was a powerful slate of co-sponsors, including Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah and Hollywood personality Michael J. Fox, who has Parkinson’s disease and is one of the nation’s leading advocates for stem cell research.
“We’re here to emphasize the importance of moving ahead, and moving ahead promptly,” said Specter, who is fighting the stem cell battle on a personal level. He is struggling with Hodgkin’s disease, cancer of the lymph system.
The legislation would upend President Bush’s 2001 ban on federal funding for stem cell research, an executive order prohibiting federal grants for research that would result in the destruction of human embryos. The president has threatened to veto the current legislation, along with any other measures that would use federal money to support similar research.
Because Bush has never vetoed a bill in 5 1/2 years in office, his veto threat immediately elevated the political profile of the stem cell dispute, which pits the president against some conservatives in Congress who have broken with the general Republican position supporting the ban on federal spending for research.
A total of 50 Republicans supported the House-passed bill and Harkin’s office said it expects considerable GOP support in the Senate as well. If Bush were to veto the measure, the legislation would need a two-thirds vote in both the House and Senate for passage, which might prove especially tough to achieve in the House.
Hatch’s support has been particularly valued by those advocating federal funding for research.
“This man has been a godsend,” said John Hlinko, founder of StemPAC, a pro-stem cell advocacy group. “The fact that someone who is unquestionably pro-life, unquestionably conservative and unquestionably a person of faith can get up there and defend stem cell research shows that this is not a partisan issue, it’s a human issue.”
Stem cells are nascent cells from which all tissue in the human body derives. Scientists believe their further study could open up promising pathways in the treatment of such diseases as diabetes, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.
“Science is learning how to make cells divide and change into different kinds of cells, which have tremendous potential for curing human disease,” said Robert Rizza, president of the American Diabetes Association. “The fundamental science regulating how cells divide is only now beginning to be understood.”
Proponents hope an infusion of federal grants will jump-start the emerging research field, leading to further advances in the private sector.
But the ethical implications of using human embryos for medical research have been a sticking point, especially for conservatives who oppose abortion. They find it difficult to reconcile support for embryonic stem cell research with their stand against abortion.
Others fear the bill will lay the groundwork for more controversial research in the future, and some have expressed concerns over opening the door for human cloning.
More attractive to these conservatives, such as Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., are alternative methods for deriving stem cells, mostly post-natal in nature, which don’t necessitate the destruction of embryos.
“Adult and other post-natal stem cells have been successful alternatives to embryonic stem cells and are extracted from such non-controversial sources such as placentas, fat, cadaver brains, bone marrow and tissues of the spleen, pancreas and other organs,” Santorum says on his Web site.
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(c) 2005, Chicago Tribune.
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AP-NY-07-13-05 2220EDT
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