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 News from Around the Americas | July 2006 
Bush Vows Swift Veto of Stem Cell Bill
 Laurie Kellman - Associated Press
| | Dr. Mary Firpo, Assistant Professor Stem Cell Institute, holds a tray of human embryo stem cells, Monday, July 17, 2006, in Minneapolis. (AP/Bill Kelley) |
Washington - The Senate is poised to send a bill expanding federal funding of embryonic stem cell research to President Bush, who has promised a swift veto his first.
Neither the Senate nor the House is expected to be able to muster the two-thirds majorities necessary for an override.
Veto or no, the bill's supporters predict the government eventually will pay for the research because a wide majority of the public supports it and many scientists say it carries great promise for curing diseases that afflict millions of people.
"There are some issues that you just can't get off the national agenda, and this is one of them," said Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass. Enactment of the bill may need to wait for another Congress and another president, he acknowledged. "It's going to happen with the president's support and it's going to happen without."
Not this year, Bush declared, with midterm elections just ahead and the Republicans' congressional majority at stake.
"He would veto the bill," the White House said in a written statement, underlining the words for emphasis. It would be the first veto Bush has cast during his 5 1/2 years in office.
The White House statement quieted speculation by supporters that Bush, perhaps persuaded by new science and strong public support for embryonic stem cell research, would reverse course and sign the legislation.
The bill would allow federal funds to be used in research on embryos derived from fertility treatments that would otherwise be discarded. Though several Republican Senate leaders support the measure, many GOP lawmakers oppose it, as do conservative voters with whom Bush wants to maintain credibility.
"The bill would compel all American taxpayers to pay for research that relies on the intentional destruction of human embryos for the derivation of stem cells, overturning the president's policy that funds research without promoting such ongoing destruction," the White House said.
Bush on Aug. 9, 2001, restricted government funding to research using only the embryonic stem cell "lines" then in existence, groups of stem cells kept alive and propagating in lab dishes.
There has been muscular opposition to the president from those with personal stories of illness, death and the promise of stem cell research.
Former first lady Nancy Reagan lobbied lawmakers on the bill's behalf. Her husband, President Reagan, died in 2004 after a long deterioration from Alzheimer's disease, one of several illnesses that researchers say stem cell research might cure someday.
"She is still restless on this issue," Kennedy said.
Everybody, it seemed, had a personal story to tell on the Senate floor where such intimacies aren't routinely shared.
"I lost a beautiful daughter some years ago to heart disease," said Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., saying he would support the bill because the affliction is one of many that embryonic stem cell research might eventually cure. "I wondered then and I wonder now and I will wonder some long while if there's anything that we could do to unlock the mystery of that devious killer."
Opponents of the bill, meanwhile, sought to put faces on the reasons why the five-day-old embryos destroyed during the research are worth more than the advances to which they might lead.
Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., appeared with three children adopted from in vitro fertilization clinics in an effort to humanize the argument that frozen embryos could have a future other than being subjects of stem cell research.
"It is immoral to destroy the youngest of human lives for research purposes," Brownback said. "It is an age-old human debate, whether you allow the stronger to take advantage of the weaker. We have already regretted doing it in the past; we will regret this, too."
Opponents of the bill also rejected arguments that only leftover embryos from fertility clinics would be used.
"Just because the budding lives would not survive does not mean that we should ghoulishly conduct experiments on them," said Sen. Jim Bunning, R-Ky. "Who knows how many human embryos we will have to destroy before any tangible progress is made?"
Neither house has demonstrated the two-thirds majority of votes needed to override a presidential veto. Vote counters on both sides said they expected the Senate to pass the bill with at least 60 votes, but they could not predict there would be the required 67 for a veto override.
The House last year fell 50 votes short of a veto-proof margin when it passed the same bill, 238-194.
After Senate passage, Bush was expected to veto the bill early Wednesday, followed by the House's override effort.
Two related bills also were scheduled for votes Tuesday in both the House and Senate. One, sponsored by Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., would encourage study on stem cells derived from sources other than embryos. The other, sponsored by Santorum and Brownback, would ban so-called fetal farming, the possibility of developing fetuses, then aborting them for scientific research.
Both have little or no opposition and Bush was expected to sign them.
On the Net: Information on the bill, H.R. 810, S. 3504 and S. 2754, may be found at http://thomas.loc.gov
Stem Cell Debate Under Way in Nation's Capital
Liz Marlantes
The political power of the stem cell issue, said supporters, comes from personal connections.
Given the long list of diseases and conditions that scientists say embryonic stem cell research might help cure - Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, juvenile diabetes, cancer, heart disease, spinal cord injuries - supporters said nearly every American has a friend or relative who might benefit from the science.
On the other hand, critics point out, every person was once an embryo.
So, it's not surprising that as the Senate stem cell debate got under way Monday, it quickly took a personal - and at times, emotional - turn.
Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), who supports embryonic stem cell research, spoke on the floor about his battle with Hodgkin's disease. Recalling President Nixon's 1970 declaration of a war on cancer, he said, "without unduly dwelling on my own situation with Hodgkin's - a year of chemotherapy - I think had the research been fulfilled, I would have been spared that malady."
Similarly, Specter said, there are hundreds of thousands of people who have died or been incapacitated by diseases "which could be cured with stem cell research."
Another supporter, Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), spoke about his nephew Kelly, who became a quadriplegic after an accident on an aircraft carrier while serving in the Navy. "Kelly's hope has been that sometime, scientists will find a way to mend his spinal cord so that he can walk again," he said. "He's been following very closely the whole issue of embryonic stem cell research."
Earlier in the day, critics of expanded federal funding for such research offered personal testimonials of their own.
At a press conference with Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.), parents of "snowflake babies" - children adopted as embryos from fertility clinics - sobbed as they talked about the prospect of such embryos being used for medical research.
"I do pray for a cure for paralysis," said Steve Johnson, a paraplegic whose daughter Zara was a snowflake baby. "But not if that comes at the destruction of an embryo. ...Would I kill my daughter so I could walk again?"
Critics also argued that adult and cord blood stem cells offered more hope for victims of disease than embryonic stem cells. "I'm a two-time cancer survivor," said Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.). "I desire the treatments that can come out of stem cell research. ... [But] every disease, save ALS, has an adult stem cell or cord blood stem cell cure that's already been proven in humans."
Under an agreement worked out by its leadership, the Senate is actually considering three separate stem cell bills, all of which will need 60 votes to pass, and none of which can be amended.
Two are relatively uncontroversial: One would outlaw "fetal farming," or growing fetuses to harvest their tissue or organs; the other would promote research into adult, or nonembryonic, stem cells.
The bill generating all the debate - and splitting the Republican Party - would allow federal funding for research on stem cells taken from embryos discarded by fertility clinics. It would essentially override a 2001 decision by President Bush that limited funding for such research to a relatively small number of pre-existing embryonic stem cell lines - lines that critics say have proved of little use to scientists because of their age and contamination.
"Science has progressed over the last five years," said Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.), who supports the bill, at the opening of the debate. "Fewer than the anticipated number of cell lines have proved suitable for research, and I feel that the limit on cell lines available for federally funded research is too restrictive."
The measure passed the House last year, and both sides say it appears to have the votes to clear the Senate as well, setting up a direct confrontation with the White House. The Senate is scheduled to vote on all three bills Tuesday.
Bush has vowed to veto the embryonic stem cell reasearch bill - a threat recently reiterated by the president's top political strategist, Karl Rove. There do not appear to be enough votes in the House to override a veto, though the Senate could get close. A veto could come as early as Wednesday.
The issue pits Frist in a rare clash with the president. Frist, a heart surgeon, broke with Bush to endorse the House-passed bill last year, and had been under growing pressure to schedule a vote in the Senate ever since.
And it has sharply divided the Republican Party: GOP icons, such as former first lady Nancy Reagan, have lobbied in favor of the bill, and some anti-abortion members - such as Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah - favor it as well.
But many religious conservatives oppose it: Advocacy groups lining up against the measure include the Family Research Council, Concerned Women for America, as well as the Southern Baptist Convention and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.
A Bush veto would please much of the GOP's conservative base, many of whom believe it is immoral to destroy any embryo for research. But with polls showing that more than two-thirds of the public supports such research, a veto could also create political problems for moderate Republican candidates, or those running in close races. |
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