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House Approves Stem Cell Bill Opposed by Bush
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Topic Started: May 25 2005, 07:24 AM (86 Views)
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gvok
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May 25 2005, 07:24 AM
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May 25, 2005 House Approves a Stem Cell Research Bill Opposed by Bush By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG WASHINGTON, May 24 - The House passed a bill on Tuesday to expand federal financing for embryonic stem cell research, defying a veto threat from President Bush, who appeared at the White House with babies and toddlers born of test-tube embryos and warned the measure "would take us across a critical ethical line."
The vote, 238 to 194 with 50 Republicans in favor, fell far short of the two-thirds majority required to overturn a presidential veto, setting up a possible showdown between Congress and Mr. Bush, who has never exercised his veto power. An identical bill has broad bipartisan support in the Senate; moments after the House vote, the Senate sponsors wrote to the Republican leader, Bill Frist, urging him to put it on the agenda.
The House action is the first vote on embryonic stem cell research since August 2001, when Mr. Bush opened the door to taxpayer financing for the studies, but only with strict limits. The new bill permits the government to pay for studies involving human embryos that are in frozen storage at fertility clinics, so long as couples conceiving the embryos certified that they had made a decision to discard them.
"The White House cannot ignore this vote," said the bill's chief Republican backer, Representative Michael N. Castle of Delaware, adding, "I'm elated."
But opponents also said they were elated. Representative Joseph R. Pitts, Republican of Pennsylvania, said: "I hate to lose, but I feel pretty good about this vote. We beat a veto-proof margin by 50 votes."
The big question now is what will happen in the Senate. Dr. Frist, a heart surgeon from Tennessee who supports the existing policy, is already facing intense pressure from conservatives over the issue of Mr. Bush's judicial nominees and does not seem eager to schedule a vote on stem cell research. He said last week that he wanted to check with his colleagues before doing so.
The House vote followed an impassioned lobbying campaign by advocates for patients, including Nancy Reagan. Mrs. Reagan, who became a strong backer of stem cell research as her husband struggled with Alzheimer's disease, telephoned fellow Republicans this week urging a yes vote, Mr. Castle said.
But Mr. Bush countered with a powerful one-two punch, throwing the full weight of the White House behind the opposition. On Friday, he issued a rare threat to veto the Castle bill. On Tuesday, just hours before the vote, he appeared in the East Room of the White House with families created by a rare but growing practice in which one couple donates its frozen embryos to another.
"The children here today remind us that there is no such thing as a spare embryo," Mr. Bush said, amid the squeals and coos of babies cradled in their mothers' arms. "Every embryo is unique and genetically complete, like every other human being. And each of us started out our life this way. These lives are not raw material to be exploited, but gifts."
The parents, who worked through a Christian adoption agency, applauded enthusiastically. When Mr. Bush said that "every human life is a precious gift of matchless love," a mother behind him on stage mouthed the word "Amen."
The White House event, on what conservative Christians and the president call an important "culture of life" issue, demonstrated just how far Mr. Bush is willing to assert himself on policy that goes to what he considers the moral heart of his presidency. In another sign of how important the issue is to conservatives, the House Republican leader, Tom DeLay of Texas, managed the opposition to the bill, also casting it in stark moral terms.
"An embryo is a person, a distinct internally directed, self-integrating human organism," Mr. DeLay said, adding, "We were all at one time embryos ourselves. So was Abraham. So was Muhammad. So was Jesus of Nazareth."
He went on: "The choice to protect a human embryo from federally funded destruction is not, ultimately, about the human embryo. It is about us, and our rejection of the treacherous notion that while all human lives are sacred, some are more sacred than others."
Human embryonic stem cells, isolated from human embryos for the first time in 1998, have the potential to grow into any cell or tissue in the body, and so hold great promise for treatment of disease. But the embryos are destroyed when the cells are extracted. So Mr. Bush, intending to discourage further embryo destruction, insisted in 2001 that federal financing be limited to studies of those stem cell colonies, or lines, that had already been created.
Instead, Mr. Bush is promoting research on adult stem cells, which are drawn from bone marrow and blood, including umbilical cord blood, and have narrower implications for medicine than embryonic stem cells. On Tuesday, the House voted 431 to 1 to approve a measure that would create umbilical cord blood banks to advance adult stem cell research.
But it was the embryonic stem cell debate that inflamed the passions of the House, sounding at various times like a lesson in cell biology, a theological discourse and a personal confessional. Lawmaker after lawmaker came to the House well to recount struggles with conscience and searing personal experiences with death and disease.
Representative Jim Langevin, Democrat of Rhode Island, rolled to the microphone in his motorized wheelchair to speak of his spinal cord injury, which he said could be helped by the research. Representative Jo Ann Emerson, Republican of Missouri, told of a young man named Cody, who had been paralyzed in a car accident at age 16 and asked her to rethink her opposition to embryonic stem cell studies.
"I later wrote a note to Cody's family telling them that even after hearing his story, I couldn't do as he asked," Ms. Emerson said, "and I have regretted writing that letter ever since."
But for every supporter with a compelling personal tale, there was an opponent like Representative Dan Lungren, Republican of California, whose brother has Parkinson's disease. "I've learned a lot of things from my brother," Mr. Lungren said, "But one of the things I learned most is that there is a difference between right and wrong."
The backers of the Senate measure, Senators Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania, and Tom Harkin, Democrat of Iowa, have scheduled a news conference for Wednesday to demand quick action. "I don't understand why Mr. Bush is doing this," Mr. Harkin said, adding, "I wish he would refrain from drawing lines in the sand."
Elisabeth Bumiller contributed reporting for this article.
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Dr. Noah
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May 25 2005, 09:53 AM
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Sistertrek's Asian Correspondant
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Here again we are seeing fracturing of the GOP. For some reason Bush has decided to let the rest of the world have an edge at therapeutic genetic therapy such as growing new organs to replace damaged ones. South Korea, Germany and France are already years ahead of us in this field due to this administration's unwillingness to allow this technology to be explored.
I don't understand why unused embryos from fertility clinics cannot be used. They are going to be thrown out, so we may as well use them to help save the lives of the millions of people who could benefit from this.
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Darthsith
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May 25 2005, 10:05 AM
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Its good to see our congress at work, I hope they adequately and respectfully considered everyone’s beliefs and feelings on the matter before coming to their decision. It would be a shame if they just disregarded and ridiculed those peoples opinions that they disagreed with simply because they disagreed with them. But if they did come to this decision after much contemplation and respectfulness to the people who will not agree with it, then I can only assume it was the right thing to do.
What I find interesting is why people are so concerned that congress did not follow the presidents beliefs on this matter. Mr Bush is not emperor of America so I don’t understand why its such a big deal when a “group” off men who are tasked to make law in this country dressage with “one” man who was tasked to carry out those laws
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Dr. Noah
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May 25 2005, 10:12 AM
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Not concerned, just noting that the GOP is not as unified as it used to be.
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Admiralbill_gomec
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May 25 2005, 10:38 AM
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- Dr. Noah
- May 25 2005, 08:53 AM
Here again we are seeing fracturing of the GOP. For some reason Bush has decided to let the rest of the world have an edge at therapeutic genetic therapy such as growing new organs to replace damaged ones. South Korea, Germany and France are already years ahead of us in this field due to this administration's unwillingness to allow this technology to be explored.
I don't understand why unused embryos from fertility clinics cannot be used. They are going to be thrown out, so we may as well use them to help save the lives of the millions of people who could benefit from this.
No, we're not. We're seeing disagreement. In addition, these Congressmen know that President Bush will veto this bill so they can tell their constituents that they supported federally-funded embryonic stem cell research.
Keep indulging in that wishful thinking. We see where it has helped in the past five years...
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Admiralbill_gomec
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May 25 2005, 10:40 AM
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UberAdmiral
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You might consider this: (emphasis mine)
http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/morse200505250901.asp
Titled: Meeting Leftovers
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It was a birthday party the likes of which the White House had never before seen: The guests of honor, Tanner Brinkman, 4, and Noelle Faulk, 2, had spent the first few years of their lives in frozen limbo. So had their small companions, now sitting on the floor of the dining room enjoying slices of chocolate-covered cake.
All 21 of these kids had once been “leftover embryos” — tiny humans who remained stored in liquid nitrogen tanks when their genetic parents had borne all the children they wanted via in-vitro fertilization (IVF). Some of their siblings remain in these frozen orphanages. One day, perhaps, they will be thawed and implanted in the wombs of their adoptive mothers — women who want to enlarge their families with children genetically related to the first child.
At the White House, adult guests stare with fascination at children who had been frozen for up to eight years — lively youngsters now dressed in pink party frocks and blue plaid rompers, bouncing on White House sofas and watching with delight as the presidential helicopter lands just outside the window. Just how old are these kids, anyway? If a three-year-old has been frozen for eight years, is he actually eleven?
At a press conference earlier in the day, the children’s parents introduced them to reporters and shared their concerns about a bill calling for federal funding for embryonic-stem-cell research — research that would destroy thousands of other “leftover” embryos.
Among the parents was Steve Johnson, a paraplegic who, with his wife Kate, adopted an embryo whom they named Zara — now a little girl in a pink flowered dress and blond curls playing near her father’s wheelchair. Johnson described the years of pain, high medical costs, and limited mobility he’d endured after a bike accident 12 years before. “My soul aches for a cure for my paralysis,” he said — but not at the cost of a child’s life. “Would I kill my daughter so I could walk again? Of course not. Then why do we think it is okay to kill someone else’s kid?” he asked.
Janet and Kevin Mason juggled twin toddler sons as they described their despair after six years of attempting to conceive a child. After learning of the Snowflake Embryo Adoption program, they adopted 16 stored embryos; Caleb and Jordan are the result.
A genetic mother described how hard it was to give up children “in a suspended state.” An adoptive mom pointed out that “leftover” embryos can cure at least one tragic disease — infertility — without being killed in the process. If stored embryos are destroyed in the quest to cure other ailments, she asked, what do you say to the half-million infertile couples who desperately want a child?
The parents spent a lot of time countering the claims of the hucksters of embryonic-stem-cell research. For instance, there are not 400,000 “leftover” embryos that are “just going to die anyway,” as these people claim. Less than three percent — approximately 11,000 embryos — have been earmarked for research by their parents. The rest are saved for future use by parents or for donation to other infertile couples.
Parents also pointed out that, despite the hype, embryonic-stem-cell research has failed to provide a single treatment. Meanwhile, adult-stem-cell research has led to breakthroughs in treating Parkinson’s, spinal-cord injuries, and juvenile diabetes.
All the parents agreed: There is no such thing as a “leftover embryo;” The 21 children in the room, clinging to their mothers' legs and sleeping in their fathers' arms, shatter the myth that they are not human and not alive. Which one, they ask, would you sacrifice on the altar of science?
Down the street, members of Congress argued about the “need” to fund the destruction of still-frozen children just like them — and then voted in favor of doing so. Unaware of the vote, the “leftover embryos” were squeezing the last moments of fun out of their White House party. There are curtains to hide behind, cookies to steal — and maybe, just maybe, that nice man who gave the speech will give them a ride on his helicopter.
This is what you do with those "unused" embryos.
There is one cure these embryos can give, to the problem of infertility.
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Darthsith
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May 25 2005, 10:41 AM
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- Dr. Noah
- May 25 2005, 03:12 PM
Not concerned, just noting that the GOP is not as unified as it used to be.
When was it ever? One only need to look at their last national election to see that. They had people form all over the spectrum (even a democrat) out to have a good time. There message was clear that they new they where all different, but despite that they where willing to work together to further their causes. It is no surprise that some republicans in the congress actually support stem cell research, they all don’t have to and aren’t expected to follow the present every where he goes, that’s not their job.
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