Stem Cell Fight Not Over

(CBS/AP)  President Bush hasn't seen the last of legislation to allow federal funding for new embryonic stem cell research.

Supporters are answering his veto with an effort Thursday to add to an appropriations bill permission to use taxpayer dollars for new lines of embryonic stem cells.

Separately, Democratic congressional leaders are expected to bring back the bill Mr. Bush nixed and try to override his veto — or just give the issue more air time. Neither chamber has the two-thirds majority necessary to succeed.

The stem-cell controversy divides the presidential candidates as well, CBS News senior White House correspondent Bill Plante reports, and it's clear that it will be an election issue.

"This will be an election issue in 2008 not just in the House, not just in the Senate, but in the presidential election," said one of the House's chief sponsors of the bill the president vetoed, Rep. Diana DeGette, D-Colo. "We ... intend to continue bringing this up until we have a pro-stem cell president and a pro-stem cell Congress."

It was familiar rhetoric after Mr. Bush's second veto of the legislation. But this time, he is facing new Democratic congressional leaders planning to resurrect the issue in the bills they author, the committees they control and on the House and Senate floors.

Vetoing the bill a second time Wednesday, Mr. Bush also sought to placate those who disagree with him by signing an executive order urging scientists toward what he termed "ethically responsible" research.

Mr. Bush announced no new federal dollars for stem cell research, which supporters say holds the promise of disease cures, and his order would not allow researchers to do anything they couldn't do under existing restrictions.

"If this legislation became law, it would compel American taxpayers for the first time in our history to support the deliberate destruction of human embryos," he said. "I made it clear to Congress and to the American people that I will not allow our nation to cross this moral line."

He vetoed similar embryonic stem cell legislation last July.

Mr. Bush's executive order encourages scientists to work with the government to add other kinds of stem cell research to the list of projects eligible for federal funding — so long as it does not create, harm or destroy human embryos.

Democrats dismissed Mr. Bush's veto as a moral affront to hundreds of thousands of Americans who have diseases that might someday be treated or cured by research into the lines derived from pluripotent — or all-purpose — embryonic stem cells. Democrats said his executive order was a meaningless gesture meant to trick people into thinking he had advanced stem cell research.

Many Republicans also support the bill the president vetoed. At a separate news conference, DeGette's co-sponsor, Rep. Mike Castle, R-Del., said Republican supporters will join in the effort to overturn the veto.

The pushback was expected to begin Thursday. The Senate Appropriations Committee was to vote on a must-pass bill for the Labor and Health and Human Services departments that includes permission to use federal funding for embryonic stem cell lines derived after Mr. Bush in 2001 banned taxpayer dollars from being used on new studies of that kind.

The provision, proposed by Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, would allow taxpayer dollars to be spent on research on human embryonic stem cell lines derived prior to June 15, 2007 — moving the date of Mr. Bush's August 2001 ban on public funding for such research up by nearly six years.

Research on stem cell lines derived in the interim would be eligible for federal funding. The new provision also would add ethical standards to be used for selecting embryos to be studied using federal funds.

By the 2008 elections, Democrats predicted, Mr. Bush's veto of new public funding for embryonic stem cell research would be a top priority of voters in the congressional and presidential elections.

Public opinion polls show strong support for the research.

Republican presidential hopefuls are split on the scope of federal involvement in embryonic stem cell research. Sen. John McCain of Arizona and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani have broken with Bush — and the GOP's social conservatives — in backing the expansion of federal funding for such research.

Rivals Mitt Romney and Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas oppose the expansion.

Most of the Democratic candidates have urged Mr. Bush to expand the research.

Scientists were first able to conduct research with embryonic stem cells in 1998, according to the National Institutes of Health. There were no federal funds available for the work until Mr. Bush announced on Aug. 9, 2001, that his administration would spend tax money for research on lines of cells that already were in existence.

Currently, states and private organizations are permitted to fund embryonic stem cell research, but federal support is limited to cells that existed as of Aug. 9, 2001. The latest bill was aimed at lifting that restriction.

[randalds]

Better get to an asylum and take dallison with you, scumballs.
Posted by mudrose at 10:35 AM : Jun 22, 2007

You are beginning to show signs of Alzheimer's. One of the traits of alzheimer's patients is their blind rage. You have all the symptoms.

Try some Alavert! It's endorsed by Di*ck Cheney! (well ok, so it doesn't work on him, but he makes good money saying so)

[mudrose-2009]

Neocons and the Bushit / Darth Chickenshit administration are real "moral" when no personal price is paid by them and their cronies. Thus, we have lots of "young Republicans", Bushshytes, who support the war because they know they will personally never face a draft. They oppose abortion--until their lily white daughter gets raped. They oppose stem cell research--until they come down with Alzheimer's, like Ronnie Raygun.

Busht's primary attribute, along with stupidity, is stubbornness. So wishing that he comes down with Alzheimer's is merely hoping for an opinion-changing event to occur in his life.

Right on dallison!

Posted by gkc99

You are beginning to show signs of Alzheimer's. One of the traits of alzheimer's patients is their blind rage. You have all the symptoms. Better get to an asylum and take dallison with you, scumballs.

[gkc99]

oleander8 sez:
""Bush takes us another giant step backwards into darkness. I want to be there when he and his fat-butt wife both end up with some horrible disease whose cure he has prevented."
[Posted by dallison7] ""

"What is the point of your rude, mean comment?"

Neocons and the Bushit / Darth Chickenshit administration are real "moral" when no personal price is paid by them and their cronies. Thus, we have lots of "young Republicans", Bushshytes, who support the war because they know they will personally never face a draft. They oppose abortion--until their lily white daughter gets raped. They oppose stem cell research--until they come down with Alzheimer's, like Ronnie Raygun.

Busht's primary attribute, along with stupidity, is stubbornness. So wishing that he comes down with Alzheimer's is merely hoping for an opinion-changing event to occur in his life.

Right on dallison!

[oleander8]

"Bush takes us another giant step backwards into darkness. I want to be there when he and his fat-butt wife both end up with some horrible disease whose cure he has prevented."
[Posted by dallison7]

What is the point of your rude, mean comment?

[drinuk]

This is simply about support for the pharmaceuticals. Stem cell research will without doubt blow most of their poisons out of the water and they will not have one single Patent on it. For Bush to make it a religious issue is a Snow Job, almost a worse lie than WMD's. His nutty religious followers will be the first to request it when they start shaking with Parkinsons. Oh! the hypocracy of these crooks, it's almost beyond belief, His God is certainly not the peoples God, we want genuine cures not Big Pharma chemical comfort and dependency.

[dallison7]

Bush takes us another giant step backwards into darkness. I want to be there when he and his fat-butt wife both end up with some horrible disease whose cure he has prevented.

[canyoutellme-2009]

question to the sheep who call themselves republicans....

These embryos are discarded normally... So, question to you republipukes... do you prefer that these embryos are destroyed and discarded?

If that is your stance, then it is you who want to destroy life.

You do realize that lives will be SAVED if Stem Cell research continues on right?

Oh wait... there's the "there's no proven cures from stem cell research, let's abandon it all... it's hocus pocus"... need I remind you that ALL medicinal breakthroughs happen after YEARS AND YEARS of work and failed trial after failed trial. With enough time and learning, we humans create great things. Did you realize that the development of many vaccines which keep you ALIVE were actually FAILURES at first? Did you know that all kinds of anesthesia was deadly to all until we humans spent many many years researching it and figuring it out? Would you prefer to have just dropped it and then so all surgery would be without anesthesia? because "pain" is natural? LOL

[hhkeller]

Wonder how Bush will live with himself after he realizes he squandered a 2 term Presidency.

[realpatriot1]

NO!DO NOT ATTACH TO THE MILITARY SPENDING BILL!

The military spending bill isn't just about Iraq. It's about Afghanistan. It's about the Pacific Navy. It's about readiness for matters that we can't even forsee at this point.

Let's not even joke about that.

[tnichlsn]

attach it to the military spending bill...