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Senate Stem Cell Study Advocates Skeptical

Posted on: Tuesday, 12 July 2005, 03:00 CDT

WASHINGTON -- Senators who want the public to pay for human embryonic stem cell studies are giving a skeptical hearing to scientists studying unproven but less controversial methods.

Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, said any legislation to pay for theoretical alternatives is a ploy by the White House to sink his bill, which would lift President Bush's restrictions on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research. Bush and many conservatives say such studies are immoral because the process destroys the embryo.

Harkin countered that paying for less-proven alternatives isn't right either.

"The method we're discussing today hasn't been published in a single scientific journal. It hasn't even cleared the peer review process. What's more, it's only been tried in mice. We're a long way from proving it works with human embryos," Harkin said in prepared remarks.

The scientists' methods got no friendlier reception from Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., the Republican chairman of the committee holding Tuesday's hearing. Specter, a cancer patient, said in an interview that he is growing impatient with the delay in studies on the all-purpose cells, considered by some to carry great promise in the search for cures of diseases like cancer, Parkinson's and Alzheimer's.

"I think it's time that a little hell was raised about this subject," Specter said.

That time arrives when he gavels open the Senate's first hearing on a bill to lift the restrictions, according to Specter.

Set to testify are four scientists whose alternative research is being considered by Bush, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist and other conservatives who want to vote for alternative stem cell legislation that does not destroy budding human life.

Among those scheduled to testify Tuesday are James Battey, chairman of the National Institutes of Health Stem Cell Task Force, who will discuss four alternative research procedures on stem cells; and Robert Lanza, vice president of medical and scientific research for Advanced Cell Technology. Lanza will discuss his research into deriving stem cells from a single animal cell without destroying the embryo.

But there will be no testimony from Leon Kass, chairman of the President's Council on Bioethics. White House spokesman Trent Duffy confirmed that Kass declined Specter's invitation to testify Tuesday on four theoretical alternatives to human embryonic stem cell research, citing scheduling conflicts.

"I know the guy from the White House did not want to testify, which is his business," Specter said. "But we're going to go right about our business."

Bald and gravelly-voiced from cancer treatments, Specter said the debate itself makes him angry.

"Yeah, well I am, as a matter of fact," Specter said. "Try a few chemotherapy treatments and see how you feel" watching others debate medical research funding.

Whatever the scientists have to say at his Labor, Health and Human Services subcommittee hearing Tuesday, Specter wants his bill signed into law and federal money flowing to studies on the stem cells.

"The potential for stem cells has been held in abeyance much too long," Specter said.

He's got plans beyond the hearing. Specter said he will lift his self-imposed ban on discussing personal matters on the Senate floor and frame the debate in intimate terms - including a "long list of my medicines and my ailments."

"And I'd like to see a million-person march on the (National) Mall," Specter added. "That's an idea that has run through my chemotherapy-occupied cerebrum."

Duffy said the debate is appropriate.

"We certainly appreciate the strong emotions on all sides of this very sensitive debate and that's precisely why the president believes that we should think carefully and long and hard about these decisions," he said.

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On the Net:

Senate: http://www.senate.gov  

President's Council on Bioethics: http://www.bioethics.gov

Source: Associated Press/AP Online

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