Bush Urged to Back Expanded Stem Cell Research

WASHINGTON — Actor Michael J. Fox, a Parkinson’s disease sufferer, urged President Bush on Wednesday to drop his opposition to expanded embryonic stem cell research as Congress geared up for a pivotal vote for more government spending on the research.

"He has an opportunity to do something fantastic for the world," said the actor-activist, calling the legislation a "pro-living bill."

The Senate plans to vote on stem cell legislation this month, possibly next week. The House of Representatives passed the legislation in May with a bipartisan margin, but Bush has vowed to veto it citing ethical concerns. Embryonic stem cells are derived from human embryos, which are destroyed in the process.

The embryonic stem cell bill would lift the research limits Bush imposed in August 2001 and allow research using the 400,000 frozen embryos leftover from in vitro fertilization treatments. Most of those embryos would otherwise be destroyed, and advocates of the legislation say they believe it would be more ethical to use them to try to cure disease.

"A true culture of life seeks to cure disease and alleviate suffering, not deny help," said Massachusetts Democrat Edward Kennedy.

Stem cells can be transformed into many other types of cells, offering the potential for regenerating damaged organs or tissue.

Critics of the embryonic stem cell bill center much of their efforts on alternative legislation that would fund experimental means of deriving stem cells without destroying a human embryo.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, a Tennessee Republican with close ties to the White House, has been involved in efforts to draft legislation focusing on these alternative research routes.

But those methods are more preliminary and speculative, and would likely take much longer to yield any therapies or cures for crippling human diseases, several scientists told a Senate hearing earlier this week.

"There are people who want to obfuscate this issue," said California Democrat Dianne Feinstein. She said the critics of the bill are motivated "more by ideological concerns" related to abortion while she would rather focus on the possibility of alleviating "chronic debilitating illness."

The key players in the Senate debate are still negotiating over the structure of the debate.

Several backers of the embryonic bill said they would be happy to pass other research bills, including Frist’s approach as well as broadly-backed legislation that would expand the use of a form of stem cells drawn from umbilical cord blood.

Other bills that could become part of the debate focus on topics like banning human-animal chimeras or outlawing human cloning. One group of lawmakers is considering legislation that would allow stem cell research using currently frozen leftover embryos, but would not allow research on any embryos created in the future.