Senate to pass stem cell bill, Bush set to veto

By Joanne Kenen

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Conservative anti-abortion senators
were split on Tuesday ahead of a vote on a stem cell research
bill that appears destined to draw the first veto of George W.
Bush’s presidency.

The bill, already approved by the U.S. House of
Representatives and set to win Senate passage later in the day,
has broad bipartisan support. Most Democrats and roughly 20
Republicans support it.

“This is the bill that will help provide the long overdue
expansion of the number of stem cell lines eligible for
federally funded biomedical research,” Sen. Orrin Hatch, a Utah
Republican with a long anti-abortion record, said during debate
on Tuesday.

“This is what our leading scientists have told us they want
and need to move the field of stem cell research forward,”
Hatch said.

Bush has said he will cast the first veto of his presidency
because days-old embryos are destroyed when the stem cells are
extracted.

Some conservatives who agree with Bush were pushing
legislation that would encourage other forms of stem cell
research that do not harm the embryo. Some like Sam Brownback,
a Kansas Republican, want more leftover embryos to be adopted
by infertile couples.

Hatch and others backers of the research pointed out that
the legislation only allows scientists to use leftover embryos
at fertility clinics that would otherwise be destroyed.

Although the legislation is expected to sail through the
Senate, backers acknowledge they do not expect to muster the
two-thirds majorities both houses would need to override a Bush
veto.

PUBLIC SUPPORT

Numerous opinion polls have found strong public support for
expanding federal embryonic stem cell research, and disease
advocacy groups have lobbied for it strenuously. Nancy Reagan,
widow of former president Ronald Reagan who died of
Alzheimer’s, was seeking support from fellow Republicans.

Scientists, including Nobel laureates, told the U.S.
Congress that the research has a realistic chance of leading to
stunning breakthroughs in treating disabling or deadly
diseases, including diabetes, Parkinson’s and spinal cord
injuries.

Bush in 2001 allowed limited federal funding for research
on 78 stem cell lines then in existence. But most of them
proved unsuitable for research.

“I don’t follow his (Bush’s) logic on this and frankly I
don’t believe it is logical,” said Dick Durbin of Illinois, the
second-ranking Democrat in the Senate. Durbin said he did not
see how Bush could allow research on some cells, which
scientists have said are inadequate, but not on others.

With Republicans divided, stem cell research has become an
issue in several Senate races in the November elections and
possibly in the 2008 presidential race.

Of the five Senate Republicans considering seeking the
presidential nomination in 2008, three — George Allen of
Virginia, Sam Brownback of Kansas, Chuck Hagel of Nebraska —
side with Bush. Two, John McCain of Arizona and Senate Majority
Leader Bill Frist of Tennessee, back expanding the research.

Some Republicans, including Brownback and Pennsylvania
Republican Rick Santorum, who is in a tight re-election race
this November, have pushed hard for two alternative bills,
which are expected to pass both the Senate and House on Tuesday
and be signed by Bush as early as Wednesday.

One would ban “fetus farming,” or implanting a human embryo
in a woman or animal for the purpose of harvesting cells or
tissue, which has not been proposed. The other promotes
research into stem cells that do not involve destruction of an
embryo, research which some top government scientists say they
are already doing.