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Cellular division
Why Bush doesn’t want to use federal funds for embryonic-stem-cell research — and why he should

BY DAN KENNEDY


SOMETIME IN THE next few weeks — possibly by July 23, when he is scheduled to meet with Pope John Paul II — George W. Bush will decide whether to allow federal funding of research on stem cells that have been removed from human embryos.

The decision will help define Bush’s presidency, if only by the enemies he’ll make. If he approves funding, thus affirming a decision Bill Clinton made last year, he’ll alienate the anti-choice religious right, which makes up his base, and conservative Catholics, whom he hopes to add to that base. If he rejects funding, then he will earn the contempt not just of scientific, technological, and business interests, but also of some powerful Republican senators who have unexpectedly come out in its favor, including minority leader Trent Lott of Mississippi, Orrin Hatch of Utah, and Connie Mack of Florida.

The battle over stem cells serves as a proxy for the larger cultural divide over abortion rights. First isolated in 1998, stem cells are the human body’s earliest, most primitive cells. They are what scientists call “undifferentiated” — that is, they can grow into almost any type of cell, be it nerve, blood, liver, or skin. This malleability has led to the hope that stem cells could form the basis of miraculous new treatments for diseases such as Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, and certain types of diabetes and arthritis, to name just a few.

Unfortunately for proponents, the best (though not the only) source of stem cells is human embryos, the unwanted byproducts of in vitro fertilization, stored and frozen in laboratories throughout the country. Those who support stem-cell research argue, logically enough, that these embryos will eventually be discarded. Why not put them to good use? But anti-abortion-rights absolutists counter that because extracting stem cells destroys the embryos, it is the moral equivalent of abortion.

To judge from most media reports, public support for stem-cell research and for federal funding of it are overwhelming. For instance, a recent poll jointly conducted by ABC News and the religious Web site Beliefnet showed that 58 percent of respondents support research and just 30 percent oppose it; government funding was backed by a margin of 60 percent to 31 percent. Research was even supported by traditionally anti-choice constituencies such as evangelical white Protestants (50 percent to 40 percent) and white Catholics (54 percent to 35 percent).

But, as is frequently the case with polls, the answers depend on how the questions are phrased. For instance, a survey conducted recently by the National Conference of Catholic Bishops found that respondents oppose by a margin of 70 percent to 24 percent federal funding of stem-cell research if it requires destroying human embryos.

Thus the debate over stem-cell research approximates the cultural divide that resulted in last November’s virtually tied election. the stem cell wars: embryo research vs. pro-life politics is how Newsweek put it in a recent cover story. And though the unexpected support of anti-choice stalwarts such as Hatch shows that the battle lines don’t break down neatly into blue-state/red-state camps, the dispute nevertheless shows the difficulty of coming to a social consensus on complicated moral, ethical, and scientific questions — especially when abstract political and religious ideas clash with painfully personal considerations.

THE REPUBLICAN Party’s most disastrous modern moment was its 1992 convention, when Pat Buchanan delivered a hatemongering speech that liberal columnist Molly Ivins later quipped sounded better in the original German. Buchanan oozed revulsion toward lesbians and gay men; and as more than one commentator noted at the time, that was too much even for the conservative delegates who attended the convention. After all, plenty of families have gay and lesbian members. Even delegates who opposed gay rights didn’t want to see their children, their siblings, or their cousins spat upon and discriminated against. Buchanan’s speech helped cost the GOP the 1992 and ’96 presidential elections, and is still cited as a prime example of right-wing intolerance.

The same mixture of the personal and the political is what makes the stem-cell debate so perilous for Bush today. Reportedly, during a debate rehearsal last fall, Bush was asked by an Al Gore stand-in how he could oppose federal research funds when his own sister had died of leukemia. Bush’s response: inarticulate anger. The real Gore would only have added to his reputation as a preening bully if he had asked such a question; but the fact is that just about all of us have family members who could benefit from stem-cell research, and a lot of us, regardless of our views on abortion rights, are more concerned about helping the living than about the potential of a clump of days-old cells to grow into a human being. Balancing the personal and the political has proven difficult even inside the Bush White House: according to this past Sunday’s New York Times, chief-of-staff Andrew Card’s father died of Parkinson’s disease, and his mother died of Alzheimer’s. In addition, Republican icon Ronald Reagan suffers from Alzheimer’s, and the Times reported that old Reagan friends such as Kenneth Duberstein are pushing for federally funded research.

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Issue Date: July 12-19, 2001






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