Bush rejects second stem cell bill; veto override is unlikely

The president holds firm on his ban of federal funding for human embryonic stem cell research but supports studies that don't destroy human embryos.

By Doug Trapp, AMNews staff. July 9, 2007.

Washington -- Congressional backers of embryonic stem cell research continue to pressure President Bush on the issue, despite the lack of a veto-proof majority in Congress.

Bush vetoed the Stem Cell Enhancement Act of 2007 on June 20. The bill would have ended his ban on using federal funding for research on new human embryonic stem cell lines, in place since Aug. 9, 2001.

One day after the veto, a Senate committee approved a Dept. of Health and Human Services 2008 spending bill 26-3 with language allowing federal funding for research on stem cell lines derived before June 15, 2007. The language was inserted by Sen. Tom Harkin (D, Iowa), who said in a statement there is "no substitute for this type of research."

However, advances of the last couple of years are changing the debate over the ban on federal support of human embryonic stem cell research. These advances -- such as reprogramming adult cells into pluripotent form -- are allowing Bush and other opponents of research that destroys human embryos to argue that science may one day allow scientists to bypass this thorny moral issue.

Bush issued an executive order, also on June 20, instructing the HHS secretary to develop a plan to support research using alternative methods of deriving pluripotent stem cell lines. "Destroying human life in the hopes of saving human life is not ethical -- and it is not the only option before us," Bush said.

However, maintaining a ban on federal funding of human embryonic stem cell research while endorsing other, less-established methods of stem cell research isn't allowing scientists to do all the work they could, according to Leo Furcht, MD, president of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology. "We've been, frankly, as a country, hindered by the policies of the White House," Dr. Furcht said.