President Bush Makes Decision on Stem Cells

[Guest guest]

-- President Bush has decided on compromise that allows limited federal funding of embryonic stem cell research, sources say.

Details soon.

[Guest guest]

<h3>Bush Settled Decision in His Mind......</h3>

 

WASHINGTON –– President Bush told confidants it was as grave a decision as sending American troops into war. Quietly, he begged advice from scientists, ethicists, patients, politicians and priests.

 

 

 

The president ultimately settled the question – should the government fund potentially lifesaving cell research that involves killing human embryos? – in his own mind. Then he impatiently roused senior adviser Karen Hughes from her family vacation on Wednesday to help with the words to explain his decision.

 

In an unused house on the president's sprawling Texas ranch, Bush, Hughes and Jay Lefkowitz, the top lawyer at the agency where regulations on federal funding get written, huddled for 2½ hours Wednesday afternoon trying to get the paperwork just right – the speech, the talking points, the regulations.

 

After a break for exercise and dinner, the president practiced aloud the speech that Hughes had written for him and he braced for the political fallout that would inevitably begin 24 hours hence.

 

 

 

Some senior aides were surprised by the timing, having been told to expect an announcement next week. But Bush, who is on a monthlong working vacation in rural Texas, grew tired of reporters asking about his decision whenever he ventured out to golf or visit with local residents, aides said.

 

For months, he had been hit by advice from all sides. Pope John Paul II warned Bush in Rome against the "evils" of creating human embryos for research. First lady Laura Bush weighed in with a private opinion that she declined to make public. Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., used a ride aboard Air Force One to lobby Bush for the research.

 

Vice President Dick Cheney, who was not part of Bush's inner circle on this issue, found himself being lobbied while fly-fishing in Montana with a buddy on the board of the Alliance for Aging Research.

 

Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptists' Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, told White House political strategist Karl Rove that Bush stood to lose support of 16 million anti-abortion Southern Baptists counting on him to keep his campaign promise opposing embryonic research.

 

Thursday's televised announcement capped a long deliberation so tightly guarded that White House aides have operated under the assumption that to speak publicly about any part of the process would be a fireable offense.

 

Two of the few who were in on the president's plan, chief of staff Andrew Card and communications strategist Dan Bartlett, happened to pull into the White House driveway at the same moment Thursday – around 6:20 a.m. – to get an early start on their highly sensitive to-do lists.

 

Card telephoned Cheney at home in Wyoming to let him know the decision was made. On Nantucket island, vacationing press secretary Ari Fleischer alerted TV networks. At Bethany Beach, Del., congressional liaison Nicholas Calio dialed lawmakers with nothing more than a promise to fill in the details after Bush said his piece to the nation. Rove, known around the West Wing as "the stem cell guy" for his stewardship of Bush's decision-making process, fielded calls on his Texas vacation but told anxious senators and conservatives he was sworn to secrecy.

 

Bush presided in recent weeks over small, Oval Office discussions with Catholic church leaders, Dr. John Mendelsohn of the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, conservative bioethicists Leon Kass of the University of Chicago and Daniel Callahan of the Hastings Center, and representatives of the anti-cell-research National Right To Life Committee and the pro-research Juvenile Diabetes Foundation. Only Hughes, Card and Rove sat in on these sessions, described as exhaustive and deeply probing of the moral, scientific and political crosscurrents of stem cell research.

 

At Bush's instruction, these meetings were typically his last of the day so that they could run long.

 

 

 

Last Thursday was the final day that Bush brought in experts, hearing from NIH scientists in the morning and a pro-research ethicist late in the afternoon.

 

As Bush put it last month: "My process has been, frankly, unusually deliberative for my administration. I'm taking my time."

 

Radio call-in host Janet Parshall participated in a meeting Bush held recently to discuss his social-services agenda with Christian broadcasters. He unexpectedly raised the stem-cell issue.

 

The president was "anguished" and made clear that he had "consulted a higher authority," Parshall told CNN on Thursday.

 

 

 

Bush did not speak to University of Wisconsin researcher Jamie Thomson, who discovered human embryonic stem cells in 1998. And, despite assumptions in the research community, Bush did not consult with the Senate's only physician, Republican Bill Frist or Tennessee, who had pushed a middle ground proposal for letting the research go forward under more stringent restrictions. The president mentioned the issue only in passing on two occasions when Frist was at the White House on other business, spokeswoman Margaret Camp said.

 

At a private meeting of the centrist Republican Main Street Partnership, Rove was asked about the president's deliberation by Rep. Jim Ramstad, R-Minn., whose mother's battle against Alzheimer's has made him a passionate advocate of stem cell research.

 

Ramstad later shared Rove's reply: "The president equates the enormity, gravity and magnitude of this decision to an issue of war and peace and whether to commit American troops."

 

 

 

 

 

[mahak 0]

Stem cell research is being advertized as such a great boon, and there is immense pressure from the money lords that this is needed lest we become primitives again, but really, enough is enough.

 

Brother dubya, tis nothing but obeyah business, witchcraft, with a disguise of science. Let em know, enough is enough, or else the chinese will certainly provide all the stems money can buy.

[Guest guest]

For immediate release: Thursday, August 9, 2001

For further information:

Suzanne Stanmeyer (202) 626-8800 Ext: 133

 

 

 

NATIONAL RIGHT TO LIFE APPLAUDS PRESIDENT'S DECISION

ON EMBRYO-DESTRUCTIVE STEM CELL RESEARCH

 

 

 

In an address to the nation this evening, President Bush announced that he would not allow federal funding of stem cell research that involves the killing of any more human embryos.

 

 

 

"We are delighted that President Bush's decision prevents the federal government from becoming a party to any further killing of human embryos for medical experimentation," stated Laura Echevarria, director of Media Relations for the National Right to Life Committee.

 

 

 

"While National Right to Life mourns the loss of life for those embryos from whom stem cell lines have already been derived, nothing the National Right to Life Committee or President Bush can do can restore the lives of those embryos who have already died," stated Ms. Echevarria.

 

 

 

President Bush's decision will have no negative impact on ethical research involving stem cells derived from sources such as adult fat, blood, and bone marrow, as well as placentas and umbilical cord blood. Adult stem cells have been shown to be dramatically more effective, and have already been used to help patients.

 

 

 

"More and more people with disabling and chronic conditions are being helped by adult stem cell research," stated Ms. Echevarria.

 

 

 

According to a June (June 1-5, 2001) International Communications Research poll, 67 percent of those polled prefer having their tax dollars used for stem cell research "using adult stem cells and other alternatives..." Only 18 percent favored federal support of research that included experiments which "require destroying human embryos."

 

 

 

Moreover, instead of destroying human embryos through medical research, they may be adopted by parents. Indeed the demand for their adoption exceeds the number of embryos who could be adopted.

 

 

"We strongly commend the President's strong opposition to all human cloning and to the special creation of human embryos for research," said NRLC Legislative Director Douglas Johnson.

 

Last month a Massachusetts firm, Advanced Cell Technology, announced that it will soon begin attempting to create cloned human embryos for the purpose of harvesting their stem cells or using them in other lethal research (a practice referred to by the bio-tech industry as "therapeutic cloning"). On July 31, the House of Representatives voted to ban all human cloning, including the creation of cloned embryos, 265-162. The legislation is now awaiting action in the Senate. President Bush has endorsed the bill.

 

 

 

"The Senate must act immediately to prevent the start-up of cloned human embryo farms in the United States," Johnson said.

 

 

 

For further information on these issues, see the NRLC website at www.nrlc.org\killing_embryos\index.html.

 

[mahak 0]

Im not overly upset about his "compromise". There is wiggle room in all of this, but my stance is the same. give it up. This is witchcraft and vampire practice. This installation of body parts and blood and all this stuff will lead to a bigger problem. It already has, the more "advances" of modern medicine, the more profound the plague is upon us.

 

How many cases of cancer were there when the American Cancer Society was foundede. How much cancer is there now, after sucking trillions of research dollars out of do-gooder and taxpayer pockets? Show me a little progress in anything, and I give ya credibility, but to make a 75 year old live until he is 80 at the expense of the human toll of having the "self" seen as "biomass" to be used here and there to keep these "ghostless" machines runnin, I say cut them all off, and give us the herbal remedies back.

 

Sidenote, do any of yall know how much the AMA, ACS, Pharmaceutical Conglomerates, etc spends annually to prevent herbal use and homopathic practitioners from gaining credibility with the public. A good chunk of the Combined Federal Campaign and United Way stipends, ill bet.

[Tarun 6]

Bravo for Bushanam Bush! I was about to insert a joke here if he had decided the other way.

Feeling sorry for Christopher Reeves and all Kaliyuga sufferers.

Only one permanent solution:

Harer nAma Harer nAma Harer nAmaiva kevalam

Kalau nasty eva nasty eva nasty eva gatir anyathA