Wednesday, May 25, 2005

Senators Urge Quick Vote on Stem Cells

Following House passage of H.R. 810 yesterday, senators supporting identical legislation in their chamber spoke out today in favor of scheduling debate and a vote sometime in the very near future.

Iowa Democrat Tom Harkin: "The American people cannot afford to wait any longer for our top scientists to realize the full potential of stem cell research."

Pennsylvania Republican Arlen Specter, "newly bald from chemotherapy treatments for Hodgkin's disease, held himself up on Wednesday as Exhibit A for the possible benefits of embryonic stem cell research," says Sci-Tech Today. Specter "called Bush's promise to veto any relaxation of his restrictions on funding stem cell research an affront to millions of people with diseases that might be treated or even cured with federal dollars propelling the science."

Minority Leader Harry Reid called on Frist to schedule debate soon, and called Bush's veto threat "
wrong politically, morally and scientifically."

As I've
remarked previously, I strongly support passage of the Senate equivalent of H.R. 810, and I have no doubt that it will pass the Senate with wide bipartisan support. It would be a significant error for President Bush to use his first veto on a bill with strong public support (58% approve, 30% disapprove, according to a new CBS News poll: 50% of Republicans approve, while 65% of Democrats do). Might I recommend, again, the highway bill as a much better use of the veto-pen?

4 Comments:

At 10:28 PM, Blogger Alan Stewart Carl said...

I think the CBS poll is a bad poll. It doesn't seem that they polled on the actual bill but on the general idea of stem-cell research. I would bet many more than 58% would support this bill if they knew the embryos being used would be discarded anyway.

That said, 58% report in just a generic poll is a pretty sizable majority.

 
At 10:31 PM, Blogger JBD said...

Alan, I agree. I think the numbers would be much higher as well if this specific issue were asked in the question.

 
At 9:31 AM, Blogger Heiuan said...

Hey guys...there was a diary over on "that other site" that pointed out Sen/Dr. Frist's support for embriotic stem cell research in the past. More specifically, he said that he saw no reason, ethically or morally, not to use embryos that were going to be discarded anyway.

Does anyone have any "current" info on where he stands now?

 
At 9:57 PM, Blogger JBD said...

Heiuan, see my new post at the top.

 

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