Frist breaks with Bush on stem cell research

Said Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass.: “As a physician, Sen. Frist has a moral calling to save lives and alleviate suffering. He honors his Hippocratic Oath today by recognizing the unique healing power of embryonic stem cells.”

A bill to finance more stem cell research has passed the House, but has been stalled in the Senate. Frist’s support could push it closer to passage and set up a confrontation with Bush.

It also could impact Frist’s own political future. As a likely presidential candidate in 2008, Frist has been courting religious conservatives who helped make Bush a twice-elected president and generally consider embryonic stem cell research a moral equivalent to abortion. But the announcement, coming just a month after Frist said he did not support expanded financing “at this juncture,” could help him with centrist voters.

With those political realities in mind, Frist argued that his positions on stem cell research and abortion were not inconsistent.

‘Treat the embryo with dignity’
According to recent polls, some two-thirds of Americans say they support embryonic stem cell research and a majority of people say they would like to see fewer restrictions on taxpayer funding for those studies.

“From those cells we have the potential for looking at those diseases that everybody knows about, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and others,” Frist said Friday.

“I give huge moral significance to the human embryo, it is nascent human life,” he said. “What that means is as we advance science, we treat that embryo with dignity, with respect.”

He credited Bush with opening the doors for federal funding of embryonic stem cell research, and said when this policy was announced in 2001, policy-makers thought 78 stem cell lines would be available. Since then, the number has dropped to 22.

“Those 22 cell lines are not of the quality for human application or human therapy, and that’s why today I believe we need to modify that policy,” Frist said.

When Bush announced his position on stem cell research, he said the government should pay only for research of stem cell colonies, or lines, that had already been created at that time, so that the “life or death” decision had already been made.

Frist said additional stem cells should be used, so long as there was a careful process of informed consent in which the parents had decided that the embryos should be discarded, not adopted or frozen.

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