By Gudrun Schultz
WASHINGTON, D.C., April 11, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) – US President Bush has said he’ll veto a bill that would increase taxpayer funding for human embryonic stem-cell research, if the Senate votes to pass the measure today, Focus on the Family’s CitizenLink reported.
“The administration strongly opposes Senate passage of S. 5, which would use federal taxpayer dollars to support and encourage the destruction of human life for research,” the White House said in a statement April 10. “Destroying nascent human life for research raises serious ethical problems, and millions of Americans consider the practice immoral.”
The Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act is nearly identical to a bill that was passed by the House in 2005 and the Senate in 2006, but vetoed by the president as unethical for permitting the destruction of human embryos.
President Bush has expressed support for a bill known as the HOPE Act that would permit federal funding for embryonic research using embryos considered unlikely to survive implantation or the freezing process of storage, as well as research on cells taken from embryos that have already died, according to a Kaiser Network report earlier today.
With no scientific consensus on what constitutes naturally-occurring “embryo death”, the HOPE Act has been rejected as laughable by members of the scientific community, the Washington Post reported. Bernard Siegal, with the Genetics Policy Institute supporting human embryonic research, condemned the HOPE Act as “nothing more than political cover so politicians can go back to their constituents and boast that they are supporting ‘ethical’ stem cell research”.
The measure would also encourage ethically acceptable research on stem cells taken from alternate sources to human embryos, however, such as amniotic fluid.
The Senate began debate on both measures yesterday and is scheduled to vote on the bills this evening.
See previous LifeSiteNews coverage:
President Bush Issues First Veto Rejecting Embryonic Stem Cell Bill, Spokesman Sullies Action
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2006/jul/06071908.html