NATIONAL RIGHT TO LIFE COMMENTS
ON U.S. HOUSE AND WHITE HOUSE ACTIONS

ON STEM CELL RESEARCH

 

WASHINGTON (May 24, 2005) --  The U.S. House of Representatives today approved a bill to provide federal funds for stem cell research that would require killing human embryos -- but if the bill survives its uncertain future in the Senate, the President's promised veto will be sustained, according to the National Right to Life Committee (NRLC), which opposes the bill.

 

"Under this bill, human embryos would be killed by the very act of harvesting their stem cells for government-funded research," commented NRLC Legislative Director Douglas Johnson. 

 

The House passed the bill by a margin of 238 to 194, which was 50 votes short of the two-thirds majority that would be required to override a veto.

 

The White House today issued an official statement of Administration policy that said in part, "The bill would compel all American taxpayers to pay for research that relies on the intentional destruction of human embryos for the derivation of stem cells, overturning the President's policy that supports research without promoting such ongoing destruction.  If H.R. 810 were presented to the President, he would veto the bill."  To read the complete statement, click here.

 

In addition, at the White House, President Bush spoke to a group that included many children who were adopted when they were still embryos.  The President said:  "The children here today remind us that there is no such thing as a spare embryo. Every embryo is unique and genetically complete, like every other human being.  And each of us started out our life this way.  These lives are not raw material to be exploited, but gifts."  The complete remarks are here.

 

NRLC's Johnson commented:  "The biotechnology industry will not be satisfied with exploiting only embryos donated by parents -- in fact, they are already seeking to create human embryos by cloning, for the specific purpose of harvesting their parts for research.  Unless Congress acts promptly to ban human cloning, as many other nations have already done, biotech labs will establish what President Bush in the past has called 'human embryo farms.'"

 

Enactment of a ban on human cloning takes on new urgency in the wake of a May 19 report that researchers in South Korea had, in 11 cases, "successfully" created a clone of a person with a disease, killed the cloned embryo, harvested stem cells, and started a cell line of tissue genetically like that of the clone's parent-twin.

 

For additional information on H.R. 810, including links to important documents, click here.  For additional information on bills related to human cloning that are currently pending in Congress, click here.

 

By a vote of 431 to 1, the House today also approved the Stem Cell Therapeutic and Research Act (H.R. 2520), sponsored by Congressman Chris Smith (R-NJ), a bill to establish a new federal program to make stem cells extracted from umbilical cord blood available to patients who need them.  This bill was endorsed by President Bush and by NRLC.  In a statement of Administration policy released today, the White House said:  "Cord-blood stem cells, collected from the placenta and umbilical cord after birth without doing harm to mother or child, have been used in the treatment of thousands of patients suffering from more than 60 different diseases, including leukemia, Fanconi anemia, sickle cell disease, and thalassemia.  Researchers also believe cord-blood stem cells may have the capacity to be differentiated into other cell types, making them useful in the exploration of ethical stem cell therapies for regenerative medicine."

 

From this week's (May 30) edition of TIME magazine:  "Writing in the New England Journal of Medicine, researchers at Duke University Medical Center reported that infants born with a fatal nerve disorder have been helped -- and perhaps even saved -- by treatment with stem cells taken from the umbilical cords of healthy babies.  Of course, the stem cells used at Duke are not the kind that have caused so much anguish and debate in the U.S.  Because these cells are taken not from embryos but from cord or placenta blood, they are both more developed and less versatile than embryonic stem cells.  But they are also less controversial because no potential human lives are lost if the cells are destroyed.  Yet they seem to have great potential for battling certain illnesses."
 

To return to the NRLC Human Embryos index page, click here.