WP: Stem Cell Legislation Is at Risk
Note the framing below, as there are no ethical constraints to be avoided:
Backers Say Promise of New Techniques Threatens Senate Bill's Passage
By Ceci Connolly and Rick Weiss
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, July 9, 2005; Page A03
Promising but still unproven new approaches to creating human embryonic stem cells have suddenly jeopardized what once appeared to be certain Senate passage of a bill to loosen President Bush's four-year-old restrictions on human embryo research.
The techniques are enticing to many conservative activists and scientists because they could yield medically valuable human embryonic stem cells without the creation or destruction embryos.
Embryonic stem cells are coveted because they have the capacity to become virtually every kind of body tissue and perhaps repair ailing organs, but they are controversial because days-old human embryos must be destroyed to retrieve them.
"The new science that may involve embryo research but not require destruction of an embryo is tremendously exciting," Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) said recently. "It would get you outside of the boundaries of the ethical constraints."
ETC...
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Backers Say Promise of New Techniques Threatens Senate Bill's Passage
By Ceci Connolly and Rick Weiss
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, July 9, 2005; Page A03
Promising but still unproven new approaches to creating human embryonic stem cells have suddenly jeopardized what once appeared to be certain Senate passage of a bill to loosen President Bush's four-year-old restrictions on human embryo research.
The techniques are enticing to many conservative activists and scientists because they could yield medically valuable human embryonic stem cells without the creation or destruction embryos.
Embryonic stem cells are coveted because they have the capacity to become virtually every kind of body tissue and perhaps repair ailing organs, but they are controversial because days-old human embryos must be destroyed to retrieve them.
"The new science that may involve embryo research but not require destruction of an embryo is tremendously exciting," Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) said recently. "It would get you outside of the boundaries of the ethical constraints."
ETC...
