Word: stemming
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Backers of expanded stem-cell research say public opinion is swinging their way, thanks in no small part to such high-profile advocates as Nancy Reagan, who has made her late husband's struggle with Alzheimer's an emblem of the campaign for stem-cell research. Support is solid even among Republicans, says G.O.P. pollster David Winston, who conducted a poll released last week by New Models, a Republican communication research organization. Surveying 13 Republican congressional districts across the country, Winston found that voters in those areas favored embryonic-stem-cell research an overall 66% to 27%, while Republicans supported...
What brought the expansion of embryonic-stem-cell research to a congressional vote was not a public groundswell, however, but an uncharacteristically deft inside move by a group of Republican moderates who call themselves the House Tuesday Group. For months, they had been looking for an opportunity to get around the House's rigid procedures and force it to take up the measure, which probably could never have got to the floor through the usual process of committee deliberation. When House Speaker Dennis Hastert needed their votes in what turned out to be a squeaker on the budget last month...
Wilson has been visited by lobbyists for universities and groups who advocate for sufferers of various diseases. Fellow Republican lawmaker Charles Bass of New Hampshire gave her a chapter from Hatch's 2002 memoir Square Peg, in which the Senator explained his own conversion on the stem-cell issue. But the most compelling appeal, Wilson says, has come from a House Democrat--James Langevin of Rhode Island, an abortion foe who is also a quadriplegic as a result of an accidental gunshot wound suffered when he was a teenager. "When Jim Langevin talks to you about this," says Wilson...
Opponents are not without their own emotionally charged arguments, one of which is that if the bill becomes law, it would only be the beginning of a slide toward human reproduction through cloning. Foes say they also plan to point out that embryonic-stem-cell research has yet to produce a cure for anything. Researchers, they say, should first explore the potential of stem-cell research that does not require the destruction of embryos, including use of adult stem cells and stem cells from umbilical-cord blood. "This is not a debate between pro-science forces and religious zealots," says...
...legislative machinery. House sources say he stepped back from that effort after moderate Republicans reminded Speaker Hastert that he had promised them a clean shot at passage. Meanwhile, an alternative strategy is being discussed that would give House members the opportunity to also vote on an additional piece of stem-cell legislation, possibly a bill by Congressman Chris Smith of New Jersey that would establish a national bank to store and distribute stem cells from the blood of umbilical cords. The idea is to take off some of the political heat by giving both lawmakers and Bush a stem-cell...