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The CPI report also points out that some companies have teamed up with patients' rights groups to battle religious and prolife coalitions. "As a result, what was once a debate between science and religion has become, in part, a clash between profits and ethics."

The report notes that the AAR, which bills itself as the leading citizen advocacy organization for improving the health of older Americans, "also happens to receive funding from private-sector biotechnology companies that have a financial stake in the outcome of the stem-cell debate, including Geron," the for-profit corporation that isolated embryonic stem cells in 1998.

Like the White House announcement, the proposal recommended a limit on the number of stem-cell lines but did not specify how many. (Stem-cell lines are ongoing generations of stem cells dating back to a single embryo.) The proposal also suggested establishing strict new oversight guidelines and increasing federal funding for adult stem-cell research.

Bush said he would establish a presidential council—headed by the respected bioethicist Leon Kass—to oversee the research.

Meanwhile, many conservative groups are hailing Bush's decision as the right one, which they say is consistent with his campaign pledge. "He deserves praise from citizens who understand that it is never justified to destroy one life in order to possibly save another," said James C. Dobson, president of Focus on the Family.

As a candidate, Bush consistently opposed embryonic stem-cell research that required live human embryos to be discarded. In a May 18 letter to the Culture of Life Foundation, a d.c.-based educational foundation, Bush reaffirmed his stance: "I oppose federal funding for stem-cell research that involves destroying living human embryos."

Bush's decision is expected to jump-start efforts in Congress to expand the government's support of embryonic stem-cell research, which would override the President's approach. Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., and Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Wash., have both introduced legislation that would allow federally funded researchers to destroy human embryos to harvest their stem cells.

But Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., one of the Senate's most vocal opponents of embryonic stem-cell research, argues that no embryo should ever be the object of experiments. "This is a life we're talking about, not just some disposable piece of property," says Brownback, who compares the issue to China's harvesting of organs from condemned criminals. "The utilitarian argument is, 'Why not get some use out of them?'"

Ken Connor, president of the Family Research Council, gave Bush a mixed review. He commended Bush for barring federal funding of research linked to the destruction of embryos, but labeled as "troubling" the decision to permit research on existing stem-cell lines. "Mr. Bush attempts to put a redemptive gloss on previous bad acts and to distance himself from the immoral acts that resulted in the killing of embryonic human beings," he said.

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September 3 2001, Vol. 45, No. 11