Thursday, 4:30 PM
Romney blasts some stem cell research, again
By Russell Nichols, Globe Staff, and Andrew Ryan, Globe Correspondent
Governor Mitt Romney reiterated his opposition to a type of stem cell research today, saying that laboratories that create new embryos for study take science too far.
I believe it crosses a very bright moral line to take sperm and egg in the laboratory and start creating human life, said Romney, who is considering a 2008 presidential run. It is Orwellian in its scope in that in laboratories you can have trays of new embryos being created.
It's almost like the movie the Matrix, said Romney, referring the 1999 science fiction film in which humans are used by machines for their energy.
He made the comments after speaking at an education conference in Cambridge, not far from Harvard University, which he criticized in February 2005 for research that involved cloned embryos. The governor, who has made frequent trips in the last year to New Hampshire, Iowa and other early voting states, set off a storm of criticism when he told the New York Times that he favored banning "the creation of new human embryos for the purpose of research."
At the time, scientists and some politicians accused him of trying to block a promising avenue of research. Some saw the stand in February 2005 as a shift for Romney, who had described himself as a supporter of embryonic stem cell research when he ran for governor in 2002.
In speaking with reporters today, Romney said that he has remained consistent.
I laid out my position on this a long time ago, he said. It remains the same as it was in the very beginning.
There are two types of stem cells: adult stem cells, which are already used to treat some diseases, and embryonic stem cells, which are not used to treat diseases but have the capacity to become any cell in the body. Scientists hope to use these stem cells to understand and possibly treat diseases.
Most human embryonic stem cells used today were created from embryos left over from fertility treatments. Cloning, however, allows researchers to create stem cells with the DNA of patients who suffer a particular disease, giving them a new way to study the development of the disease in the laboratory.
Romney supports the use stem cells taken from fertility clinic embryos, but not cloned embryos.
