Romney urges changes to stem cell bill Adds amendment to prohibit cloning
Governor Mitt Romney said yesterday that he will reject the Legislature's bill supporting stem cell research, urging lawmakers to rewrite the measure to prohibit scientists from cloning and to remove a passage that redefines when life begins.
Romney had said previously that he planned to veto the bill, but for now he has decided to return the measure to the Legislature with four amendments. One amendment would prohibit scientists from cloning human cells, a controversial technique called ''nuclear transfer" that the Legislature supports by a substantial majority, but which the governor opposes. Cloning is unethical, he has said, because it requires researchers to create human embryos specifically for research.
But there are three other amendments, asking the Legislature to reconsider the bill's position on when life begins and to clarify what women can be paid to donate eggs for research and what circumstances are appropriate for researchers to create human embryos.
The move is the latest twist in a battle between Romney and the Legislature over the future of stem cell research in the state. The governor has echoed the hopes of many that stem cell research may one day find treatments for diseases, and he shares the conviction that the research is important to the state, with its heavy concentration of scientists and the biotechnology industry. But the governor has split with a large majority in the Legislature over cloning human cells, something Harvard scientists are planning to do.
Although the Legislature passed the measure by a veto-proof margin, the amendments keep the issue alive and shine a light on what the governor believes are other flaws in the bill, particularly its assertion that life does not begin until an embryo is implanted in a uterus.
''It is very conceivable that scientific advances will allow an embryo to be grown for a substantial period of time outside the uterus," Romney said in an interview with the Globe. ''To say that it is not life at one month or two months or four months or full term, just because it had never been in a uterus, would be absurd."
Such technology, the governor acknowledged, is far from being practical today, but he pointed to the potentially far-reaching ramifications of the change, beyond stem cell research.
In a letter outlining his position, to be delivered to lawmakers today, the governor said the bill would change a 1974 law defining an unborn child as ''the individual human life in existence and developing from fertilization until birth."
In the letter, the governor calls this ''a matter of profound moral and ethical consequence," adding that it ''implicates a much broader array of issues than the relatively discrete question of whether stem cell research should be permitted."
Another amendment proposed by the governor addresses a mounting concern in stem cell research: whether paying women to donate eggs could be exploitative. To clone human cells, as scientists in Massachusetts want to do, researchers need woman to provide egg cells. Retrieving eggs carries some risks, and critics have worried that scientists might use money to lure poor women to participate.
The governor's amendment would tighten language restricting payments for eggs, emphasizing that women can be paid only for direct expenses, like medical care or transportation, not for their time and discomfort.
The governor's final amendment, unlikely to be controversial, makes a relatively minor change to language prohibiting the fertilization of eggs for the sole purpose of creating embryos for research.
The House and Senate will now consider the bill, as amended by the governor, but they are unlikely to agree to his proposed prohibition on cloning human cells.
It could not be learned last night whether legislative leaders supported the other changes. Senate President Robert E. Travaglini, a champion of the bill supporting stem cell research, was unavailable for comment last night, a staff member said.
Gareth Cook can be reached at cook@globe.com. 