Kennedy rips Romney over stem cell policy
Governor eyes an alternate plan
WASHINGTON -- Senator Edward M. Kennedy yesterday blasted Governor Mitt Romney's proposal to ban the cloning of embryos for stem cell research, saying the governor's approach would rob Massachusetts of the benefits of one of the most promising areas of scientific research.
Romney, meanwhile, indicated he is open to new research as a compromise on the thorny ethical issue. On Friday, he is scheduled to be briefed on a method of generating embryonic stem cells without creating embryos.
The governor set off a political storm last week by declaring that human embryos should never be created for research. Kennedy, in his first public comments on Romney's approach, said a blanket ban on such cloning would be a major setback to Massachusetts by forcing researchers to leave the state.
''Banning it or prohibiting it, making it illegal, would be a major mistake," Kennedy said in an interview with the Globe. ''It's a big opportunity. We are in the life science moment of research on this planet. This is the time, and now is the moment, and Massachusetts is the place."
Kennedy said Massachusetts is poised to take the international lead in curing many chronic diseases, with researchers at Harvard University planning to create cloned human embryos, and private firms and other academic researchers eager to jump in as well.
Research on embryonic stem cells holds the promise of curing scores of illnesses, since the cells are flexible enough to be turned into most types of cells in the human body. But such research is controversial because it requires the destruction of the embryos, which some people consider to be human lives.
Romney said last week he favors allowing research on existing embryonic stem cells taken from embryos that would otherwise be discarded by fertility clinics, but he would seek to outlaw the creation of embryos specifically for research.
''Lofty goals do not justify the creation of life for experimentation and destruction," Romney wrote in a letter to Senate President Robert E. Travaglini.
Democratic leaders in the Legislature have announced plans to explicitly allow stem cell cloning for research purposes. Their plans will be aired publicly at a legislative committee meeting today. Some scientists consider cloned cells to represent the most promising avenue for research because they can be made to share the DNA of a research subject, and could help scientists develop cures for Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and other diseases.
''The advantage of therapeutic cloning is, one, you can get the exact genetic match, and you eliminate the real possibilities of rejection, which is going to be key in this whole area of research," Kennedy said.
Romney's proposal, the senator said, ''would be a major setback in terms of the total search for light and truth in this area of research, because we have so many top researchers in Massachusetts."
Yesterday, aides to the governor said Romney remains committed to his belief that embryonic stem cells should not be created for research. But they indicated that the governor may be open to other methods of creating such stem cells.
Romney is scheduled to meet Friday with William Hurlbut, a Stanford ethicist and a member of the president's Council on
''I am doing this in the spirit of trying to seek solutions," Hurlbut said yesterday regarding his meeting with Romney. ''This is what the country badly needs."
Eric Fehrnstrom, Romney's communications director, said Hurlbut's proposal reinforces Romney's belief that human embryos should not be created for research purposes.
''The idea of creating human life to be a research subject is wrong, especially given the fact that there may be alternatives to cloning that may allow us to proceed with this kind of research without having to veer off course into unethical territory," Fehrnstrom said.
Kennedy said ethical objections to research on cloned embryonic stem cells can be answered by banning the creation of human babies from such embryos.
The issue of embryonic stem cell research is heating up on both Beacon Hill and Capitol Hill. The Legislature's Economic Development and Emerging Technologies Committee will hold a public hearing today on the Democratic proposal to allow cloning of embryonic stem cells for research purposes. Travaglini, sponsor of that measure, said he believes the ''probability of passage is good," though it is unclear whether Democrats will be able to pass the legislation with a veto-proof majority.
In Washington, Kennedy will join several Democratic and Republican colleagues in introducing a measure that would reverse the partial ban on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research that President Bush put in place in 2001.
Under that policy, researchers can only use federal funds on batches of embryonic stem cells created before Aug. 9, 2001, sharply limiting the number of stem cell lines available for research. The bill being introduced today, sponsored by Senator Arlen Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican, would allow research on all embryos at in vitro fertilization clinics that are no longer wanted by the would-be parents.
The measure is silent on the issue of federal funding for embryonic stem cells that are cloned for research. But Kennedy said he wants to go further and is supporting another measure that would open the door to federal funding for cloned embryonic stem cells while banning cloning to produce human babies.
Also yesterday, syndicated conservative columnist Cal Thomas reported that Romney, in an interview, accused Harvard University of engaging in a ''bait and switch" scheme to pass legislation that would permit therapeutic cloning, contending that the university never sought such rights in prior legislative sessions.
Asked to elaborate, Fehrnstrom refused, and instead pointed reporters to comments made to reporters last week, in which the governor accused Travaglini, not Harvard, of the bait and switch.
Still, given Romney's assertion last week that Harvard's stem cell research efforts ''cross the line of ethical conduct," Dr. David T. Scadden, co-director of Harvard's Stem Cell Institute, defended the school's research agenda. He said Harvard has always been upfront with Romney and the public about its desire to clone human embryos to harvest stem cells for research.
Of Romney's criticism, Scadden said: ''I have to say it is very troubling. Certainly, we don't view ourselves as adversaries of the governor, and we see ourselves as contributing to the benefit of the Commonwealth. . . . We'd like not to get into a bare-knuckles fight, but rather where there might be a shared sense of goal."
Raphael Lewis of the Globe staff and Globe correspondent Janette Neuwahl contributed to this report. Rick Klein can be reached at rklein@globe.com.
