Frist fuels momentum for stem cell research

WASHINGTON -- Senate majority leader Bill Frist's surprise decision to endorse expanding embryonic stem cell research yesterday gives a major boost to Congress's efforts to roll back President Bush's strict limits on federal funding of the research, and could reshape the political landscape over this promising but controversial area of science.

The move by Frist -- a Harvard-trained heart surgeon, the top Senate Republican, and one of Bush's closest allies on Capitol Hill -- isolates the president politically and undercuts his arguments for the strictures on research he imposed in 2001, according to supporters of the legislation. It also improves the odds that a House- approved bill to ease Bush's restrictions could pass the Senate and reach the president's desk this fall.

But while Frist changed the dynamics around the bill, it is unclear whether supporters have enough votes to override the veto Bush has promised -- which would be his first since taking office in 2001.

In a Senate speech yesterday, Frist argued that researchers need access to more cell lines and that being ''pro-life" like him does not mean one cannot support life-saving research on embryos that in vitro fertilization clinics would otherwise destroy.

''We must get our stem cell policy right -- scientifically and ethically," said Frist, a Tennessee Republican. ''Embryonic stem cells have specific properties that make them uniquely powerful and deserving of special attention in the realm of medical science."

Since Frist controls the Senate agenda, his support could make the difference for the bill's passage. That would force Bush to use his first veto to stop a policy that has broad public approval and substantial support within his own party.

Scientists assert that research on embryonic stem cells -- undeveloped human cells that could be altered to generate human tissue -- holds the promise of cures for diseases such as cancer and Parkinson's as well as for the repair of damaged spinal cords.

Senator Arlen Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican and cancer patient who has urged expanded research, predicted that Frist's decision will persuade wavering House and Senate members to vote for the bill and could draw enough votes to block Bush's veto. Specter said he is even hoping that Frist's announcement will help Bush change his mind, though the White House said that would not happen.

''[Frist's] views will be influential on other senators, and perhaps even with the president," Specter said.

Bush's policy allows research only on stem cell lines derived from embryos before he issued an executive order four years ago, an attempt to hold the middle ground on an ethically charged issue.

Bush has repeatedly said he favors funding stem cell research only if embryos -- fertilized eggs, which many religious conservatives consider to be human lives -- are not destroyed for the sake of science. White House press secretary Scott McClellan downplayed the break between Frist and Bush but reiterated the president's opposition to the bill.

''The president told him last night, 'You need to vote your conscience,' " McClellan said. ''The president does not believe we should be using taxpayer dollars to support the further destruction of human life."

Bush's policy has left just 22 stem cell lines available to federally funded researchers, and they have been contaminated by mouse cells because of the method in which they were grown. At the same time, optimism has grown about the potential healing powers of embryonic stem cells.

That has left Bush increasingly distant from his party on the issue of stem cells. Nancy Reagan -- wife of president Reagan, a conservative icon who died of complications from Alzheimer's disease last year -- is a leading proponent of the research, and was among the first to applaud Frist's announcement.

In May, 50 House Republicans bucked their president and their congressional leaders to vote for the bill that Frist now supports. And even before Frist joined them, the bill had majority support in the Senate, including from such influential Republicans as Specter and Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah.

Frist's announcement, though, was a jolt to social conservatives, many of whom approved his efforts to have Bush's judicial nominees confirmed and his intervention in the Terri Schiavo case this year.

James Dobson, founder and chairman of the conservative group Focus on the Family, said Frist ''has gravely miscalculated" if he thinks supporting stem cell research will help him win the White House in 2008.

''It is an understatement to say that the pro-life community is disappointed," Dobson said. ''To push for the expansion of this suspect and unethical science will be rightly seen by America's values voters as the worst kind of betrayal: choosing politics over principle."

Conservatives in Congress vowed to help Bush's veto; in May, the House vote fell 52 votes short of the 290 needed to override it.

House majority leader Tom DeLay said Frist's new position ''is obviously disappointing" and does not mesh with the senator's stated commitment to the lives of unborn children, since extracting embryonic stem cell lines requires embryos to be destroyed.