 |
|
"I
think if it really comes down to a showdown, we will have enough
in the United States Senate to override a veto," Specter
said.
|
WASHINGTON,
May 26, 2005 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – Buoyed by the
House of Representatives' passage of the stem cell bill in defiance of
President George Bush's veto threat, the bill's chief sponsor boasts
enough votes in the Senate to defeat any veto, reported the New
York Times on Thursday, May 26.
"I
don't like veto threats, and I don't like statements about overriding
veto threats," Senator Arlen Specter, the Pennsylvania
Republican, told a press conference on Wednesday, May 25.
"I
think if it really comes down to a showdown, we will have enough in
the United States Senate to override a veto," he added.
The
veteran legislator, co-sponsor of the bill with Iowa Democrat Tom
Harkin, said they had last year a letter signed by 58 senators, adding
"we had about 20 more in the wings".
The
other sponsors are Republicans Orrin Hatch of
Utah
and Gordon Smith of
Oregon
, and Democrats Dianne Feinstein of
California
and Edward Kennedy of
Massachusetts
.
Despite
Bush's veto threat, the House of Representatives on Tuesday, May 24,
approved the bill that would expand federal funding of embryonic stem
cell research using excess embryos created through fertility
treatments.
The
vote was a rare defeat for Bush in the Republican-controlled House and
may lead to the first veto of his presidency.
The
new bill permits the government to pay for studies involving human
embryos that are in frozen storage at fertility clinics, so long as
couples conceiving the embryos certified that they had made a decision
to discard them.
Vital
Supporters
of the bill say many friends, relatives and acquaintances died from
illnesses that might someday be cured as a result of research
conducted on embryonic stem cells.
They
urged the Senate to pass similar legislation, reported Reuters.
"I
think it is important to remember that in the early days of IVF [vitro
fertilization] you heard a lot of the similar objections that we are
now hearing about stem cell research," said Sean Tipton, a
spokesman for the American Society of Reproductive Medicine and vice
president of the Coalition for the Advancement of Medical Research,
which lobbies for stem cell research.
"Many
people believe human life -- a person -- begins in a woman's uterus,
in the mother's womb, not in a Petri dish or a test tube," stem
cell researcher Dr. Robert Lanza of privately owned Advanced Cell
Technology in
Massachusetts
said in an e-mail.
Opponents
anguished at the prospect of destroying human embryos in the name of
science.
Human
embryonic stem cells, isolated from human embryos for the first time
in 1998, have the potential to grow into any cell or tissue in the
body, and so hold great promise for treatment of disease.
But
the embryos are destroyed when the cells are extracted.
The
hope is, according to Reuters, to someday take a patient's cells, or a
closely matched batch of cells from a donor, and use them to grow new
blood cells, tissues or even organs to treat diseases and conditions
such as cancer, juvenile diabetes or Parkinson's.
From
an Islamic
point of view, "the embryo in this stage is not human. It is not
in its natural environment, the womb. If it is not placed in the womb
it will not survive and it will not become a human being. So there is
nothing wrong in doing this research, especially if this research has
a potential to cure diseases.
"However,
it is important that we establish strict rules against the misuse of
embryos."
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