By DEB RIECHMANN, Associated Press Writer
from YAHOO! NEWS

WASHINGTON - Vetoing a stem cell bill for the second time, President Bush on Wednesday sought to placate those who disagree with him by signing an executive order urging scientists toward what he termed “ethically responsible” research in the field.

Bush announced no new federal dollars for stem cell research, which supporters say holds the promise of disease cures, and his order would not allow researchers to do anything they couldn’t do under existing restrictions.

Announcing his veto to a roomful of supporters, Bush said, “If this legislation became law, it would compel American taxpayers for the first time in our history to support the deliberate destruction of human embryos. I made it clear to Congress and to the American people that I will not allow our nation to cross this moral line.”

He vetoed similar embryonic stem cell legislation last July.

His executive order encourages scientists to work with the government to add other kinds of stem cell research to the list of projects eligible for federal funding - so long as it does not create, harm or destroy human embryos.

read more at YAHOO! NEWS

By DEB RIECHMANN, Associated Press Writer
from Yahoo News

WASHINGTON - Pushing back against the Democratic-led Congress, President Bush intends to veto a bill Wednesday that would have eased restraints on federally funded embryonic stem cell research - work that supporters say holds promise for fighting disease.

At the same time, Bush will discuss at a White House event his efforts to encourage work that could make additional stem cell lines available for research, presidential spokesman Tony Fratto said Tuesday.

The president has accused majority Democrats of recycling an old measure that he already vetoed and argued that the bill would mean American taxpayers would - for the first time - be compelled to support the deliberate destruction of human embryos.

“The president supports and encourages stem cell research - including using embryonic lines - as long as it does not involve creating, harming or destroying embryos,” Fratto said. “That is an ethical line that should not be crossed.”

Democrats made the legislation a top priority when they took control of the House and Senate in January, but they don’t have enough votes to override Bush’s decision.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid appealed to Bush on Tuesday not to veto the bill. He said the measure acknowledges the ethical issues at stake and offers even stronger research guidelines than exist under the president’s current policy.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi used Bush’s veto threat as a reason to send out an e-mail letter soliciting contributions to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee to help elect more Democrats.

read more at YAHOO! NEWS

By JEFF ZELENY
The New York Times

WASHINGTON, June 7 - The House gave final Congressional approval on Thursday to legislation aimed at easing restrictions on federal financing of embryonic stem cell research, but Democratic leaders in both chambers conceded they were short of the votes needed to override a veto threatened by President Bush.

On a vote of 247 to 176, the House overwhelmingly passed the bill, with more than three dozen Republicans joining a Democratic-led effort to authorize federal support for research using stem cells from spare embryos that fertility clinics would otherwise discard. The Senate approved the legislation in April.

“Science is a gift of God to all of us and science has taken us to a place that is biblical in its power to cure,” said Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of California, arguing for the bill’s passage. “And that is the embryonic stem cell research.”

But minutes after the vote, Mr. Bush renewed his pledge to veto the proposal, which he called “a recycled old bill.” It would reprise the first veto of his presidency, which occurred last year when he rejected a similar bill passed by the Republican-controlled Congress.

“Recent scientific developments have reinforced my conviction that stem cell science can progress in ethical ways,” Mr. Bush said in a statement from Germany, where he was attending the Group of 8 meeting. “Researchers have been investigating innovative techniques that could allow doctors and scientists to produce stem cells just as versatile as those derived from human embryos, but without harming life.”

The House bill received support from 210 Democrats and 37 Republicans, 35 votes short of what would be needed to override a presidential veto; 16 Democrats joined 160 Republicans in opposing the legislation.

Several Republicans voting against the bill seized upon scientific findings reported Wednesday, in which biologists said they could use cells from ordinary, adult cells of the body, instead of stem cells. Critics of the bill also said taxpayer dollars should not be used for research on cells derived from discarded human embryos, particularly in the wake of such advances.

See how they voted here

Charlie Crist is doing some good……

GOVERNOR CHARLIE CRIST ANNOUNCES PLANS FOR PAPER BALLOTS

DELRAY BEACH, Fla., Feb. 1 - Gov. Charlie Crist announced plans on Thursday to abandon the touch’screen voting machines that many of Florida’s counties installed after the disputed 2000 presidential election. The state will instead adopt a system of casting paper ballots counted by scanning machines in time for the 2008 presidential election.

Where Voters Will Find a New Type of Ballot Voting experts said Florida’s move, coupled with new federal voting legislation expected to pass this year, could be the death knell for the paperless electronic touch’screen machines. If as expected the Florida Legislature approves the $32.5 million cost of the change, it would be the nation’s biggest repudiation yet of touch’screen voting, which was widely embraced after the 2000 recount as a state-of-the-art means of restoring confidence that every vote would count.

Several counties around the country, including Cuyahoga in Ohio and Sarasota in Florida, are moving toward exchanging touch’screen machines for ones that provide a paper trail. But Florida could become the first state that invested heavily in the recent rush to touch screens to reject them so sweepingly.

“Florida is like a synonym for election problems; it’s the Bermuda Triangle of elections,” said Warren Stewart, policy director of VoteTrust USA, a nonprofit group that says optical scanners are more reliable than touch screens. “For Florida to be clearly contemplating moving away from touch screens to the greatest extent possible is truly significant.”

Read more at the New York Times

CRIST BACKS LIMITED STEMCELL RESEARCH

It’s a start……

Gov. Charlie Crist said he would recommend $20 million in the state budget for a program to fund grants for stem cell research.

In an appearance at the University of South Florida College of Medicine in Tampa, Crist said the grant program he is proposing would support research within the parameters of federal law, including adult stem cells, umbilical cord blood and placental stem cells, amniotic fluid stem cells and embryonic stem cells from lines permissible for use under federal law.

Earlier in the day, Crist told newspaper editors at the Associated Press Florida Legislative Planning Session in Tallahassee that he would not recommend including research that requires the destruction of human embryos.

Some scientists have argued human embryonic stem cells hold the most promise for finding new treatments and cures for diseases, although not all scientists agree.

Read more here

Jan. 8, 2007 - Mixed messages come from the White House today on news that U.S. researchers have discovered that stem cells in amniotic fluid could offer the same promise as those harvested from embryos.

This morning White House spokesman Tony Snow urged caution, saying the White House is still looking into the findings. He brushed off a question about the potential of amniotic stem cells saying, “Just because you find that there is - that amniotic stem cells have some medical potential doesn’t mean that you run around saying, ‘OK, everybody, pony up your amniotic fluid.’ I mean, it doesn’t work that way.” And he offered the measured assesment that, “there will always be concern, but, obviously, there is a difference between using amniotic stem cells that do not, by design, involve the destruction of a human life and embryonic stem cell research which does.”

That’s a far cry from the enthusiastic language used by the White House communications shop. Just minutes before Snow gave his less-than’sanguine assesment of the news, the White House communications shop, which Snow is also a part of, sent reporters a press release hailing the discovery of amniotic stem cells as a “breakthrough” - a word Snow seemed careful to avoid. In a mass e-mail entitled “Stem Cell Breakthrough Shows Great Promise” the White House quoted six news sources brimming with a sense of excitement over the potential of amniotic stem cells.

Read more at ABCNews

And in related news, the House will be debating stem cell research this week.

H/T to my Australian friend, Scottie! Hopefully the U.S. will advance this research soon!

The Patterson Bill gives Australian scientists an opportunity to fully explore every aspect of embryonic stem cell research. Significant work and progress has been made under the current law which allows for human embryonic stem cell research under licence.

The bill allows the introduction of somatic cell nuclear transfer, otherwise know as therapeutic cloning. This technology enables the development of human, disease’specific embryonic stem cell lines. How does this work, and why is it so valuable?

The process begins by taking the nucleus from a cell - for example, a skin or blood cell - of a patient who has a complex disease, such as Parkinson’s or leukaemia. This nucleus is then placed in an ovum which has had its nucleus removed. The environment of the egg helps form a blastocyst, which is an early’stage embryo containing a few hundred cells from which scientists can grow a human embryonic stem cell line that carries the trait of the disease. These cells may then be directed to form the relevant cell types of the disease under investigation.

Read more here