Top senator pushes new stem-cell compromise

URL: http://www.nature.com/cgi-taf/DynaPage.taf?file=/nature/journal/v412/n6845/full/412368a0_fs.html

Date accessed: 9 October 2001

Nature, 26 July 2001

[WASHINGTON] President George W. Bush was offered a possible way out of his stem-cell research imbroglio last week, when an influential Republican senator laid out a set of possible conditions for government funding.

Bill Frist (Republican, Tennessee), the only physician in the Senate, said on 18 July that the research should be federally funded "within a carefully regulated, fully transparent framework [that ensures] the highest level of respect for ... the human embryo".

Frist added that research on embryonic stem cells had greater potential than studies on adult stem cells. But his ten-point plan for the research would restrict it to an unspecified, finite number of embryonic stem-cell lines — an idea that many biologists oppose (see Nature 412, 107; 2001.)

Category: 31. Stem Cells