Posted on 07/11/2005 6:54:19 PM PDT by kristinn
WASHINGTON (AP) - Sen. Arlen Specter, suffering from cancer, said Monday he plans to take public his anger over the government's restrictions on funding for studies on human embryonic stem cells.
"I think it's time that a little hell was raised about this subject," Specter, R-Pa., said in a telephone interview.
That time will arrive Tuesday, Specter said, when he gavels open the Senate's first hearing on his bill to lift President Bush's restrictions on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research. It carries the greatest promise among such studies searching for cures to Alzheimer's disease and other ailments.
Set to testify Tuesday are four scientists whose research - to date neither published nor performed on human cells - could receive federal funding instead as alternatives to using human embryonic stem cells.
Bush and conservatives who believe studies on human embryos are immoral are considering bills to pay for such research in part to peel votes from Specter's bill.
That makes the Pennsylvania Republican, bald and gravelly voiced from cancer treatments, angry.
"Yeah, well, I am, as a matter of fact," Specter said. "Try a few chemotherapy treatments and see how you feel" watching the debate over medical funding.
Whatever the scientists have to say at the Labor, Health and Human Services subcommittee hearing, Specter wants his bill signed into law and federal money flowing to studies on human embryonic stem cells.
"The potential for stem cells has been held in abeyance much too long," he said.
Specter has plans beyond the hearing. He said he will lift his self-imposed ban on discussing personal matters on the Senate floor and frame the debate in intimate terms - including a "long list of my medicines and my ailments."
"And I'd like to see a million-person march on the Mall," Specter said. "That's an idea that has run through my chemotherapy-occupied cerebrum."
Bush halted federal funding for embryonic stem cell research on lines not already developed by Aug. 9, 2001, saying that taxpayers should not be forced to fund research that many find immoral. Other senators agree and are considering offering as many as five alternatives to Specter's bill, preferring to finance science that meets their ethical standards even if it is in its infancy.
"We certainly appreciate the strong emotions on all sides of this very sensitive debate, and that's precisely why the president believes that we should think carefully and long and hard about these decisions," said White House spokesman Trent Duffy.
"I don't want to see us destroy additional human lives with taxpayer dollars," said Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., who may offer one of the alternatives debated on the Senate floor.
Leon Kass, chairman of the President's Council on Bioethics, declined Specter's invitation to testify on the panel's report in May on four theoretical alternatives to human embryonic stem cell research, citing scheduling conflicts.
"I know the guy from the White House did not want to testify, which is his business," Specter said. "But we're going to go right about our business."
That starts with the hearing Tuesday and a press conference Wednesday featuring actor Michael J. Fox, who has Parkinson's disease, and actress Dana Reeve, whose late husband, "Superman" star Christopher Reeve, suffered a devastating spinal cord injury.
Among those scheduled to testify Tuesday is James Battey, chairman of the National Institutes of Health Stem Cell Task Force, who will discuss four alternative research procedures on stem cells. Robert Lanza, vice president of medical and scientific research for Advanced Cell Technology, will discuss his research into deriving stem cells from a single animal cell without destroying the embryo.
No comment necesssary.
I am soooo not forgiving Bush, Santorum and Frist for propping up this joker.
What an ass.
"I'm mad as hell and...and...I'm going to demagogue on how cancer is bad, since I sure don't have any other issues where I'm in step with regular people, and this is vaguely related to cancer! Gimme your pity support!"
Ok,just a question.What types of cancer is stem cell research purported to find a cure or treatment for?
:
None. Somewhere I find in the stem-cell crowd a thirst for blood...their justification for what they want to do sounds too much like the rhetoric of abortion supporters and euthanasia supporters, and we all know the common thread here.
"And I'd like to see a million-person march on the Mall," Specter said. "That's an idea that has run through my chemotherapy-occupied cerebrum."
You and about a zillion other drug addeled wackos,
from the Clintons down to screwy louie Farakan, the best
they can do is a couple of hundred thousand.
Remember, Better living through chemistry!
No comment on the article you posted, Kristinn.
Tell Spector Scottish law forbids stem cell research?
And if it were not for the support of GW, Santorum, and Frist, this lunatic would have lost the primary to Toomey.......
Poor bastard. Maybe he ought to let an abortionist slice him to ribbons to see how that feels, too.
I don't remember who said it, but to paraphrase them. If emryonic stem cells are the panacea liberals make them out to be, why aren't private corporations falling all over themselves to fund the research. A cure to cancer, alzeihmers, and whatever else they're claiming would be a license to print money.
This crowd and this Senator want to live forever at the expense of the most defenseless and most innocent.
WELCOME TO THE CULTURE OF DEATH FOR YOU BUT NOT FOR ME!!!
The article said that embryonic stem cells provide the most "promising" cells...
THAT is not true...in fact there are a lot of scientists that say just the opposite...
Besides, there is something totally unbecoming of Specter making this about HIM PERSONALLY!! How crass.
AND, the fact that he had announced even before bringing it to the floor, that he is gonna "raise hell", says that he is trying to make this HIS MARK. He isn't into it for a reason other than selfish....
Couldn't agree with you more about Laura. What a contrast between her and that sorry excuse for a Republican, the senior RINO from PA. How much better off we'd be if Orrin Hatch was still in that chair.
Laura's the greatest. Sorry I don't get to listen to her this week. On vacation and not in range.
He can take his gavel and go pound sand with it. I have a short fuse with this RINO. I am ashamed that he's one of my Senators.
ping
Oh, the humanity! I absolutely cannot imagine anything more boring or likely to make me gag as listening to some old man who wants to live forever go on publicly about his long list of "my medicines and my ailments."
I am a compassionate person, but this is just beyond the pale. Beating people up by making them listen to this stuff, when he's trying to FORCE the President to fund cutting up helpless little innocent human beings just to prop up his frail, fading wrinkly old ass makes me sick.
Despite his atrociously egotistical behavior and constant attempts at legacy building, history will render Arlen Specter either forgotten or cursed.
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