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American Morning
Is There a Middle Ground in Stem Cell Research Debate?
Aired August 03, 2001 - 11:12 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
LINDA STOUFFER, CNN ANCHOR: One difficult issue facing the president: whether federal tax dollars should be used to fund potentially live-saving research using embryonic stem cells. Well, that debate has split the anti-abortion community, with some warning that the president will pay a political price if he sanctions such research with federal dollars.
Well, CNN's Jeanne Meserve is in our Washington bureau. She has a closer look at this -- hi, Jeanne.
JEANNE MESERVE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Linda.
And the warning was issued very explicitly and strongly at a press conference this morning.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JUDIE BROWN, AMERICAN LIFE LEAGUE: If the president, for any reason whatsoever, chooses to approve any kind of support for this destructive experimentation on human beings, he will no longer have the right to call himself a pro-life president. There is nothing pro- life about approving the destruction of a human being, even one of them.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MESERVE: Judie Brown of the American Life League joins me here now, as does Congressman Roscoe Bartlett. He's a Republican from Maryland -- has a 100 percent rating from the National Right to Life Committee and also has a Ph.D. in human physiology.
You believe that you can reconcile your views on abortion with stem cell research. Explain how.
REP. ROSCOE BARTLETT (R), MARYLAND: Well, absolutely.
Nobody wants to do research on embryos. What I'm talking about is taking a cell from an early embryo and then doing research with that cell. That's very different than doing research on an embryo. And it's not destroying an embryo.
MESERVE: Your reaction to that.
BROWN: Well, it's theoretical at this point. And I agree with Dr. David Prentice. I think there are a lot of proposals out there in the scientific community. But there is no hard fact. And as far as we know from the research currently being done, you must kill a human embryo, who is a human being, in order to have access to those stem cells. And that's immoral.
MESERVE: Congressman, can you counter that?
BARTLETT: No. What they are doing now is killing the embryos. They don't have to kill the embryos. You can take a cell from an embryo without destroying the embryo. And that's what they need to do.
MESERVE: But is your compromise solution here purely theoretical at this point or has it ever been done?
BARTLETT: Well, they have taken single cells and created a whole new individual from them. They have taken nuclei out of one cell and put it in another cell. The technology for doing it is there. Is it a scientific challenge? Yes, it is scientific challenge. But we have many scientific challenges.
MESERVE: You're shaking your head.
BROWN: Well, yes, because what we are concerned about right now is the challenge before the president based on what we know scientifically.
What we know scientifically is that the human being must be destroyed in order to access that stem cell. That is unethical. It is immoral. And theories are not going to cut the muster.
MESERVE: Do you also have a fear that if certain cells were extracted from an embryo, even if that embryo survived, that the cells that have been extracted could themselves grow into another human embryo and take you right back to the ethical dilemma you had in the first place?
BROWN: The National Institutes of Health as already made that point. I don't have to make that point. And it's true that in fact that can happen. It could happen. And, in fact, the National Institutes of Health has pointed that out in their report on stem cell research.
BARTLETT: Of course it could happen if you took the cell from the morula or the blastula. If you take it...
MESERVE: Which is a very early...
(CROSSTALK)
BARTLETT: Very early. If you take it from the gastrula, that will not happen.
BROWN: No. No.
BARTLETT: Already you have three germ layers. Trust me. I have a Ph.D. in human physiology. I have had courses in advanced embryology. A cell from the gastrula will not produce an embryo.
BROWN: But that human being is so old at that point, when Congressman Bartlett's cells would be taken, if his proposal in fact worked, that that baby would not be able to implant and would die anyway. So we're back to the same question: Can I kill one person for the sake of research?
The answer is no.
(CROSSTALK)
BARTLETT: That is not known. That is just not known. It is not known that you cannot take...
(CROSSTALK)
MESERVE: I know you have presented your ideas to White House officials. I'm curious as to whether you think they are struggling to find a compromise on this issue and if what you are presenting has had an appeal to them.
BARTLETT: Well, the White House is in a very difficult position.
BROWN: Yes.
BARTLETT: No matter which decision they make, they lose some of their base.
BROWN: That's right.
BARTLETT: They don't need to do that. They need to challenge the research community to see if what I am proposing is doable. Theoretically, it should be doable. Scientifically, it should be doable. They haven't done it yet because they haven't needed to do it yet.
It's easier to kill the embryos -- which I don't want them to do -- and take the cells. This does -- this is not impossible to do. They haven't done it yet. But we didn't...
BROWN: Well, they have got to suspend funding immediately. The funding for the current research has to be banned, whether it is private-sector money or federal money. And they can start over then.
MESERVE: And we have to leave it there. Obviously, great divisions of opinion on this issue continue -- and will, I'm sure, for the weeks and months and years ahead.
Thank you both for joining us, Judie Brown and -- excuse me, Linda Brown...
BROWN: Judie.
MESERVE: It was Judie. I was right the first time. OK.
(LAUGHTER) MESERVE: Congressman Roscoe Bartlett, we will get this right. We are so wrapped up in this debate.
BROWN: Thank you.
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