Bush Backs Partial Stem Cell Funding

Patient advocates and researchers sounded relieved that Bush had not imposed a ban, but were disappointed by the limits. "We are saddened that President Bush failed the leadership test and cast a shadow on the hopes of patients and the promise of science," said Dan Perry of the Alliance for Aging Research. He leads the patient-advocacy Coalition for Urgent Research.

Conservative Republicans and anti-abortion groups praised Bush for deciding not to pay for stem cell studies that involve the creation of new embryos for research, although they said they feared the president had created a precedent that would prove difficult to restrict in the future. "This initial research may ultimately serve as a pretext for vastly expanded research that does require the destruction of new living embryos," said House Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-Tex.)

Stem cells can develop into many other types of tissue, which scientists believe could create new treatments for diabetes, Parkinson's and Alzheimer's diseases, and other afflictions. Researchers consider stem cells from embryos to be especially promising, although similar cells can be found in some adult tissues.

Bush said that, as he sorted through the intricacies of the choices he faced, he was guided primarily by two questions: "First, are these frozen embryos life and, therefore, something precious to be protected. And second, if they're going to be destroyed anyway, shouldn't they be used for a greater good, for research that has the potential to save and improve other lives."

"At its core," the president said, "this issue forces us to confront fundamental questions about the beginning of life and the ends of science."

The new policy will replace guidelines issued by the National Institutes of Health a year ago under the Clinton administration that would have allowed the first federal subsidies of human embryo cell research. Those rules did not permit the use of federal funds to destroy human embryos directly, but it would have allowed the government to sponsor studies involving stem cells taken from embryos by privately financed researchers. The policy said the embryos had to be slated for destruction at fertility clinics, frozen and used in research with donors' consent.

Bush's ground rules differ from the previous guidelines, which never went into effect, because they will permit research only on existing colonies of stem cells. The president said that 60 such colonies, or "lines," exist -- many more than scientists acknowledge.

The president also said he would create a presidential council to oversee such research and named as its chairman Leon Kass, a conservative bioethicist from the University of Chicago.

Sean Tipton of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine said the group was "concerned about the nature and the composition of the task force." Kass was an early opponent of in vitro fertilization "and has not shown a lot of signs of movement since then," Tipton said.

In an interview after Bush's speech, Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy G. Thompson, who had urged the president to allow subsidies during the administration's internal deliberations, said the panel will "review all of the ethical questions around stem cell lines and make advisory opinions."

NIH will review grant applications from scientists starting next year. During the past several weeks, NIH has contacted all the companies, organizations and individuals in the United States and other countries that possess the existing colonies of stem cells and secured promises to share their cells with government-subsidized researchers, Thompson said. It remained unclear how much money would be spent, but Thompson suggested it would be "several million" dollars.

A senior administration official said Bush's direction was clear after an Oval Office meeting with two bioethicists a few weeks ago. Bush signaled early this week that he had made a decision and was simply contemplating when and how to announce it.

Staff writers David Brown, Helen Dewar and Juliet Eilperin contributed to this report.