http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20010811/pl/stemcell_bush_pox_dc_1.html

 

Saturday August 11 10:18 PM ET

Bush Says His Stem Cell Policy Has Precedent

Photos Reuters Photo

NEW YORK (Reuters) - President Bush (news - web sites), defending his policy on stem-cell research funding, said on Sunday that chickenpox vaccine provided an ethical precedent for the medical use of human embryos.

``While it is unethical to end life in medical research, it is ethical to benefit from research where life and death decisions have already been made,'' Bush said in an article in the Sunday edition of the New York Times.

``There is a precedent. The only licensed live chickenpox vaccine used in the United States was developed, in part, from cells derived from research involving human embryos,'' he said.

Bush wrote that researchers first grew the virus in embryonic lung cells which were later cloned.

``Many ethical and religious leaders agree that even if the history of this vaccine raises ethical questions, its current use does not,'' he said.

The New York Times article was Bush's second exposition of his policy in as many days, following his weekly radio address on Saturday in which he said stem-cell research offered ``great promise and great peril''.

Bush on Thursday night authorized federal funding on stem-cell research but limited it to existing stem-cell ``lines'' created from embryos destroyed in the process, meaning the life and death decision on them has already been made.

He refused to allow harvesting of stem cells from 100,000 embryos frozen at fertility clinics, as scientists would prefer. Scientists believe stem cells offer hope for cures to diseases like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's.

With the decision, Bush sought a middle ground between those who want as much stem-cell research as possible and those opposed to any research that destroys human embryos.

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