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WASHINGTON - In a move that may put him at odds with Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt, Utah Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch joined a bipartisan group of lawmakers seeking to overturn President Bush's limits on stem-cell research Wednesday.
"There is no greater way to promote life than to find a way to defeat untimely death and disease," Hatch said in a statement with other co-sponsors of legislation to expand the number of stem-cell lines eligible for federally funded research.
Other Republican senators signing on to the bill included Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania and Gordon Smith of Oregon. Hatch, Smith and Leavitt are members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which has not taken a position on the ethics or morality of stem-cell research.
The Bush administration currently prohibits federal research on human embryonic stem-cell lines that were derived after August 9, 2001. Critics of the policy say those early lines do not have biological diversity, are contaminated and are useless for research into possible cures.
Meanwhile, more than 100 new lines have been derived but are ineligible for funding because of the Bush ban, which has the support of anti-abortion groups.
Stem-cell research is administered by the National Institutes of Health, part of the Department of Health and Human Services, which is now headed by Leavitt, the former Utah governor. During Leavitt's ceremonial swearing-in Friday, Bush reiterated the administration's staunch opposition to what he has labeled "human embryo farms" to expand stem-cell research.
"We must never sanction the creation of life only to destroy it," the president said.
In an interview, Hatch stopped short of directly criticizing Bush's policy, saying the president "deserves some credit" for leading the only administration to put up money for stem-cell research.
But, ''I don't think he's had the opportunity to spend the time on it that I have and has run into a political morass because of the sincere feelings of some that it should not go forward," he said.
Hatch dismisses claims his support of stem-cell research runs counter to the ''pro-life'' agenda, arguing the research uses fertilized eggs from in-vitro clinics that are going to be discarded and that the eggs "cannot be a human being until they are implanted in a mother's womb."
Hatch said Wednesday that he plans to soon reintroduce legislation he co-sponsored last year with Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., to allow a form of cloning known as somatic cell nuclear transfer under strict ethical guidelines. And he will join other lawmakers in introducing legislation to impose criminal penalties on "anyone trying to bring about the birth of a cloned baby."
Besides the promise of cures for some of society's most debilitating diseases, Hatch said the suite of new proposed laws is needed to prevent Utah's biotech and genetic experts from migrating to California, where voters have approved a state-funded stem-cell-research program.
"We have the greatest mouse stem-cell researcher in the world at the University of Utah in Mario Capecchi and I don't want to lose him," said Hatch. "We have the genealogical research that allows him to go back in time and I don't think he wants to lose that. We've got to keep working on this."