The U.S. House has approved a bill that would clear the way to use more embryonic stem cells for research. Iowa’s only democrat in the House, Leonard Boswell of Des Moines, says he was a cosponsor of the bill. He says, “I just think it’s something we must do. We got the science to do it. We ought to be doing our best to find cures and solutions. So I very strongly support medical research. I’m seeking ways to find some breakthroughs. We seem like we’re just there, we just got to keep it up.” President Bush threatens to veto the bill saying the government shouldn’t be funding research that, in his words, “destroys life in order to save life.” Boswell says there’s a lot of disagreement in the republican caucus over the issue but he doesn’t know if there’s enough to get the bill through. He says there’s speculation there’s not enough republican support to override a presidential veto. He says, “You know people out there, they’re desperate to find a solution to cancer, diabetes a whole, a whole number of things. They’re probably gonna feel like there was a chance to take a step forward and one person just decided not to let it happen. If he does that, somebody’s giving him some pretty bad advice in my opinion.” Iowa Congressman Steve King, a republican from Kiron, is urging his colleagues to reject the bill the House passed to support a different bill. King says the other bill used “Research that shows true promise for disease victims and raises no ethical questions, and to oppose taxpayer funding of research that requires the killing of human embryos and has yielded no results.” Iowa Senator Tom Harkin, a democrat, today called on the Senate majority leader to take up the bill he cosponsored that he says is identical to the bill passed in the U.S. House. Harkin says the President’s approach is a “dead end.”
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