Therapeutic Cloning

President Bush probably will not reverse his position on stem cell research, even if it is mostly symbolic (embryos, after all, are destroyed every day in reproductive clinics–perhaps some White House press corps member would ask the president about this someday). The battle over therapeutic cloning, however, goes on in the Senate. And it appears that a ban on such cloning, lacking the support of Senators such as Orrin Hatch and Arlen Specter, probably would not muster a simple majority in the Senate–much less the 60 votes needed to break a filibuster. “The question is whether the Democrats and stem-cell supporters among Republicans can still hang tough,” says one observer, especially when contentious Supreme Court appointments loom in the near future. Some hope that passage of Proposition 71 in California will put pressure on President Bush to change his stem cell policy, a proposition that unfortunately looks unlikely from this president.