Will Thompson, Bush clash over human embryo research?

The HHS nominee supports it, but right-to-lifers want it stopped.

By Arthur Allen

Dec 29, 2000 | It's well known that Wisconsin Gov. Tommy Thompson, whom President-elect George W. Bush named as secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services on Friday, is opposed to abortion -- a fact that led Planned Parenthood to announce its opposition to his confirmation. Less well known, however, is that Thompson has strongly supported research into cells derived from human embryos -- research endorsed by President Clinton, but denounced by many anti-abortion groups and cautiously opposed by Bush. The looming showdown over embryonic cell research reveals just how complicated abortion and abortion-related issues can become when they collide with scientific research.

Just as President George Bush banned federal funding for research using fetal tissue (a ban Clinton quickly overturned), so right-to-lifers expect Bush to quickly reverse Clinton's endorsement of embryonic stem cell research. Bush has "consistently opposed federal funding for research that requires embryos to be discarded or destroyed," says his spokesman, Scott McClellan.

But banning funding for work involving embryos could be politically thorny. Embryonic stem cell research is particularly promising for diseases that plague seniors, like Parkinson's, and it has many Republican backers in the Senate and elsewhere. And at HHS, Thompson would be in charge of funding the research through the National Institutes of Health.

Thompson has a solid anti-abortion record, but in January 1999 he angered right-to-lifers in his home state when he invited University of Wisconsin biologist James Thomson to his state-of-the-state speech. Thompson introduced Thomson to the Legislature as a "bold pioneer" who is "leading Wisconsin into the next millennium." A few months earlier, Thomson had turned science on its ear by growing embryonic stem cells -- which have the potential to become any human tissue -- in a petri dish. The stem cells came from embryos donated by women at a campus fertility clinic. To get the stem cells, Thomson had had to destroy the embryos.

Although embryo destruction isn't the same as abortion -- the embryos were never implanted in a woman -- many right-to-lifers equate the two. At the time, Mary Matuska of Pro-Life Wisconsin blasted Gov. Thompson for endorsing research that "involves mutilating and destroying human embryos."

Despite her group's criticism, a Wisconsin university official says, Thompson has remained a steadfast supporter of Thomson's work. As governor, he spearheaded funding for several new biology buildings on the Madison campus, and a few weeks ago quietly helped quash legislation to ban fetal and stem cell research in Wisconsin.

All this has somewhat clouded Thompson's bona fides among cultural conservatives in his state. "The Wisconsin right-to-life folks are uneasy about Thompson," says Richard Doerflinger of the Pro-Life Activities secretariat of the U.S. Catholic Bishops Conference. Doerflinger says he's confident that regardless of his HHS choice, Bush will undo the federal guidelines, published in August, that enable funding for the research. "He has already said he disagreed with the [embryo research] guidelines, and we expect him to reverse them," Doerflinger says. "I'm pretty confident that's what he's going to do."

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