Hats off to Hatch.

Byline: The Register-Guard

Those who believe human life begins in a Petri dish will not be swayed by Sen. Orrin Hatch's sponsorship of a bill to expand federal funding of embryonic stem cell research. But the Utah Republican's impeccable anti-abortion credentials should give other abortion opponents ample reason to remain open-minded about the enormous therapeutic potential of strictly controlled research using cells from human embryos.

Hatch, joined by fellow Republican Sen. Arlen Specter and Democratic Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Ted Kennedy, introduced the Human Cloning Ban and Stem Cell Research Protection Act of 2005 on Thursday. The bill represents a thoughtful attempt to set ethical guidelines that would permit the therapeutic cell cloning necessary for disease research while banning any procedures aimed at producing a cloned human child. Researchers who attempted reproductive cloning would be committing a crime punishable by up to 10 years in prison and a $1 million fine.

The bill also requires the informed consent of donors, prohibits the purchase or sale of unfertilized eggs and limits the time research can be done on created embryos to 14 days. Within the first 14 days, an embryo shows no human qualities and cannot survive on its own.

So much has changed since President Bush's unfortunate 2001 decision to drastically limit federally funded stem cell research that congressional action is urgently needed. The few stem cell lines Bush approved for federal funding quickly proved inadequate for ongoing research because of a lack of genetic variety or potential contamination.

As a result, states have taken matters into their own hands, creating a patchwork of conflicting laws, fierce competition for funding and a brain drain of talented researchers. In November, California voters overwhelmingly approved a measure allowing the state to borrow $3 billion to fund human embryonic stem cell research over 10 years.

The California initiative gener- ated nationwide interest from biomedical researchers and spawned similar efforts in New Jersey, Wisconsin and Massachusetts. At the opposite end of the spectrum, five states have enacted legislation specifically prohibiting embryonic stem cell research, and 20 other states are debating whether to join or oppose stem cell research efforts.

The stem cell debate is complex and can be confusing. There are essentially two types of stem cells - adult and embryonic. Both types have the ability to make identical copies of themselves and to divide into other specialized types of cells. Adult stem cells, which can be extracted from bone marrow, aren't as versatile as embryonic cells, which can differentiate into almost any type of cell in the human body.

Adult stem cell research has been happening for years and is responsible for most of the breakthroughs that have occurred to date. But scientists stress that embryonic stem cells have much greater potential for new clinical discoveries. For one thing, embryonic stem cells can be grown indefinitely in culture, but adult stem cells cannot.

The controversy over embryonic stem cell research arises because the fertilized embryos are destroyed when the stem cells are removed. This occurs at the blastocyst stage, about 96 hours after fertilization. Some anti-abortion activists equate the destruction of 4-day-old blastocysts produced in the laboratory with abortion.

But even ardent abortion opponents such as Hatch have conceded that embryos grown in vitro do not constitute a pregnancy. Hatch and others recognize that most Americans are uncomfortable with extreme definitions of human life and favor sensible guidelines allowing potentially life-saving embryonic stem cell research to receive federal funding.

Hatch's support for carefully controlled embryonic stem cell research points the way toward compromise. It's time for Congress to move forward on this vitally important health issue.