US Representatives Michael Castle (Republican, Delaware) and Diana DeGette (Democrat, Colorado) introduced legislation on Tuesday that would codify into law President Obama’s executive order allowing federal funding of embryonic stem cell research. The two lawmakers had previously introduced a pair of similar bills, in 2006 and 2007, but former President George W. Bush vetoed both of these after they had been approved by Congress. Could third time be the charm for Castle and DeGette? Peter Granitz spoke to Castle today to find out how quickly he expects the bill to make its way to Obama’s desk.
Do you think that such a contentious issue as embryonic stem cell research will really move forward this year, given the upcoming mid-term elections in November?
It’s a contentious issue, but the bill really sort of incorporates a lot of the concepts that were in the President’s executive order — things that are already happening. And [this legislation] provides some protection against practices that would be questionable in terms of being able to purchase stem cells, etc. My sense is that there might be reason to move forward. We have passed this legislation in previous Congresses and now with the White House being supportive my sense is that we’ll probably be able to move forward.
Now that you’re resigning your seat in the House to run in the special election to fill Joe Biden’s seat, if elected, do you plan to continue championing stem cell legislation in the Senate?
There are other champions of it over there. I would certainly continue to advocate the use of embryonic stem cells until such time as they are proven to be completely unneeded in this process. There have been a lot of advances in terms of reprogramming adult cells and I’d love to see this issue go away. But having said that, the experts still say that there are differences in the reprogrammed cells and the embryonic stem cells, and for that reason we should not not move forward.
Health care reform and job creation are clearly top of the agenda right now in the Senate. What are the chances of this bill ever seeing the light of day?
The Senate is very backed up on key legislation and we’re getting into the middle of an election year, so Lord only knows if they would actually get to something if we got it done in the House. But on the other hand, this is not a new issue, and it’s an issue that could be handled fairly rapidly.
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