Boston, Mass., Jun 18, 2007 / 07:58 am
Lawmakers in Washington must move beyond partisan politics and offer support for stem-cell research techniques that bring science and ethics together to promote, protect and save life, said former Mass. governor Mitt Romney.
Romney commented on the passage of a bill in Congress last week that would use tax dollars to fund embryonic stem-cell research. The research is controversial because the process requires the killing of embryos.
Romney, a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, suggested that the bill, pushed by a Democratic-controlled Congress, only exacerbates the controversy given that alternative techniques have been developed that do not require the use of embryos at all.
Romney noted that researchers in Massachusetts announced on Wednesday that they managed to transform regular skin cells into the equivalent of embryonic stem cells in mice.