How Bush Got There

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If nothing else, it was not the outcome that pro-lifers feared most--the compromise developed last month by Republican Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee, the only physician in the Senate, who has been an important Bush adviser on medical and health-care issues. Frist's plan would allow stem cells to be extracted from surplus embryos currently in stock and due for destruction in clinics and labs around the country, a supply that numbers between 100,000 and 1 million. Senate majority leader Tom Daschle, who was mildly critical of Bush's compromise, says he will introduce a broad stem-cell funding bill that could embrace the Frist approach; in the fall Daschle will find out whether Bush has cut him off at the pass.

For months a White House working group led by Karl Rove, the President's top political adviser, had been taking views from all sides on the stem-cell question. Bush turned to the issue seriously three months ago. On May 8 he had lunch with Tommy Thompson, the pro-research Secretary of Health and Human Services. At the time Thompson was fairly certain that Bush would not budge from the position he took during the campaign, when the question had been turned over to aides who handled abortion issues, with predictable results. To Thompson's surprise, Bush insisted that he was looking for a solution somewhere between a total ban and the kind of green light that might encourage the spread of virtual embryo factories. "He made it clear that he was up in the air," says a White House aide.

Thompson was a major advocate of the idea that already existing lines of stem cells might serve as the basis for compromise. He spoke from time to time with James Thomson, the stem-cell pioneer at the University of Wisconsin (see America's Best), who had led him to believe there could be useful research with even a limited number of stem-cell lines.

Bush continued to seek views from everywhere. On an Air Force One flight to Philadelphia a few months ago, G.O.P. moderate Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania presented the case for a bill he had sponsored that would fund and control stem-cell research through the NIH. Bush listened attentively but gave no hint of what he thought. On July 11, Bush met with medical leaders to talk about the patients' bill of rights. Toward the end of the meeting, he broke away from health care to tell his audience that "the issue I am wrestling with is stem cells." Dr. Stan Pelofsky, president of the American Association of Neurological Surgeons, says he told Bush that "the genie was out of the bottle" and that federally funded research with oversight would accomplish the best of both worlds. "You would perhaps get spectacular benefits down the road," he said, "and you would also have governmental oversight." But again Bush gave no indication of which way he was leaning.