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by Bob Eschliman

The headline alone is repulsive to any committed supporter of former U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum’s presidential campaign: “Santorum and Specter team up on stem-cell bill | The compromise measure would involve creating altered embryos as a source for the material.”

But what was inside the May 6, 2006, article published by The Philadelphia Inquirer would be deal-breaker for just about anyone considering Santorum’s campaign, if only it were entirely true. But, before we take a look at the merits of the article, it’s important to provide some key facts related to this article.

A decade ago, genetic scientists had begun developing therapies for a wide range of maladies that involved the use of “pluripotent stem cell lines.” There was just one catch: these special cell arrangements could only be created by using the cells of human embryos, which destroyed the embryos after they were extracted.

Many Christians found this process morally reprehensible, and rightfully so, because it destroys human life. Santorum, then a member of the U.S. Senate, was among the most vocal opponents to the use of embryonic stem cell research.

Ironically, his chief opponent — and chief supporter of embryonic stem cell research — was the other member of the Pennsylvania delegation, then-Sen. Arlen Specter. He was the chief sponsor of a bill called the Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act, which would provide federal funding for research on leftover embryos donated by couples undergoing fertility treatment.

In 2001, President George W. Bush had pushed a compromise that allowed embryos harvested prior to his executive order banning research that destroyed embryos to still be used. The “logic” behind this was the embryos were no longer “viable” and could not be implanted in a woman’s uterus to produce a human child.

Five years later, Congress was still embroiled in a debate over what could be done with regard to stem cell research. With the senators from Pennsylvania deadlocked on opposite ends of the spectrum on the use of embryonic stem cells, common sense dictated they sit down to see if some sort of middle ground could be achieved.

Mind you, Specter and Santorum were both Republicans, regardless of what any of us have come to know about the former’s political leanings. And, they were both from Pennsylvania. So, it was hardly a shocker that they would sit down to discuss the issue.

To help bridge the divide, the President’s Council on Bioethics had issued a report that outlined what it considered “ethically uncontroversial” means of obtaining the strings of stem cells researchers needed to do their work. Among some of the “uncontroversial” concepts was one in which an embryo is engineered so that it would stop growing at a certain point in its development — in essence, it contained the genetic code of a human being, but it could never reach that full potential.

At the time, this could not be done with adult stem cells. But, the research in that area was limited, at best. So, Santorum authored the Alternative Pluripotent Stem Cell Therapies Enhancement Act, which gained the support of five other Republican senators: Richard Burr of North Carolina, Susan Collins of Maine, James Inhofe of Oklahoma, Jeff Sessions of Alabama, and Specter.

The bill was clearly an attempt to find alternative means to gain the benefits that could be enjoyed from embryonic stem cell research without using cells derived from embryos. In fact, the first provision of the bill makes that more than abundantly clear:

In accordance with section 492, the Secretary [of Health and Human Services] shall conduct and support basic and applied research to develop techniques for the isolation, derivation, production, or testing of stem cells that, like embryonic stem cells, are capable of producing all or almost all of the cell types of the developing body and may result in improved understanding of or treatments for diseases and other adverse health conditions, but are not derived from a human embryo.

The bill also clearly stated it could not be used as a loophole to allow an expansion of existing embryonic stem cell research:

Nothing in this section shall be construed to affect any policy, guideline, or regulation regarding embryonic stem cell research, human cloning by somatic cell nuclear transfer, or any other research not specifically authorized by this section.

The Alternative Pluripotent Stem Cell Therapies Enhancement Act quickly moved out of committee and was passed unanimously (for those of you who, like me, went to public school, that means a 100-0 vote in the Senate) just 10 weeks after it was introduced. In the House, however, there was a little bit of a problem.

July 18, 2006, the very same day the bill passed the Senate unanimously, it was taken up by the House. Considered a “noncontroversial bill,” it was fast-tracked and the rules were suspended to allow a quick vote.

This procedural move requires a two-thirds supermajority to pass, though. The final vote was 273-154 with six representatives voting “present.” It failed to get the necessary supermajority by 16 votes. Sadly, it was never again considered.

In the meantime, the bill Specter championed, the Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act, became a little more famous. It had passed the House, 238-194, nearly a year earlier, but came to a vote in the Senate the same day as Santorum’s bill, passing the upper house by a 63-37 margin.

Santorum voted against that bill. And, it became the first piece of legislation to be vetoed by President Bush, even though it was more than five years since he had taken the Oath of Office. In fact, the bill was modified and brought forward again, passing both houses again, and was vetoed again, in 2007.

That should have been the end of the story.

But, the “Santorum voted for embryonic stem cell research” attack has been used intermittently by surrogates of various Santorum opponents throughout the current campaign cycle. Most often, they point to the story authored by Marie McCullough and Carrie Budoff of The Inquirer.

So, let’s take their piece apart and sort out fact from fiction.

U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum (R., Pa.) yesterday called for federal funding of research that would involve creating an altered human embryo – one that could yield precious stem cells but not implant in a uterus.

FICTION: As you see above, Santorum’s bill makes no mention of “altered human embryos,” a phrase lifted instead from the President’s Council on Bioethics. There isn’t any instance in Santorum’s record — other than this specific article — that indicates he supports the use of “altered human embryos.”

Santorum, who has steadfastly opposed embryonic stem-cell research in the past, joined Sen. Arlen Specter (R., Pa.), a vocal proponent of the research, in introducing a compromise bill on the politically popular issue.

FICTION: While they worked together on the language of the bill, they did not simultaneously introduce the bill. The bill itself was solely authored by Santorum with Specter and others listed as co-sponsors.

The bill would require the National Institutes of Health to find and fund new methods for obtaining human embryonic stem cells in the hope of developing therapies.

FICTION: As you can see above, the language of the bill specifically outlines obtaining calls like human embryonic stem cells, not the stem cells themselves. Some might call this semantics, but if you look at the bill in its entirety, there is no doubt Santorum intended to find alternatives to embryonic stem cells.

Santorum said these methods would not involve destroying embryos and would be “non-controversial,” but acknowledged that controversy may be unavoidable in such an ethically charged, uncharted scientific field.

“There are some who believe that . . . there is controversy around these new entities – these collections of cells – as to whether it is an embryo or not,” Santorum said during a news conference at the University of Pennsylvania. “I feel comfortable, given all of the conversations I have had with a number of bioethicists, that these are appropriate steps to take.”

FACT: These statements were made by Santorum. However, it is probably important to point out Santorum’s conversations were with bioethicists at the National Catholic Bioethics Center, another staunch opponent to embryonic stem cell research. The goal of the conversations was to discern which options presented by the President’s Council on Bioethics would provide research that did not kill human beings.

Embryonic stem cells are “pluripotent” — meaning they give rise to all types of tissues in the body — and theoretically have tremendous potential to repair and regenerate tissues. Pluripotent stem cells exist only briefly in a three-day-old embryo, which is destroyed when the stem cells are removed.

MUDDLED: Stem cells can be pluripotent, meaning they have the potential to become part of one of the three germ layers of the embryonic cell: endoderm (interior stomach lining, gastrointestinal tract, the lungs), mesoderm (muscle, bone, blood, urogenital), or ectoderm (epidermal tissues and nervous system). Pluripotent stem cells can give rise to any fetal or adult cell type. However, alone they cannot develop into a fetal or adult animal because they lack the potential to contribute to extraembryonic tissue, such as the placenta.

However, stem cells also can be totipotent, meaning they can become any kind of embryonic or extraembryonic cell. Pluripotent cells, the type used for stem cell research, are usually extracted from an embryo on the fourth day after fertilization, in a process that destroys the embryo.

It is not yet clear whether concepts outlined in the bioethics council’s report will work. Two of them were tested last year in mice… The Santorum-Specter bill also calls for funding of research on adult stem cells that “are capable of producing all or almost all of the [body's] cell types.”

But adult stem-cell research — which is already funded by the federal government as well as states such as New Jersey and California — has not yet produced pluripotent stem cells.

FACT (AT THE TIME): When the article was written, this was a largely true statement. But, in less than a year, researchers developed a means of creating “induced pluripotent stem cells,” which are adult cells that have been genetically reprogrammed to an embryonic stem cell–like state by being forced to express genes and factors important for maintaining the defining properties of embryonic stem cells.

So, as you can see, the article is more fiction than fact, and even large portions of the fact are muddled, at best. Anyone who uses this article as means to attack Santorum’s “sanctity of life” record exposes his or her own ignorance.