The Kansas City Star - McCaskill Backs Stem-Cell Proposal

Kansas City Star: McCaskill Backs Stem-Cell Proposal

January 25, 2006

Kansas City Star
By Steve Kraske

Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Claire McCaskill on Tuesday pledged support for a proposed ballot initiative that would protect research on early human stem cells in Missouri.

"Never in the history of our great nation has America turned her back on groundbreaking research," McCaskill, the state auditor, told reporters outside the Stowers Institute for Medical Research.

The founders of the institute, Jim and Virginia Stowers, have contributed more than $4 million to the initiative campaign.

McCaskill's likely opponent, Republican incumbent Sen. Jim Talent, said later in the day that he had not taken a position on the proposal, which backers are seeking to place on the November ballot.

Talent, though, is co-sponsor of a bill by Sen. Sam Brownback, a Kansas Republican, that would ban human cloning, including embryonic therapeutic cloning that most researchers see as a key to effective early stem-cell study.

McCaskill said Talent's backing of the Brownback bill provided a clear distinction between the candidates.

"It is a very clear choice, whether you want to be behind hope for lifesaving cures, or whether you want to criminalize research that can change people's lives and save people's lives," she said.

McCaskill and Talent have differed on the nomination of Judge Samuel Alito to the U.S. Supreme Court. McCaskill opposes the nomination; Talent favors it.

McCaskill's news conference marked the first time since her campaign kickoff in August that she has gone on the offensive on a particular issue.

The McCaskill campaign "is moving into the next phase," spokesman Tony Wyche said. "There will be other issues that she discusses in the weeks to come, and we'll be traveling all over the state to talk to voters about them."

The stem-cell ballot initiative, sponsored by a group called the Missouri Coalition for Lifesaving Cures, would amend the Missouri Constitution to protect laboratory techniques for cloning human cells to treat disease. But the initiative also would bar efforts to create a fully developed human baby through cloning. The proposal includes criminal penalties for any attempt to implant cloned cells into a woman's uterus.

"This is not about reproducing human life," McCaskill said. "This is about research on human cells."

McCaskill insisted that the issue was not partisan or political.

"This is about right and wrong," she said. "This is about hope versus a jail cell.

"Frankly I think that choice is stark and compelling."

McCaskill said President Bush's domestic eavesdropping program broke the law. The law requires the administration to go to court to get approval for any eavesdropping after the surveillance has occurred, the former Jackson County prosecutor said.

"That is what the law requires," McCaskill said. "That law was not followed. I don't understand why he doesn't want to go to the secret court that's been provided within the framework of the law."

She said she favored electronic surveillance of suspected terrorists. But she added: "If the law is not necessary, why do we need the Patriot Act? If he can do anything he wants to do based on the authorization to go to war, it seems to me we're wasting a lot of time debating the Patriot Act."

On Monday, when Bush was at Kansas State University, he defended the use of the program and said lawyers had concluded that he was within the law when he authorized it.

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