CNN Crossfire - Transcript

CNN

SHOW: CNN CROSSFIRE 16:30

August 9, 2004 Monday

Transcript # 080900CN.V20

SECTION: News; Domestic

LENGTH: 3874 words

HEADLINE: Stem Cell Debate Heats Up in Election '04

GUESTS: Tammy Baldwin, Genevieve Wood

BYLINE: Robert Novak, James Carville, Wolf Blitzer

HIGHLIGHT:
The political lines are drawn over stem cell research: on one side a call for expanded research; on the other, a warning about the implications.

BODY:

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

CARVILLE: President Reagan's death a couple months ago brought a divisive issue to the forefront of the battle for the White House: stem cell research. President Bush placed a partial ban on research three years ago. Senator John Kerry says that's not the way we do things in America. We don't sacrifice science for ideology. Kerry says if he's elected he will lift the ban.

Today we're debating the politics involved in this scientific and ethical issue. In the CROSSFIRE, Democratic Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin who is joining us from Madison, Wisconsin, and here in the studio, Genevieve Wood with the Family Research Council.

NOVAK: All right. Congresswoman Baldwin, today, Laura Bush was speaking on the subject, Mrs. Bush's father died from Alzheimer's, so she has a personal commitment. Let's listen to what she said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LAURA BUSH, FIRST LADY: I hope that stem cell research will yield cures and therapies for a myriad of illness. But I know that embryonic stem cell research is very preliminary right now. And the implication that cures for Alzheimer's are around the corner is just not right.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

NOVAK: And where she gets that information, Ms. Baldwin, is from Michael Shelanski, a stem cell researcher at Columbia University, testifying before Congress earlier this year. And he said: "I think the chance of doing repairs to Alzheimer's brains by putting in stem cells is small. I personally think we're going to get other therapies for Alzheimer's a lot sooner."

What people like you are doing is just politics, isn't it, because there's no scientific evidence that this is any cure for Alzheimer's?

REP. TAMMY BALDWIN (D), WISCONSIN: Well, first of all, I think that as public officials, we owe it to our constituents who have family members suffering from a wide range of illnesses and debilitating illnesses to do all we can to fund science in a scientific way, not an ideological way or based religious ideology.

I think that we owe that to the voters. But secondly, I would disagree strongly with the assessment on where we are with embryonic stem cell research. I represent a district that includes the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where in 1998, Dr. James Thompson first successfully established and sustained a line of embryonic stem cells. They predicted about five or six years ago that it would take about five or six years to get to the stage with this new research where they would be able to contemplate clinical trials.

But the promise is there, it's very exciting what they've been able to do in the laboratory in terms of using these embryonic stem cells to...

NOVAK: The testimony before Congress-Congresswoman, before the Senate earlier this year was quite the contrary. But you're a very skilled politician. And why-can't we just admit that what the Democrats have now is that you're in retreat on abortion, on gun control, on gay marriage. And what you have now is your first-you think you have a wedge issue that you can stick a wedge in between the public and for political benefit. Quite frankly, isn't that what you're up to?

BALDWIN: You know, I meet with constituents all the time who tell me about their children with juvenile diabetes. I know people who-and I have family members who suffer from Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease. And we do have very promising research. I believe that we ought to be providing federal funding and to take the politics out of science, the ideology, the religious beliefs and fund scientific research based on the science.

There are an extraordinary number of academic experts who believe that this research holds incredible promise. Nobody is saying, don't endeavor to fund other research, but we owe it to our constituents to do a full-court press.

CARVILLE: Thank you, ma'am.

Ms. Wood, I'm going to show you a list of names of very prominent liberal Democrats who support this. Nancy Reagan, Betty and Gerald Ford, Orrin Hatch, Trent Lott, John McCain, Lamar Alexander, Arlen Specter, Ted Stevens, John Warner, Kay Bailey Hutchison, no, certainly not Democrats, I'd be damned. I thought-excuse me.

Do you know any Democrats who have this sort of position that we shouldn't fund this kind of research?

GENEVIEVE WOOD, FAMILY RESEARCH COUNCIL: There are plenty of Democrats that...

CARVILLE: Like who?

WOOD: Zell Miller for one, from Georgia, would be an example.

CARVILLE: All right. Well...

WOOD: Now you want to keep going down the list.

(CROSSTALK)

CARVILLE: Yes, all right, Zell Miller. But he supports Bush.

WOOD: James, hold on. This isn't a, how many support this...

CARVILLE: Just give me...

WOOD: This is an issue that's both ethical and...

CARVILLE: I understand.

WOOD: ... as the congresswoman pointed out, it deals with finding cures. I think there are two problems here. This has turned into a political issue which means there's tons of hot air in it. And you guys aren't being out there with all the facts. The facts are the president has not banned stem cell research, even the opening thing that you read there was wrong.

Stem cell research, both embryonic and adult, is legal in this country. The question is whether or not tax dollars are going to fund embryonic, which as Mr. Novak here pointed out, has absolutely not got one cure from embryonic research. Not one.

(CROSSTALK)

WOOD: So financially, that's a bad investment. You have got nothing. And secondly, it's huge ethical problem. Once you get into the business of saying, look, we are going to destroy this human being to help another human being, that's a slippery slope you don't want to go down.

CARVILLE: But again, you can't think of anybody but Zell Miller? That's it. Who's supporting Bush.

WOOD: There are plenty of other Democrats out there.

CARVILLE: Name them. Go ahead. I gave you a list of them.

(CROSSTALK)

CARVILLE: Listen, the nutty position that you people have that started some kind of inflexible thing of a small segment of the Republican Party that you're some kind of ideological narrow band. And I gave you a list of Nancy Reagan, Orrin Hatch...

WOOD: James, but we're not debating Republicans versus Democrats, we're debating...

(CROSSTALK)

WOOD: ... stem cell research. But it seems to be that just because you don't have the facts on your side, you're trying to debate Democrat versus Republican.

CARVILLE: I'm just-giving you all these Democrats (ph).

WOOD: ... debate who's a Democrat and who's a Republican. Why don't you talk about the science?

CARVILLE: I'm talking about all of these people.

NOVAK: All right. Congresswoman Baldwin, you were at the Democratic Convention in Boston. In fact, I listened to your speech. You're a very good speaker.

BALDWIN: Thank you.

NOVAK: I hope you listened to Ron Reagan Jr.'s speech. And I'm going to-in case you have forgotten it, I'm going to give you one amazing passage from that speech, and please listen to it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RON REAGAN, SON OF FMR. PRESIDENT RONALD REAGAN: The nucleus of one of your cells is placed into a donor egg whose own nucleus has been removed. A bit of chemical or electrical stimulation will encourage your cell's nucleus to begin dividing, creating new cells.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

NOVAK: What he's talking about, I'm sure you understand, is the product, is a human embryo no different from the product of sexual reproduction. Now that is human cloning. Are you in favor of human cloning, Ms. Baldwin?

BALDWIN: I'm not. And I'm actually not-I haven't been invited here to speak to that subject. I'm here to speak to the subject of funding-using federal dollars to fund embryonic stem cells. And there are many lives at stake in this debate, the lives of the people across the United States, in fact, across the world who suffer from an enemy's list of ailments. And I think we have to keep them in mind.

But I also think that it's very important to point out that the use of embryos in this context are embryos from in vitro fertilization clinics. These are embryos that would otherwise be destroyed. And so we're not talking about...

NOVAK: Yes, but I would like you to answer my-no, wait a minute, I'd like you to...

CARVILLE: You told me I couldn't interrupt her. Two can play this game. Let this woman talk.

NOVAK: I let her talk before. You're just rude and abusive.

CARVILLE: I'm not rude to anybody.

NOVAK: Yes, you are, you're rude and abusive.

CARVILLE: OK. I'm rude and abusive.

(LAUGHTER)

NOVAK: Anyway, Congresswoman, if you'll pardon the interruption by my rude companion, I just want to ask-you to answer this question. And I think it is essential to this. Ron Reagan went before the Democratic Convention and came out for human cloning. And so, would you say that you would reject what he told the convention about putting the nucleus of the donor egg whose own nucleus has been removed and having this reproduction, you're against that?

BALDWIN: I am. And let me also talk about the safeguards that I think are in place when you have the slippery slope arguments that you and your guest talk about. They had the same sort of arguments when we were talking about the early development of transplant technologies. And what we do in science is not put an end to the science, but we put in road blocks or obstacles. There are a host of ethical oversight that goes on when we're talking about clinical trials, the FDA is involved. What we're talking about...

WOOD: But Congresswoman, you're violating the very first ethical issue here. When you destroy a human embryo to try to do research, you have begun the violations right there...

CARVILLE: Genevieve, let me ask you one question...

BALDWIN: The two points that I reiterated before...

CARVILLE: ... Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson are with you on this, 48 Nobel...

NOVAK: His name is Robertson.

CARVILLE: Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson and Jim Dobson, some other right wing guy out there in Colorado, are for this. Forty-eight Nobel Prize winners agree with Ms. Baldwin. Why should the country follow these nuts and not these scientists?

WOOD: James, you know, this is why...

(CROSSTALK)

WOOD: Let me finish you here. The fact is this is just like polls. Anybody can produce a letter that says we have 100 scientists to say this and 100 scientists that say that. And there are plenty of people who sent letters to the president that are signed who believe that stem cell research using embryos is wrong. The fact is you cannot get away from cloning, which the congresswoman here doesn't want to address, to get cures, which we don't even know if we're ever going to get. It would take millions, likely, of embryos, and you don't have those in IVF clinics.

NOVAK: Next on "Rapidfire", the real reason Ron Reagan junior spoke at the Democratic National Convention, we'll find that out.

And right after the break, Wolf Blitzer tells us about the role of U.S. forces in a battle near one of Iraq's holiest shrines.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: I'm Wolf Blitzer in Washington. Coming up at the top of the hour, rising stakes in Iraq, specifically in the holy city of Najaf. A radical cleric vows to fight to the death.

And important member of the so-called coalition of the willing meets with President Bush. I'll speak live with the Polish prime minister, Marek Belka.

And a stunning look inside the al Qaeda terror network, through what are believed to be al Qaeda's own computers. Those stories, much more only minutes away on "WOLF BLITZER REPORTS".

Now back to CROSSFIRE.

CARVILLE: It's time for "Rapidfire" where we serve up questions furious and fast. We're talking about a hot political issue, stem cell research. Democratic Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin is with us from Madison, Wisconsin. And here in the studio, Genevieve Wood of the Family Research Council.

NOVAK: Congresswoman Baldwin, can't we say that the appearance at the Democratic Convention of Ron Reagan to talk about a subject he knows very little about was a cheap political stunt?

BALDWIN: Well, I do think he knows something about this topic. And I think that it was a poignant reminder that people of all political parties have a stake in the outcome of this issue, and that who you vote for in November will make a difference.

CARVILLE: Are you aware that Ron Reagan's speech was sent to experts at Harvard University Medical School to make sure that everything he said in there was accurate and it was deemed to be accurate?

WOOD: Well, what I'm interested to know is why Ron Reagan, when he did describe cloning, as Bob Novak pointed out, he didn't just call it what it was, cloning. He didn't do it because he knows the majority of Americans overwhelming are opposed to cloning. And the fact is you will have to have human cloning to get the research that these folks are talking about, to try to find these cures that we don't even know that you're going to get.

NOVAK: Congresswoman, on July the fourth, your candidate for president, Senator John Kerry, said, "I believe life does begin at conception," unquote. What does that do to embryonic stem research if life begins at conception?

BALDWIN: Well, again, we have supported in vitro fertilization clinics for years to help childless couples bring babies into this world. But we also know that the embryos currently are discarded. I believe that we are destroying lives by fundamentally putting restrictions on what is possibly a life-saving and life-extending and improving the quality of life technology.

NOVAK: OK. Thank you very much, Congresswoman Baldwin, thank you very much, Genevieve.

NOVAK: President Bush spent some time recently with a well-known television personality. We'll show you what they did, we really will, right after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CARVILLE: All right. This is some television that's all wet. President George W. Bush trying to reel in some votes from the outdoor crowd. Bush and his dog, Barney, is that Barney Fife, were featured last week on Outdoor Life Network, fishing with Roland Martin, the host of "Professional Bass Fishing" who's a friend of the Bush family. The episode was taped at a pond on the president's ranch in Crawford, Texas. And by the way, the president caught a four-pound bass.

NOVAK: Is it true, James, that you spend most of your spare time fishing?

CARVILLE: No. I don't have the patience to do it. But if the president had caught a fish as big as his deficit, he'd have never reeled it in, Bob.

NOVAK: But I can't imagine you fishing. Anything that takes that much patience and thoughtfulness, and that sort of thing.

CARVILLE: I do have a hard time sitting still, you know? And I agree. I'm glad the president caught a fish. From the left, I'm James Carville, that's it for CROSSFIRE.

NOVAK: And the right, I'm Robert Novak. Join us again next time for another edition of CROSSFIRE. "WOLF BLITZER REPORTS" starts right now.