How Thompson, Baldwin differ on stem cell research

Madison - The Nobel Prize in medicine last week went for research offering a possible alternative to embryonic stem cells, but voters attuned to questions of medical research and morality can still consider their alternatives in candidates.

President Barack Obama and U.S. Senate candidate Tammy Baldwin support federal funding for the full range of stem cell research going on in labs like those at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney hasn't directly said, while a spokeswoman for U.S. Senate candidate Tommy Thompson, the Republican challenging Baldwin, said he supports federal funding for research on some embryonic stem cell lines but not others.

The issue has gotten less attention nationally this election season but is still important in Wisconsin, the birthplace of human embryonic stem cell research and a leader in the study of how the tissues in our bodies grow. Embryonic stem cell research holds great promise to cure many diseases but is controversial because stem cell lines require the destruction of embryos already discarded by fertility clinics.

Conservative groups are confident that both Romney and Thompson would at least roll back Obama's expansion of federal funding for embryonic stem cells.

"The way we read (a Romney campaign) statement is he's not going to outlaw embryonic stem cells research, but he believes federal money should be put into the moral alternatives," said Barbara Lyons, executive director of Wisconsin Right to Life.

Of Thompson, Lyons said, "Tommy Thompson is opposed to federal funding of research that harms or destroys human embryos."

Human embryonic stem cells, first isolated by James Thomson of UW in 1998, drew attention for their ability to turn into any tissue in the human body but also for the controversy over how embryonic stem cell lines are created. Then in 2007, both Thomson and last week's Nobel Prize winner, Shinya Yamanaka, wowed the science world with their separate work on induced pluripotent stem cells, which behave similarly to embryonic stem cells but don't require the destruction of embryos.

The Romney campaign didn't directly answer a question from the Journal Sentinel on whether as president he would pull back federal funding for embryonic stem cells.

"He believes that, instead, federal funding should be limited to research involving adult stem cells or alternate methods that do not require embryo farming or cloning," the Romney campaign said in a statement that did not spell out the "alternate methods."

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How Thompson, Baldwin differ on stem cell research