http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000103&sid=anWRnkrT98Ss&refer=usMarch 22 (Bloomberg) -- In 2002, when he was an 18-year-old freshman at the U.S. Air Force Academy, Jeff McCaffrey was paralyzed from the waist down in a car accident. A Catholic and opponent of abortion, McCaffrey is now an ardent campaigner for research using stem cells from human embryos.
``I have no moral qualms,'' said McCaffrey. ``It is simply cells,'' he said in a telephone interview. ``Scientists can make those stem cells that are blank turn into spinal cells and heal my injury.''
People such as McCaffrey present a quandary for Republicans, who are split over whether to allow federal funding for research on new stem cells from human embryos. Senate Democrats plan to force a debate on the issue in the coming months and use it in the campaign leading up to the November elections.
Republicans plan their own debate over bioethics in an effort to limit the damage from letting stem cells become ``a wedge issue that divides Republicans,'' Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said in an interview.
Republicans in the past often have benefited from such ``wedge issues'' -- subjects that divide Democrats' constituencies, such as gun control, abortion and gay marriage. Stem-cell research may be one of the first wedge issues that hurts Republicans more because of President George W. Bush's stand against it; polls show a majority of the public disagrees with him.
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