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   Bush Will Pair Veto With New Cell Initiative
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   By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
   Published: June 20, 2007
   WASHINGTON, June 19 — President Bush will issue an executive order intended to encourage scientific advances in regenerative medicine, according to senior White House officials who said Mr. Bush would announce the initiative on Wednesday, just as he vetoes a measure promoting embryonic stem cell research.
   
   The embryonic stem cell measure has widespread public support, and the veto would be the second time Mr. Bush has rejected it. By pairing the veto with a new scientific initiative, the White House clearly hopes to blunt the inevitable criticism that Mr. Bush will face from researchers, advocates for patients and politicians, including many in his own party.
   
   In interviews on Tuesday, two senior administration officials said Mr. Bush would direct his health and human services secretary to promote research into producing cells with properties akin to those of human embryonic stem cells, without destroying embryos in the process. Mr. Bush has said embryo destruction is a moral line that he will not cross.
   
   The officials said Mr. Bush wanted the National Institutes of Health to capitalize on recent scientific advances, including a study published this month involving skin cells in mice, that had the potential to sidestep the ethical controversies surrounding embryonic stem cell experiments. The White House has been consulting with scientists in recent weeks on the plan, they said.
   
   “This is the product of a lot of really hard, earnest work on this policy,” said Karl Zinsmeister, a domestic policy adviser to Mr. Bush who helped develop the initiative. “It is a real sincere effort to open up a new scientific solution to a vexing problem.”
   
   But the effort appears largely symbolic — there is no money attached — and some scientists were instantly skeptical. Two leading stem cell researchers, interviewed Tuesday evening, said the recent work was no substitute for embryonic stem cell research. One, Douglas A. Melton of Harvard University, said he had become aware recently that the White House was trying to reach out to some of his colleagues who are pursuing the skin cell research, which has not been replicated in humans.
   
   “It should be pursued just as actively as we pursue human embryonic stem cell research,” Dr. Melton said of the recent studies. “I’m not trying to say there’s nothing to this,” he continued, “but it doesn’t need any special attention from the White House. All we’ve ever asked is let human embryonic stem cell research vie for public funding like all other research.”
   
   Tony Fratto, deputy White House press secretary, said the new initiative was “not about politics. It’s about achieving effective policy.”
   
   Controversy over human embryonic stem cell studies has been a theme in the Bush presidency. The cells are considered valuable because they are “pluripotent,” meaning they can develop into any type of tissue in the body, and might therefore yield treatments and cures. In August 2001, Mr. Bush said he would allow taxpayers to finance the research, but only on stem cell colonies, called lines, that already existed.
   
   Scientists and advocates for patients have been pressing Mr. Bush to lift those restrictions. On Tuesday, two senior administration officials, speaking anonymously because the president had not yet announced his new initiative, summoned a reporter to the White House to share details of the alternative plan.
   
   They said the initiative had three parts.
   
   First, Mr. Bush will an announce that the registry of embryonic stem cell lines eligible for research with federal tax dollars will be reconfigured as the “human pluripotent stem cell registry,” a change intended to allow other types of stem cells to become eligible for federal financing if they have the same properties as embryonic stem cells.
   
   Mr. Bush will also order Michael O. Leavitt, secretary of health and human services, to “support alternative techniques,” the officials said. He will instruct Mr. Leavitt to come up with a plan describing how scientists and researchers who want to get new stem cell lines approved for the registry might do so.
   
   The officials said the White House was particularly encouraged by several new avenues of research, including studies involving stem cells obtained from amniotic fluid, and efforts to extract stem cells from embryos that had been declared “clinically dead.”
   
   But scientists said those studies could be as ethically problematic as the ones Mr. Bush already opposes. John Gearhart, a stem cell researcher at Johns Hopkins University, said no one had figured out when an embryo could be declared clinically dead. The White House officials said it would be up to the health institutes to develop standards.
   
   “It is not an alternative for embryonic stem cell research, because some of these alternative procedures still have ethical issues associated with them,” Dr. Gearhart said, adding, “Who is the god that says the embryo is dead?”
   
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