Overkill
Editorial
The Texas Observer
6/2/2006 An ambitious group of right-to-lifers is taking credit for preventing construction of a proposed $41 million bioresearch center at the University of Texas Health Science Center in Houston. They thought they were striking a righteous blow in their fight against embryonic stem cell research. As it turns out, they may have killed off a research facility for entirely the wrong reasons. In the final days of the Legislature’s just completed special session, Joe Pojman, the executive director of Texas Alliance for Life, rallied his religious right soldiers to oppose state funding for the proposed facility. The money was tucked into a bill allowing for $1.86 billion in tuition revenue bonds for the state’s universities. Pojman told his legions that scientists might conduct embryonic stem cell research at the Houston facility. Not surprisingly, the prospect of state funding for such research—in which stem cells are taken from discarded embryos—didn’t sit well with the anti-abortion crowd. Pojman’s group made so much noise about the addition of the bioresearch center that the University of Texas System officials withdrew their request for the facility. They were forced to remove it for fear that the revenue bond bill wouldn’t pass, jeopardizing higher education projects for every university system in the state. One problem: Pojman and his activist friends seem to have misunderstood the work that would be done at the proposed bioresearch center. A university spokesman said the facility planned research not on the controversial embryonic stem cells, but rather on adult stem cells—research that doesn’t rely on embryos and that the religious right generally supports. "As I stated from the very beginning of the project concept, only human adult stem cell research—not embryonic stem cells—was planned to be conducted in the biomedical research and education facility at UTHSC," Anthony P. de Bruyn, assistant to the vice chancellor for external relations and assistant director for public affairs for the university system, wrote in an e-mail to the Observer. But a pledge from UT didn’t deter the Texas Alliance for Life and its assault on the proposed bioresearch center. And it certainly wasn’t going to dissuade Pojman from taking some credit for killing the idea. In a May 12 e-mail after UT had withdrawn the proposal, Pojman wrote to his supporters, "After state representatives received a large number of pro-life calls from constituents, an unprecedented pro-life victory occurred yesterday in the Texas House." Maybe a hollow victory.
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