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The New York Times June 15, 2001 PUBLIC INTERESTS Sisyphus in D.C. By GAIL COLLINS Remember back when governors were trendy? Christie Whitman left New Jersey to put a moderate Republican face on the Environmental Protection Agency. Two humiliating rebuffs from the White House later, she's vanished. Twenty years from now, a schlock news show will open up a mysterious vault under the Executive Office Building and discover Mrs. Whitman, typing memos hopefully. Tommy Thompson was going to turn the lumbering Department of Health and Human Services into an innovative 21st-century service center for the upwardly mobile poor — not a safety net, but a trampoline! But lately, he's been complaining about how hard it is to move the bureaucracy. "You know when I was governor, I'd have an idea in the morning and I'd have people working on it in the morning and have it partially implemented by the afternoon," he told The Washington Post. Now that he's in the cabinet, Mr. Thompson has an idea in the morning and by afternoon he will have had lunch. Yesterday Secretary Thompson unveiled a reorganization of the Health Care Financing Administration that was highlighted by a promise of "a new climate of responsiveness" and an announcement that the H.C.F.A. will henceforth be called Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Some of us were sorry to see that Mr. Thompson had dropped the idea of calling it Medicare And Medicaid Administration, or MAMA. Next, the nation will get to see whether the secretary's previous judgment about the importance of stem cell research trumps the White House's judgment about the importance of the anti-abortion lobby. Scientists believe stem cells from human embryos may hold the key to cures for everything from diabetes to Parkinson's disease. "This is the wave of the future," said Dr. Mary Hendrix of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology. It's possible that cells from adults may turn out to be just as useful, but researchers are pushing for as much flexibility as possible. They're supported by the disease organizations, and every celebrity sufferer in the nation is prepared to testify before Congress. The anti-abortion movement, meanwhile, is totally opposed to using embryonic stem cells because the scientists have to destroy the embryo in order to extract them. "We start with the principle that each of these eggs is an individual member of the human species," said Douglas Johnson of the National Right to Life Committee. Researchers get stem cells via fertility clinics, which dispose of the unused fertilized eggs. Mr. Johnson said his organization felt the eggs should be made available for adoption instead. George W. Bush sounded unenthusiastic about stem cell research during the presidential campaign. Perhaps more to the point, there are reports that Karl Rove, his chief political adviser, believes that any failure to crack down could cost the administration Catholic votes in 2004. Mr. Thompson, who is Catholic and pro-life, was nevertheless supportive of stem cell research when he was happily running Wisconsin. A number of members of Congress feel the same way. "Senator Thurmond's daughter has diabetes, but he would be supportive of stem cell research even if that wasn't the case," said a spokeswoman for Strom Thurmond. Parsing the policy decisions of a 98- year-old legislator are somewhat difficult, but the spokeswoman said that Mr. Thurmond, although pro-life, felt that "the advances in medicine that eventually could be achieved outweigh having to use what would be discarded fertilized eggs." One thing you can say for Strom Thurmond — I doubt there's anyone in Washington more interested in advances in medicine. Mr. Thompson, who originally seemed to want to give the researchers some leeway, has gone undercover pending further study and the return of the Great Decider from Europe. But if President Bush opts to oppose the scientists and makes his secretary deliver the bad news, it will be an embarrassment of Christie Whitman proportions. "I've learned the hard way already," Mr. Thompson confessed to a newspaper back in Wisconsin. "You can't be quite as direct as I was as governor." Maybe he and Mrs. Whitman could start a support group. http://www.nytimes.com/2001/06/15/opinion/15COLL.html *********** ---------------------------------------------------------------------- To sign-off Parkinsn send a message to: mailto:[log in to unmask] In the body of the message put: signoff parkinsn