Second Poll: Americans Don’t Want Tax-Funded Embryonic Stem Cell Research 
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by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
August 24, 2004
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) — A second national poll has confirmed that a majority of Americans do not want their tax dollars to be used to pay for embryonic stem cell research that involves the destruction of days-old unborn children.
The poll, conducted by Wilson Research Strategies, shows 53 percent of respondents opposed "using tax dollars to pay for the kind of stem cell research that requires the killing of human embryos," while only 38 percent support it.
"When people understand that President Bush’s position is to oppose ‘using tax dollars to pay for the kind of stem cell research that requires the killing of human embryos,’ a majority agree with him," said National Right to Life Associate Executive Director Darla St. Martin
The new poll also confirmed that a strong majority of Americans prefer their tax dollars to be used for alternative research using adult stem cells. Such research is considered more ethical and has proven more effective in clinical trials.
Some 74 percent of Americans said that they "support using tax dollars to pay for the kind of stem cell research that does not require the killing of human embryos," while only 20 percent opposed it.
The Wilson poll also found that a strong majority of Americans oppose the view taken by Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry. They want both forms of human cloning — for reproductive and research purposes — to be banned.
According to the poll, 69 percent of Americans want to ban all human cloning while only 24 percent of respondents backed Kerry’s position saying that "cloning to create human embryos for stem cell research which would kill them should be allowed and only cloning for reproduction should be banned."
Kerry has co-sponsored a Senate bill calling for researchers to be able to clone human embryos specifically for the purpose of killing them for their stem cells.
Another poll released on Monday showed similar results.
Conducted by International Communications Research, it showed more Americans don’t want their tax dollars used to pay for embryonic stem cell research, a strong majority support tax-funded adult stem cell research and respondents strongly opposed human cloning for both reproduction and research.
In August 2001, President Bush put forward a federal policy prohibiting taxpayer funding of any new embryonic stem cell research conducted after that point. The Bush administration has spent $190 million on research using adult stem cells.
The Wilson Research Strategies survey was conducted August 16-18, 2004 and was taken among a sample of 1,000 adults nationwide and has a +/- 3.1 percent margin of error.
