In a wide-ranging White House news conference, Obama also said he had no plans for a fresh stimulus package, hoping to give time to see the impact of the 787-billion-dollar economic plan approved shortly after he took office.

"We're still not at actual recovery yet. So I anticipate that this is going to be a difficult, difficult year," Obama said.

"I think it's pretty clear now that unemployment will end up going over 10 percent," he said, explaining it would take time for an economic recovery to translate into job growth.

The jobless rate in the world's largest economy surged to 9.4 percent in May, with the figure shooting to a record high 11.5 percent in the most populous state of California.

"What's incredible to me is how resilient the American people have been and how they are still more optimistic than the facts alone would justify," said Obama, who has largely held onto his high popularity ratings.

"This is more about my family and my surgical career," Gupta told CNN's "Larry King Live."

The neurosurgeon said he would likely have had to give up practicing had he taken the job as the nation's top doctor.

In addition, the 39-year-old and his wife are expecting their third daughter any time, and the government job would have meant long periods away from his family, he said.

"I think, for me, it really came down to a sense of timing more than anything else," he said. "I just didn't feel I should do that now."

The discovery, published in Tuesday's issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, could also point to mutations that might turn ordinary flu into a dangerous pandemic strain. Yoshihiro Kawaoka of the University of Wisconsin and colleagues at the Universities of Kobe and Tokyo in Japan used ferrets, which develop flu in ways very similar to humans. Usually flu causes an upper respiratory infection affecting the nose and throat, as well as so-called systemic illness causing fever, muscle aches and weakness. But some people become seriously ill and develop pneumonia. Sometimes bacteria cause the pneumonia and sometimes flu does it directly.

During pandemics, such as in 1918, a new and more dangerous flu strain emerges. "The 1918 influenza pandemic was the most devastating outbreak of infectious disease in human history, accounting for about 50 million deaths worldwide," Kawaoka's team wrote. It killed 2.5 percent of victims, compared to fewer than 1 percent during most annual flu epidemics. Autopsies showed many of the victims, often otherwise healthy young adults, died of severe pneumonia. "We wanted to know why the 1918 flu caused severe pneumonia," Kawaoka said in a statement.

They painstakingly substituted single genes from the 1918 virus into modern flu viruses and, one after another, they acted like garden-variety flu, infecting only the upper respiratory tract. But a complex of three genes helped to make the virus live and reproduce deep in the lungs. The three genes -- called PA, PB1, and PB2 -- along with a 1918 version of the nucleoprotein or NP gene, made modern seasonal flu kill ferrets in much the same way as the original 1918 flu, Kawaoka's team found.

Most flu experts agree that a pandemic of influenza will almost certainly strike again. No one knows when or what strain it will be but one big suspect now is the H5N1 avian influenza virus. H5N1 is circulating among poultry in Asia, Europe and parts of Africa. It rarely affects humans but has killed 247 of the 391 people infected since 2003. A few mutations would make it into a pandemic strain that could kill millions globally within a few months.

Yet another application is in medicine, where synthetic DNA is allowing bacteria and yeast to produce the malaria drug artemisinin far more efficiently than it is made in plants, its natural source. Bugs such as these will seem quaint, scientists say, once fully synthetic organisms are brought on line to work 24/7 on a range of tasks, from industrial production to chemical cleanups. But the prospect of a flourishing synbio economy has many wondering who will own the valuable rights to that life.

In the past year, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has been flooded with aggressive synthetic-biology claims. Some of Venter's applications, in particular, "are breathtaking in their scope," said Knight. And with Venter's company openly hoping to develop "an operating system for biologically-based software," some fear it is seeking synthetic hegemony. "We've asked our patent lawyers to be reasonable and not to be overreaching," Venter said. But competitors such as DuPont, he said, "have just blanketed the field with patent applications."

Safety concerns also loom large. Already a few scientists have made viruses from scratch. The pending ability to make bacteria -- which, unlike viruses, can live and reproduce in the environment outside of a living body -- raises new concerns about contamination, contagion and the potential for mischief. "Ultimately synthetic biology means cheaper and widely accessible tools to build bioweapons, virulent pathogens and artificial organisms that could pose grave threats to people and the planet," concluded a recent report by the Ottawa-based ETC Group, one of dozens of advocacy groups that want a ban on releasing synthetic organisms pending wider societal debate and regulation. "The danger is not just bio-terror but bio-error," the report says. Many scientists say the threat has been overblown. Venter notes that his synthetic genomes are spiked with special genes that make the microbes dependent on a rare nutrient not available in nature. And Pierce, of DuPont, says the company's bugs are too spoiled to survive outdoors.

"They are designed to grow in a cosseted environment with very high food levels," Pierce said. "You throw this guy out on the ground, he just can't compete. He's toast." "We've heard that before," said Jim Thomas, ETC Group's program manager, noting that genes engineered into crops have often found their way into other plants despite assurances to the contrary. "The fact is, you can build viruses, and soon bacteria, from downloaded instructions on the Internet," Thomas said. "Where's the governance and oversight?"

Her testimony before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee had much less information on health risks than a much longer draft version Gerberding submitted to the White House Office of Management and Budget for review in advance of her appearance. "It was eviscerated," said a CDC official, familiar with both versions, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the review process.

The official said that while it is customary for testimony to be changed in a White House review, these changes were particularly "heavy-handed." The White House office had no comment on Gerberding's testimony. Gerberding could not be reached late Tuesday for comment.

The deletions directed by the White House included details on how many people might be adversely affected because of increased warming and the scientific basis for some of the CDC's analysis on what kinds of diseases might be spread in a warmer climate and rising sea levels, according to another official who had seen the original version. Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), the committee chairwoman, said the Bush administration "should immediately release Dr. Gerberding's full, uncut statement, because the public has a right to know all the facts about the serious threats posed by global warming."

The Food and Drug Administration has known for years about contamination problems at a Georgia peanut butter plant and on California spinach farms that led to disease outbreaks that killed three people, sickened hundreds, and forced one of the biggest product recalls in U.S. history, documents and interviews show. Overwhelmed by huge growth in the number of food processors and imports, however, the agency took only limited steps to address the problems and relied on producers to police themselves, according to agency documents. Congressional critics and consumer advocates said both episodes show that the agency is incapable of adequately protecting the safety of the food supply.

*****

Last week, the FDA notified California state health officials that hogs on a farm in the state had likely eaten feed laced with melamine, an industrial chemical blamed for the deaths of dozens of pets in recent weeks. Officials are trying to determine whether the chemical's presence in the hogs represents a threat to humans. Pork from animals raised on the farm has been recalled. The FDA has said its inspectors probably would not have found the contaminated food before problems arose. The tainted additive caused a recall of more than 100 different brands of pet food.

The outbreaks point to a need to change the way the agency does business, said Robert E. Brackett, director of the FDA's food-safety arm, which is responsible for safeguarding 80 percent of the nation's food supply. "We have 60,000 to 80,000 facilities that we're responsible for in any given year," Brackett said. Explosive growth in the number of processors and the amount of imported foods means that manufacturers "have to build safety into their products rather than us chasing after them," Brackett said. "We have to get out of the 1950s paradigm."

Tomorrow, a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee will hold a hearing on the unprecedented spate of recalls. "This administration does not like regulation, this administration does not like spending money, and it has a hostility toward government. The poisonous result is that a program like the FDA is going to suffer at every turn of the road," said Rep. John D. Dingell (D-Mich.), chairman of the full House committee. Dingell is considering introducing legislation to boost the agency's accountability, regulatory authority and budget.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg acknowledged as much moments later, when she solemnly read a statement from the bench explaining her dissent.

The majority opinion, she told a stone-silent courtroom, "cannot be understood as anything other than an effort to chip away at a right declared again and again by this court -- and with increasing comprehension of its centrality to women's lives."

The federal law bans a procedure used in a limited number of midterm abortions, but the court's decision will probably have an immediate effect on U.S. politics and lawmaking.

*****

The decision is especially significant because the court had rejected in 2000 a Nebraska law aimed at banning what opponents call "partial birth" abortion, because it lacked an exception for preserving the health of the woman. That five-member majority included all of yesterday's dissenters, plus then-Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. With Alito taking her place and approving the federal ban, the majority has shifted. Antiabortion activists now see the makings of a court they have longed for. "It is just a matter of time before the infamous Roe v. Wade . . . will also be struck down by the court," predicted Roberta Combs, president of the Christian Coalition of America. "The impact of Sandra Day O'Connor's retirement is painfully clear," said Nancy Northrup, president of the Center for Reproductive Rights, adding: "It took just a year for this new court to overturn three decades of established constitutional law."

Meanwhile, the chairman of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee said the budget for veterans' health care has not grown enough to cope with the number of service members being wounded in combat, or to handle their disability claims. Senator Daniel Akaka, Democrat of Hawaii, said the budget pinch meant that veterans’ affairs offices were short-staffed, leading to delays in processing new claims.

As a result, he said, federal agencies were "two months short of the goal" of processing claims within 120 days. Senator Jon Tester, Democrat of Montana, said that there were too few doctors, nurses and other health workers in the system to handle the influx of war wounded, "and we are burning them out." He, too, called for more funds for treating and assisting veterans.

Mr. Dole, a former Republican senator and presidential candidate, was himself grievously wounded in World War II. Ms. Shalala is a former secretary of Health and Humans Services. The commission is being set up to investigate how wounded soldiers are treated and helped with the transition back to civil society. "If we come up with good suggestions, we could change the system over the next 30 years," Mr. Dole said.

He said that while American military and veterans' hospitals now generally provide high quality inpatient treatment, they do not do as well with outpatient and transitional care. "It's when we move them out that's the problem," he said.

The commission was formed in the wake of revelations about unsanitary living conditions, treatment lapses and bureaucratic failings at Walter Reed Medical Center in Washington, one of the nation's premier military hospitals. Soldiers who were treated there have told of being discharged only a few days after suffering serious wounds, and of having to fight their way through a confusing and unresponsive bureaucracy to get the outpatient treatment they needed.

The findings by the nonprofit research group Commonwealth Fund come as more U.S. employers have stopped offering workers health insurance -- with runaway medical costs the most frequently cited reason. There were 46.6 million uninsured Americans last year, or nearly 16 percent of the population, according to U.S. Census Bureau figures which represented a slight gain from a year earlier. Among the fastest-growing segments of the newly uninsured were those with jobs.

For employers still providing health insurance, more are promoting higher-deductible plans, which is leading to burdensome medical and credit-card debt, the Commonwealth Fund study found. "People are being squeezed as employer coverage is either not available or contains very high out-of-pocket costs," said Karen Davis, president of the Commonwealth Fund. "The alternative of last resort -- to seek individual health insurance -- is not a safe haven," she told Reuters. For those who need to get health insurance on their own, the high cost is a significant barrier, Commonwealth found.

*****

In all, 89 percent of people seeking to buy individual health insurance in the last three years did not do so, the study said. One in five people were turned down or charged a higher premium for individual insurance because of an existing medical condition. Nearly 60 percent of those who sought individual health insurance did not buy it because they could not afford it.

*****

The share of U.S. employers offering health insurance has been slipping, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. Roughly 60 percent offered health coverage during 2005, down from 63 percent in 2004 and 69 percent in 2000.

*****

In lieu of dropping health coverage altogether, some employers are offering new higher-deductible plans, which are typically paired with tax-favored savings accounts created specifically to pay health expenses. Proponents call this approach "consumer-directed," because patients have more responsibility for paying costs and have incentives to exert more control over their care. But the study found that patients with these plans are nearly twice as likely to skip prescriptions or fail to follow up with their doctors than those with traditional insurance. "The problem is that cost-sharing is a blunt instrument," Davis said. "You pay less, but you get less care. And sometimes it is less essential care." Workers in high-deductible plans were more than twice as likely to take on credit-card debt to pay medical bills than those in traditional plans, the study said.

The changes, the biggest since the current payment system was adopted in 1983, are meant to improve the accuracy of payment rates. But doctors, hospitals and patient groups say the effects could be devastating. Federal officials said that biases and distortions in the current system had created financial incentives for hospitals to treat certain patients, on whom they could make money, and to avoid others, who were less profitable.

*****

Medicare pays more than $125 billion a year to nearly 5,000 hospitals. The new plan is not expected to save money, but will shift around billions of dollars, creating clear winners and losers. The effects will ripple through the health care system because many private insurers and state Medicaid programs follow Medicare’s example. Dr. Alan D. Guerci, president of St. Francis Hospital in Roslyn, N.Y., said the new formula would cut Medicare payments to his hospital by $21 million, or 12 percent. "It will significantly reduce payments for cardiac care and will force many hospitals to reduce the number of cardiac procedures they perform," Dr. Guerci said.

A coalition of patient organizations, including the Parkinson’s Action Network and the Society for Women’s Health Research, told the government in a letter that the new system "could have a devastating impact on payment for critical treatments for seriously ill patients, with reimbursement for some essential procedures cut as much as 30 percent." The basic payment for surgery to open clogged arteries, by inserting a drug-coated wire mesh stent, would be cut by 33 percent, to $7,590. The payment for implanting a defibrillator, like the one used by Vice President Dick Cheney, would be cut 23 percent, to $22,000, while the payment for hip and knee replacements would be reduced 10 percent, to $14,500.

"This is a bit of a catastrophe," said Dr. Herbert Pardes, president of NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital. In its zeal to cut the profits of doctor-owned specialty hospitals, including cardiac hospitals, Dr. Pardes said, the government has inadvertently hit many nonprofit academic medical centers.

*****

Without a delay, Mr. Slotnik said, hospitals can expect to see a 35 percent reduction in Medicare payments for stroke patients treated with clot-busting drugs. The basic payment for such cases is now $11,578. It is no surprise that the Greater New York Hospital Association, which represents many teaching hospitals in a high-cost area, objects to the new system. But hospitals in North Dakota are also concerned. Arnold R. Thomas, president of the North Dakota Healthcare Association, said the new system would cause "radical shifts" of money among the state’s 52 hospitals. "The effects would be rather random and inequitable," Mr. Arnold said. When hospitals lose Medicare revenue, they often seek higher reimbursement from private insurers. J. Brian Munroe, vice president of WellPoint, one of the largest private plans, said he feared that the Medicare changes "will introduce a significant amount of disruption to the commercial health insurance marketplace, driving up health care costs and causing marketplace confusion."

[T]he per-person amounts approved for possession by anyone 18 or older could easily turn any college party into an all-nighter: half a gram of coke, a couple of Ecstasy pills, several doses of LSD, a few marijuana joints, a spoonful of heroin, 5 grams of opium and more than 2 pounds of peyote, the hallucinogenic cactus. The law would be among the most permissive in the world, putting Mexico in the company of the Netherlands. Critics, including U.S. drug policy officials, already are worrying that it will spur a domestic addiction problem and make Mexico a narco-tourism destination. Even the Netherlands, famous for coffeehouses that sell small quantities of potent marijuana and hashish, forbids the possession and sale of narcotics. Colombia allows personal use of marijuana, cocaine and heroin, but not LSD or PCP.

Selling drugs or using them in public still would be a crime in Mexico. Anyone possessing drugs still could be held for questioning by police, and each state could impose fines even on the permitted quantities, the bill stipulates. But it includes no imprisonment penalties. Lawmakers who voted for decriminalization, some of whom have expressed surprise over the details of the bill, said it would for the first time empower local police to make drug arrests and allow law enforcement in general to focus on intercepting large drug shipments and major traffickers. The bill also would stiffen penalties for selling drugs near schools and authorize state and local police to detain users to check whether amounts were over the legal limit.

"The law constitutes an important step forward by the Mexican state in its battle against drug dealing," said Eduardo Medina Mora, secretary of public security and Mexico's top law enforcement officer. Presidential spokesman Ruben Aguilar said Tuesday that Fox would sign the measure, calling it an important tool in the fight against drug trafficking. Fox has avoided public comments on the bill and did not attend a news conference about it Tuesday.

Since the vote by Congress last week, lawmakers have said they are unsure who amended the bill, originally aimed at legalizing possession of small quantities of drugs among addicts, to make it apply to all "consumers." The Bush administration is refraining from public criticism of Mexico. But in private meetings Monday with Mexican officials in Washington, U.S. officials tried to discourage passage of the law, U.S. Embassy officials here said.

"Today the United States Senate is considering a bill that would have a serious and damaging impact on health coverage for women across the United States. The Health Insurance Marketplace Modernization and Affordability Act (HIMMAA), introduced by Sen. Mike Enzi (R-WY), would allow insurance companies to ignore nearly all state laws that require insurance coverage for certain treatments or conditions, such as laws that require them to include contraceptives in their prescription plans. [Emphasis added by irate Broadsheet poster.]

"This federal legislation would raze hundreds of state laws that ensure patients can get the medical care they need and would

"-- not allow women to designate their ob/gyns as primary care providers

"-- not allow women to seek care directly from their ob/gyns, but would force them to be screened by their primary care doctors first

"-- dismantle coverage for contraception

"-- dismantle coverage for annual cervical cancer exams

"-- not allow women to stay with the same doctor throughout a pregnancy, if that doctor was dropped from the insurance provider."

In short: "Under HIMMAA women will lose contraceptive-equity protections currently guaranteed by state law."

On the seventh day of the new Medicare drug benefit, Stephen Starnes began hearing voices again, ominous voices, and he started to beg for the medications he had been taking for 10 years. But his pharmacy could not get approval from his Medicare drug plan, so Mr. Starnes was admitted to a hospital here for treatment of paranoid schizophrenia.

Mr. Starnes, 49, lives in Dayspring Village, a former motel that is licensed by the State of Florida as an assisted living center for people with mental illness. When he gets his medications, he is stable. "Without them," he said, "I get aggravated at myself, I have terrible pain in my gut, I feel as if I am freezing one moment and burning up the next moment. I go haywire, and I want to hurt myself."

Mix-ups in the first weeks of the Medicare drug benefit have vexed many beneficiaries and pharmacists. Dr. Steven S. Sharfstein, president of the American Psychiatric Association, said the transition from Medicaid to Medicare had had a particularly severe impact on low-income patients with serious, persistent mental illnesses. "Relapse, rehospitalization and disruption of essential treatment are some of the consequences," Dr. Sharfstein said.

Dr. Jacqueline M. Feldman, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, said that two of her patients with schizophrenia had gone to a hospital emergency room because they could not get their medications. Dr. Feldman, who is also the director of a community mental health center, said "relapse is becoming more frequent" among her low-income Medicare patients. Emma L. Hayes, director of emergency services at Ten Broeck Hospital, a psychiatric center in Jacksonville, said, "We have seen some increase in admissions, and anticipate a lot more," as people wrestle with the new drug benefit.

Medicare's free-standing prescription drug plans are not responsible for the costs of hospital care or doctors' services. "They have no business incentive to worry about those costs," said Dr. Joseph J. Parks, medical director of the Missouri Department of Mental Health, who reported that many of his Medicare patients had been unable to get medicines or had experienced delays. At least 24 states have taken emergency action to pay for prescription drugs if people cannot obtain them by using the new Medicare drug benefit. Florida is not among those states.

Bush said aggressive action would be needed to prevent a potentially disastrous U.S. outbreak of the disease that is sweeping through Asian poultry and which experts fear could mutate to pass between humans. Such a deadly event would raise difficult questions, such as how a quarantine might be enforced, the president said.

The Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 bans the military from participating in police-type activity on U.S. soil. But Dr. Irwin Redlener, associate dean of Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health and director of its National Center for Disaster Preparedness, told The Associated Press the president's suggestion was dangerous. Giving the military a law enforcement role would be an "extraordinarily Draconian measure" that would be unnecessary if the nation had built the capability for rapid vaccine production, ensured a large supply of anti-virals like Tamiflu and not allowed the degradation of the public health system. "The translation of this is martial law in the United States," Redlener said.

And Gene Healy, a senior editor at the conservative Cato Institute, said Bush would risk undermining "a fundamental principle of American law" by tinkering with the act, which does not hinder the military's ability to respond to a crisis. "What it does is set a high bar for the use of federal troops in a policing role," he wrote in a commentary on the group's Web site. "That reflects America's traditional distrust of using standing armies to enforce order at home, a distrust that's well-justified."

Healy said soldiers are not trained as police officers, and putting them in a civilian law enforcement role "can result in serious collateral damage to American life and liberty."

What happened? In a nutshell, Roberts' record happened. The release of documents from the Ronald Reagan library have shed light on Roberts' time as associate counsel to Reagan and as deputy solicitor general under Kenneth Starr during the Reagan and first Bush administrations. We've now been able to read Roberts' writings on the subject of equal pay for women for jobs of "comparable value," which he called in a 1984 memo "a radical redistributive concept." There is his repeated use of the term "so-called" with regard to the right to privacy. He also writes of the "purported gender gap," and "perceived problems of gender discrimination." In the early 1990s, Roberts voluntarily argued for the government in front of the Supreme Court on the side of abortion clinic protesters in the Bray v. Alexandria Women's Health Clinic case. And in a 1985 memo he made a crack about housewives becoming lawyers that may have been a housewife joke, or may have been a lawyer joke, but either way was not a knee-slapper.

Before the Roberts record began to embolden progressives to take a strong stand against the nominee, some pro-choice groups were alone in fiercely opposing him, and NARAL's stumble earned them the back of the hand from some (mostly male) Democrats. The popular blogger Daily Kos (Markos Moulitsas Zuniga) enraged feminist bloggers like Jessica Valenti (Feministing) and Amanda Marcotte (Pandagon) when he blogged, in the midst of the NARAL fuss, not about the ad, but about his frustrations with NARAL's "single issue" politics, and their single-minded devotion to what he called a "pet cause."

Mr. Frist, a heart-lung transplant surgeon who said last month that he did not back expanding financing "at this juncture," announced his decision this morning in a lengthy Senate speech. He said that while he had reservations about altering Mr. Bush's four-year-old policy, which placed strict limits on taxpayer financing for the work, he supports the bill nonetheless.

"While human embryonic stem cell research is still at a very early stage, the limitations put in place in 2001 will, over time, slow our ability to bring potential new treatments for certain diseases," Mr. Frist said. "Therefore, I believe the president's policy should be modified." His speech received the approval of Democrats as well as Republicans.

"I admire the majority leader for doing this," Senator Harry Reid, the minority leader and Democrat of Nevada, said immediately after the speech. He and Senator Dick Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, said Mr. Frist's stance would give hope to people everywhere. Senator Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania, contending they were discussing "the difference between life and death," said of Mr. Frist, "I believe the speech that he has just made on the Senate floor is the most important speech made this year, and perhaps the most important speech made in years."

He added: "This is a speech that will reverberate around the world, including at the White House."

Bush had asked State Atty. Bernie McCabe to investigate Schiavo's case after her autopsy last month. He said he now considers the state's involvement with the matter finished. In asking for the investigation, Bush had cited an alleged gap between when Schiavo's husband, Michael, found her and when he called 911. McCabe said, however, that Michael Schiavo's statements that he called 911 immediately had been consistent.

Under previous state law, scientists who wanted to conduct embryonic stem cell research in Massachusetts needed the approval of the local district attorney. The new law seeks to expand stem cell research by removing that requirement but giving the state Health Department some regulatory controls.

The Republican governor vetoed the bill last week because it allows the cloning of human embryos for use in stem cell experiments — a practice Romney said amounts to creating life in order to destroy it.

The vote, 238 to 194 with 50 Republicans in favor, fell far short of the two-thirds majority required to overturn a presidential veto, setting up a possible showdown between Congress and Mr. Bush, who has never exercised his veto power. An identical bill has broad bipartisan support in the Senate; moments after the House vote, the Senate sponsors wrote to the Republican leader, Bill Frist, urging him to put it on the agenda.

The House action is the first vote on embryonic stem cell research since August 2001, when Mr. Bush opened the door to taxpayer financing for the studies, but only with strict limits. The new bill permits the government to pay for studies involving human embryos that are in frozen storage at fertility clinics, so long as couples conceiving the embryos certified that they had made a decision to discard them.

"I am a strong supporter of stem cell research, but I've made very clear to Congress that the use of federal taxpayer money to promote science that destroys life in order to save life, I am against this," said Mr. Bush, speaking in the Oval Office during a brief joint appearance with the Danish prime minister, Anders Rasmussen. "Therefore, if the bill does that, I will veto it."

The president also expressed grave concerns about a report that South Korean researchers have perfected a method of cloning human embryos to extract their stem cells that could, theoretically, be used to develop treatments and cures that would be exact genetic matches to patients.

"I'm very concerned about cloning," Mr. Bush said. "I worry about a world in which cloning becomes acceptable."

"The United States is being left farther behind every day, this morning by South Korea," said [Republican Senator Arlen] Specter. He added, "I don't like veto threats and I don't like comments about overriding the veto, but this issue is going to be the focal point of my subcommittee."

The Democratic leader in the Senate, Harry Reid of Nevada, said in a statement: "Embryonic stem cell research provides us the hope of new cures and therapies and we should embrace this research opportunity and not allow radical ideology to stand in the way. President Bush has made the wrong choice, putting politics ahead of safe, responsible science."