Frist Backs Bush on Teaching Intelligent
Design
NY Times
By DAVID STOUT
Published: August 19, 2005
WASHINGTON, Aug. 19 - The Senate majority leader, Bill Frist, aligned
himself with President Bush today when he said that the theory of "intelligent
design" should be taught along with evolution in public schools.
Teaching intelligent design as well as evolution "doesn't force any
particular theory on anyone," Senator Frist, Republican of Tennessee, said in
Nashville, according to The Associated Press. "I think in a pluralistic society
that is the fairest way to go about education and training people for the
future."
A Washington spokesman for the senator, Nick Smith, said afterward that The
A.P. had reported Mr. Frist's comments accurately.
The theory of intelligent design holds that life is too complicated to have
developed randomly through evolution, and that a higher power must be involved.
Critics say that intelligent design theorists are trying to supplant science
with religious beliefs.
The senator's view, expressed today after a speech at a Rotary Club meeting,
echoed President Bush's remarks on Aug. 2, when he told a group of Texas
newspaper reporters that he favored teaching both evolution and intelligent
design "so people can understand what the debate is about."
Mr. Frist's agreement with President Bush on one of the more contentious
educational, social and political issues of the time comes just a few weeks
after he broke with the president and with Christian conservatives on another
hot topic, embryonic stem cell research.
The senator said on July 29 that he had decided to support a bill to expand
federal financing for stem cell research, and that President Bush's
four-year-old policy of strictly limiting taxpayer financing "should be
modified." The bill has been approved by the House but has been stalled in the
Senate, where Mr. Frist's status as a heart-lung transplant surgeon could sway
some of his undecided colleagues.
Senator Frist is widely assumed to be contemplating a run for the presidency
in 2008, so his statements on issues that touch on moral as well as political
questions are sure to be scrutinized, by Christian conservatives essential to a
Republican candidacy and by people looking for signals that Mr. Frist is
willing to move toward the center.
Human embryonic stem cells can be grown into any type of body tissue, so
scientists and doctors see a potential use in treating a wide range of diseases
and injuries. But the cells cannot be obtained without destroying the embryos,
which some people think is tantamount to murder.
President Bush said on Aug. 9, 2001, that he supported government financing
for research on only those stem cell colonies that had already been created,
and for which "the life or death decision" involving the embryos had thus been
made. The House-passed bill would also allow research on stem cells extracted
from frozen embryos, left over from fertility treatments, that would otherwise
be discarded.
Mr. Frist said today there was no conflict between his stances on stem cells
and intelligent design. "I see no disconnect," he told The A.P. "I base my
beliefs on stem cell research both on science and my faith."
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