Fox's Garrett reported that Bush authorized federally funded research on 78 stem cell lines; did not mention that only 22 of them are available

Summary: On Fox News' Special Report, Major Garrett reported that President Bush "authorized federal research on 78 stem cell lines," but omitted the fact that only 22 of those lines are currently available to U.S. researchers.

On the July 17 edition of Fox News' Special Report with Brit Hume, Fox News correspondent Major Garrett reported that President Bush "authorized federal research on 78 stem cell lines" that were created prior to August 9, 2001, but omitted the number of those lines that are currently available to U.S. researchers. While the National Institutes of Health (NIH) does list 78 stem cell lines as being eligible for federal funding under Bush's policy, the NIH lists only 22 of them as currently "available" for federally funded research -- meaning stem cell lines that have sufficient research "quality" and can be legally obtained by U.S. researchers.

Furthermore, as Media Matters has noted, a March 3, 2004, Washington Post article reported a previously unpublished assessment by an NIH administrator, Dr. James Battey Jr., that because of the "collapse[]" of some stem cell lines and the inaccessibility of many others -- due to foreign labs' unwillingness or legal inability to export their cell lines to the United States -- "the 'best-case' scenario is that only 23 cell colonies" out of the 78 eligible under Bush's funding policy "will ever be available to U.S. researchers."

From the July 17 edition of Fox News' Special Report with Brit Hume:

GARRETT: On August 9, 2001, President Bush authorized federal research on 78 stem cell lines taken from embryos created for fertility clinics before that date, but opposing federal research on embryos created or discarded since then. Now, supporting the president, parents like Steve Johnson, whose daughter was born from a fertility-clinic embryo. Johnson said his own paralysis, which embryonic stem cell research might one day cure, wasn't worth sacrificing embryos.

JOHNSON: Would I kill my daughter so I could walk again? Should I have an incremental benefit at the expense of someone else's son or daughter? Of course not.

—R.S.K.