WASHINGTON, July 22 - A measure to expand federal financing for human embryonic stem cell research, passed by the House and once considered a shoo-in for adoption by the Senate, is tangled up in a procedural dispute that will probably delay a vote until fall - and could wind up killing the bill, its chief Republican backer said.
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"The bill is in some danger," said Representative Michael N. Castle, Republican of Delaware and the measure''s leading sponsor in the House.
Mr. Castle accused the White House, which has threatened to veto the measure, and the Senate majority leader, Bill Frist of Tennessee, of "doing everything in their power to deflect votes away from it or keep it from coming up for a vote at all."
But a spokeswoman for Mr. Frist, Amy Call, said he had "worked tirelessly over the past few weeks" to get an agreement from other senators to bring the House bill up for a vote. Ms. Call said that if Mr. Frist could not broker a deal by the end of next week, when Congress leaves for its August recess, he intended to try again in September.
At the very least, the delay plunges the measure into an uncertain future. Senator Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania and the chief backer of the Senate bill, said that if the bill did not come up for a vote, he would attach it to a measure appropriating money to the National Institutes of Health, a measure whose fate he controls because he is chairman of the subcommittee that governs the institutes'' spending.
"I don''t like to put it on the appropriations bill," Mr. Specter, seeming exasperated, said in an interview Thursday, "but we''ve waited long enough."
Mr. Specter''s measure, which is identical to the Castle bill, would permit federal financing for research on stem cell colonies, or lines, derived from embryos that are in frozen storage at fertility clinics. Currently, federal financing is limited to studies of those embryonic stem cell lines already in existence on Aug. 9, 2001, when Mr. Bush issued an executive order allowing the government to spend taxpayers'' money on the research.
Human embryonic stem cells, which in nature give rise to all the cells and tissues of the body, are considered by scientists to be the building blocks of the new field of regenerative medicine. Advocates for patients say the cells hold hope for treatments and cures for a variety of diseases, including Alzheimer''s, Parkinson''s and diabetes.
But because human embryos are destroyed by the research, the studies draw intense moral objections from religious conservatives and opponents of abortion, who regard embryos as nascent human beings. In announcing his 2001 policy, Mr. Bush said his intention was to place tight restrictions on the research, limiting federal financing so as to discourage future embryo destruction.
The Specter-Castle bill has considerable Republican support in the Senate. But its opponents would like to spare the president - who has never exercised his veto power - from having to reject a measure that has broad public support. They have proposed a raft of alternatives that, Mr. Castle said, are designed to peel off support from the original bill.
"It is death by 1,000 cuts," Mr. Castle said.
Among the alternatives is a bill that would promote research into unproven methods of obtaining stem cells without destroying human embryos, and another that would allow research on some frozen embryos, but only those in storage at the present time. Even if those bills pass the Senate, Mr. Castle said, they are not likely to pass the House.
"They have managed to take six or seven concepts and do exactly what they want to do," Mr. Castle said, "confuse the issue and give people who have said all along that they would vote for our bill the ability to say we are voting for this or that."
With so many bills on the table, proponents have been fighting over whether and how to bring the measures for a vote.
Opponents of embryonic stem cell research, including Senator Sam Brownback, Republican of Kansas, who is sponsoring a measure to ban human cloning both for reproduction and research, have insisted that the Senate take up their bills when it considers the Castle bill.
Mr. Specter is not keen on that. "As I have reviewed the bidding and have looked at six possible bills and six possible votes over a full day of debate, I have grave concerns that the issues can be crystallized and understood in that procedure," Mr. Specter said.
Mr. Frist has been juggling these competing demands, said Ms. Call, his spokeswoman.
"The leader is interested in getting a vote on the House bill and on other bills in this realm," she said, "so we can have a full and thoughtful debate."