Stem-cell debate raises many questions, few clear answers.

Byline: Grace Hobson

KANSAS CITY, Mo. _ Mary Pilcher Cook's three children have a 50-50 chance of inheriting Huntington's disease, an untreatable illness that combines the nastiness of Parkinson's, muscular dystrophy and Alzheimer's.

Cook, a state lawmaker from Shawnee, Kan., believes research using stem cells from human embryos holds hope for her children. But the research requires destroying the days-old embryos.

For Cook and many other staunch abortion opponents, such destruction of what they consider human life is untenable.

Others argue just as forcefully in favor of the research.

Laura Landre, holding her 2-year-old daughter, Anna, beseeched members of Congress last week to fund the studies that could hold a key to easing the suffering caused by many debilitating diseases.

Landre, from Howell, N.J., said her daughter suffers spinal muscular atrophy, a crippling disease of the spinal cord. Embryonic stem-cell research, Landre said, "is Anna's future."

Cook and Landre offer two perspectives in the national debate that swirls as President Bush considers whether to allow federal funding of stem-cell research.…