The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

GWEN IFILL: Good evening, I'm Gwen Ifill. Jim Lehrer is on vacation. On the NewsHour tonight, Margaret Warner has a Newsmaker interview with the President- elect of Mexico, Vicente Fox. Jeffrey Kaye reports on the politics of the proposed national missile defense. Health correspondent Susan Dentzer plus two advocates update the stem cell research story. And Terence Smith looks at the impact of CBS's extraordinarily successful "Survivor" show. It all follows our summary of the news, this Thursday.

NEWS SUMMARY

GWEN IFILL: Mexico's President-elect Vicente Fox arrived in Washington today. In meetings with President Clinton at the White House, and with Al Gore at the Vice President's home, Fox presented his vision for relaxed trade with, and immigration from, Mexico. He'll talk with Governor Bush in Texas tomorrow. We'll have a Newsmaker interview with President-elect Fox right after this News Summary. George W. Bush tried again today, to explain the benefits of his proposed 10-year, $1.3 trillion tax cut plan. He appeared in Louisiana with a local family he said would benefit from the plan. The father is a football coach, and a state Republican activist.

GOV. GEORGE W. BUSH: I want to put a face on the tax relief package. Under the current tax code, Andrew pays over $2,000 in taxes. Under my plan, his taxes will be reduced to $475, an over 70% decrease in the taxes he pays. Under Al Gore's plan, he gets no tax relief. The so-called "targeted tax cut" means that some are targeted out of tax relief. And it's... I believe that Andrew and his family should have more money in their pocket. They ought to share in some of the surplus, so that he can make decisions for his children, so that they can plan for their children's future.

GWEN IFILL: Also today, campaigning at Dillard University in New Orleans. Bush proposed spending $437 million over five years to help historically black colleges and universities. Vice President Gore also dealt with education today, addressing a group of students and teachers at the University of Maryland. He again criticized Bush's tax cut plan, and he proposed making $10,000 of college tuition tax- deductible each year. He also said he'd oppose any tax cuts not targeted at middle class Americans.

VICE PRESIDENT AL GORE: I will not support a giant tax cut for the wealthy at the expense of everyone else that wrecks our economy in the process. That's wrong. And I will not allow that to happen. Under the tax plan the other side has proposed-- you may know these figures-- for every $10 that goes to the wealthiest 1%, middle class families would get one dime. Lower income families would get one penny. If you add it all up, the average family, under their plan, would get about enough money to buy one extra diet coke a day, about 62 cents in change. That's not the kind of change that I'm working for.

GWEN IFILL: In the Middle East today, searchers retrieved the flight data and cockpit voice recorders from yesterday's Gulf Air jet crash. Investigators would not speculate on why the airbus went down as it approached Bahrain from Cairo. Families arrived in Bahrain's capital to identify remains. After all 143 bodies were retrieved, funeral services were held for 15. In Russia today, relatives of the 118 sailors who died on the submarine "Kursk," attended memorial ceremonies. They threw flowers, including a wreath from President Putin, into the water above the sunken vessel. Earlier, a memorial stone was laid in the town where the "Kursk" was stationed. It sank August 12. Phone workers ended their 18-day strike against Verizon Communications today. 35,000 union employees in six mid-Atlantic states and Washington, D.C. were back on the job. In part, they'll receive better pay and limits on mandatory overtime. That's it for the News Summary tonight. Now it's on to the next President of Mexico; politics and a national missile defense; stem cell research; and surviving "Survivor."

NEWSMAKER

GWEN IFILL: Margaret Warner has the interview with Mexico's next president.

MARGARET WARNER: Early last month, reform candidate Vicente Fox stunned Mexico and the world by winning the presidency of his country. Promising economic and political change, the former Coca-Cola executive and his National Action Party ousted the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, that had ruled Mexico for 71 years.

PEOPLE SHOUTING: Viva Fox!

MARGARET WARNER: Fox won't take office until December 1, but he's been trying to use this transition time to advance and promote his ideas. Today, he was in Washington meeting with Vice President Gore, then with President Clinton, to explain the three big changes he wants to see in the U.S.-Mexico relationship - fully open borders between the two countries; $20 billion a year in new U.S. development aid for Mexico's economy; and an end to the U.S. policy of certifying Mexico's commitment to the drug war. Fox is scheduled to meet with Republican presidential nominee George W. Bush tomorrow.

MARGARET WARNER: I spoke with Vincente Fox late this afternoon.

MARGARET WARNER: Thanks for joining us, Mr. Fox.

VICENTE FOX: A pleasure. Thank you for inviting us.

MARGARET WARNER: These are some pretty big ideas you've laid out on the table for changing the U.S.-Mexico relationship. What kind of openness have you found here in Washington to those ideas?

VICENTE FOX: Well, it's always better, big ideas than small ideas. And I think it's also better to think long term, to think holistic, and to walk step by step until you meet your objectives. And so this is what we've been putting on the table for discussion. We know that we have a lot of short-term problems in our relationship, but we must build up a future long term. One of these ideas - one is that we have to narrow the gap on development; we are never going to be the best friends and best neighbors and best partners if we don't narrow that gap where we have huge differences on income in Mexico compared to income in the United States or Canada, so the first idea is to narrow that gap. Number two is to work through a convergence program, economic program, whereby we are narrowing the differences on inflation, on interest rates, on other variables of the economy and development. And Number three, that we approach each of the problems individually but at the same time connected to the holistic view.

MARGARET WARNER: The biggest idea - or let's just say the most provocative idea - as it's been reported here - is this notion that the U.S. and Mexico should have a completely open border. Now explain what you're thinking of there, how soon you would expect this to happen and why.

VICENTE FOX: Well, again, long term one idea of not our trade agreements is that you compete between each other of the countries that join in that trade agreement. The idea of a community is a partnership where we join forces, where you complement your economies and you work together for a common purpose. So moving in that direction would certainly make all three of us - Canada, the United States, and Mexico - stronger. So, yes, I'm talking about a community of North America, an integrated agreement of Canada and United States and Mexico in the long term, twenty, thirty, forty years from now. And this means that some of the steps we can take, for instance, to agree that in five years we will make this convergence on economic variables, that maybe in ten years we can open up that border when we have reduced the gap on salaries and income and so on.

MARGARET WARNER: It seems, looking at that proposal, though - I mean, NAFTA is really predicated on the idea of moving goods and investments and services but that people stay in their own countries to do the work. And, of course, a totally open border you would have Mexicans living and working here and vice versa. How does that - how does that square with your idea of building up the Mexican economy?

VICENTE FOX: Well, I see more and more Americans coming to work to Mexico, and they get their visa, and they get in without any problem. And we enjoy having them there and we enrich from having them there more - more and more every day tens of thousands now. I know that this does not compare with the amount of people that come here to the United States. There we have the challenge, we Mexicans have, to hold them in Mexico through opportunity. This is why we have to generate the number of jobs that we need for them in their community, the number of schools, specifically universities and technical schools, so that they stay there. This is what we have to do, we Mexicans, but if we can do it associated, working together, we will do it much faster.

MARGARET WARNER: But in reading about your proposals, it sounds as if you are advocating shorter than twenty or thirty years, for instance, that American businesses could hire Mexican workers to come to the states to work legally. I mean, why would you want to do that and how soon?

VICENTE FOX: Well, let me use an example, and maybe we can explain better. Twenty-five years ago Spaniards used to go to work illegally to Germany, England, and France, and they worked a holistic approach and long-term process, and today they don't have the immigration problem anymore. Why? Because Spaniards have in their own country opportunities, good wages, and they don't have to go out. This is basically again a challenge that we have in Mexico, but if we can work it out together, for instance, reinforcing, reinventing, the NAD Bank - the North American Development Bank - that could be a tool for development, and, of course, we are not going to open the borders before we have reached those levels of integration, those levels of equity -- as long as we don't narrow this gap, no way that the border should be open. That's not what we're proposing.

MARGARET WARNER: I see. Now, this development bank, it is to that development bank that you'd like the U.S. to make a major annual contribution, is that right?

VICENTE FOX: No, we're willing to do it too, as Mexico.

MARGARET WARNER: You as well?

VICENTE FOX: Yeah. Maybe we should contribute - the three of us - Canada, United States, and Mexico - according to the proportion of the size of our economy, and use those funds for development anywhere. It could be used for these corridors or highways that should be able to connect Canada, United States, and Mexico, or it could be used to build up jobs in rural communities in Mexico, or to attack ecological and environmental problems that we all have in the border. So it could be used anywhere, but it's specifically to promote development and narrow this gap that we have today.

MARGARET WARNER: Just to put this in perspective, $20 billion a year, that's nearly double the U.S. foreign aid budget for the whole world. I mean, what would you say if you were an American, a new American President who wanted to sell that to this country, why that's in Americans' self interest?

VICENTE FOX: It doesn't have to be fiscal bonds; it doesn't have to be aid. We're not asking for aid. We're asking to build up together funds to finance development. So those funds -

MARGARET WARNER: So more like an IMF? More like an IMF?

VICENTE FOX: Oh, yes, specific for our purpose of developing the North American territory, which is NAFTA territory, yes.

MARGARET WARNER: Now, finally your other big idea that's been out there has to do with the way the U.S. and Mexico fight the drug war. And you want to end this unilateral certification process by which the U.S. certifies whether or not Mexico or other countries are fighting the good fight. What's wrong with that, and what would you put in its place?

VICENTE FOX: Well, the only thing that is wrong is serving no purpose. I mean, the problem has not been resolved. Consumption of drug increases in the United States; tropical drug increases in Mexico; production of drug increases in United States and Mexico and Colombia. So let's substitute that mechanism for one creative idea that works for everybody. And my suggestion is let's build up a multilateral agreement joining in countries that produce the tropic and that consume - countries that money launder funds coming from drugs, and let's put together one strategy with coordinated effort, and let's meet this challenge of the organized international crime to be able to defeat them on their same marina, because I don't think that any country by itself can do the job. The United States by itself cannot solve the problem if we don't get the cooperation of Mexico, Colombia, and the same happens with us in Mexico. We have the same problem. We need, for instance, the United States to reduce consumption because all these billions of dollars coming out of this market are used to corrupt Mexican policemen or Mexican functionaries, so we must work with obligations, each one of us, so that we can supervise, we can have common objectives, and make sure that we defeat organized crime.

MARGARET WARNER: Did you get - first of all, how specific did you get in your conversations with President Clinton and Vice President Gore on these specific proposals, and did you get any kind of commitment to at least pursue one or more of them?

VICENTE FOX: Well, it was not a meeting for the purpose of agreements or negotiations. I'm just president-elect; President Clinton will finish his term in two months. So we explore ideas; we interchange those ideas. For instance, we're talking about micro credit; both of us were enthusiastically working on this because he visited Bangladesh; he knows about the system. Mrs. Clinton is pushing this micro credit system. We have them in Juana quarto, and when we talked about small, medium-sized businesses, about the system they follow in Italy, in northern Italy, which they have mastered the nourishment of entrepreneurship in small companies, then all of these ideas are exactly what we need to bring them opportunities within NAFTA and make sure that we narrow this gap.

MARGARET WARNER: It sounds as if, in addition to these specific ideas, you really want a whole new kind of attitude or atmosphere in the relationship between our two countries.

VICENTE FOX: Well, we have an excellent relationship, but it can do much better yet. I want to be creative. I want to bring in new ideas, big ideas, long-term ideas, and specifically I think that we need a holistic approach, that we put all these pieces together to make an orderly plan, so that we gain the battle against poverty in Mexico -- so that

we defeat the problem of migration and so that we gain the battle against narco traffic.

MARGARET WARNER: Do you think that the relationship to date has been too one sided or too much the United States calling the tune?

VICENTE FOX: No. It's okay, the relationship. It's just a matter of - it's been ten years working. NAFTA is doing excellent, but now we have to look at the next ten-year term and see where we're going, what do we want to accomplish, and specifically enhance, reinforce and make more dynamic the processes of development in our three countries.

MARGARET WARNER: You have met - I know you're meeting with Governor Bush tomorrow but you've met with him before when you were both governors of states, and you met with Vice President Gore today. Who do you think of the two is more - will be sort of a better friend to Mexico and will be more open to your ideas?

VICENTE FOX: Well, both wear western boots. I wear western boots.

MARGARET WARNER: As you do.

VICENTE FOX: The same. No, I think that today the conscience in America, in the United States, about the relationship with Mexico and Latin America is on both parties -Democrats and Republicans - and I think that the idea here is to build up a common future, and I'm sure we can work that future with either one.

MARGARET WARNER: Well, President-elect Fox, thanks so much for being with us.

VICENTE FOX: Thank you. A pleasure.

GWEN IFILL: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight, missile defense politics, stem cell research, and surviving "Survivor."

FOCUS - BUILDING A DEFENSE

GWEN IFILL: Now, part two in our series on national missile defense. President Clinton will soon make a decision on the deployment of such a system. Two weeks ago we looked at the perceived threat, and whether it was technologically feasible to build a defense system. Tonight, the politics. Jeffrey Kaye of KCET-Los Angeles reports.

JEFFREY KAYE: This is Shemya Island, a windy, isolated patch of land at the tip of the Aleutian chain, in Alaska. It's known for its sea urchins and its air force base, but it also features prominently in an international debate over U.S. Military plans. Shemya, according to the pentagon, is a perfect site for a radar system that could track warheads launched from North Korea, then guide U.S. interceptor missiles to smash into them, destroying them in outer space. If President Clinton gives the go-ahead, construction of the Shemya radar would begin next year, as the first step in building in a U.S. national missile defense system. In the U.S., there's been debate over whether a missile system will work or whether it's big enough. And overseas, there has been a growing drumbeat of opposition. Many foreign leaders argue that a U.S. missile defense system would provoke an arms race and challenge historic understandings built on deterrence and international treaties. French President Jacques Chirac said building the system would "retrigger a proliferation of weapons, notably nuclear missiles." German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder said, "Everything that goes in the direction of proliferation is a bad direction. I'm skeptical." And the chief of foreign policy for the European Union, the former head of NATO, Javier Solana, said recently, "If the decision on deployment is taken without agreement with Russia and without help from European leaders, it will be very badly taken." They, along with the Russians and Chinese, worry that an American missile defense system would give the U.S. global military dominance. But if it's to be built, allied concurrence is essential, because radars will have to be stationed in Greenland and Great Britain, as Secretary of Defense William Cohen explained recently.

WILLIAM COHEN: In order to have a technologically effective system, we need to have the support of our allies. If we don't have the support of our allies with respect to forward-deployed x-band radars, you will not have an effective technologically reliable system.

JEFFREY KAYE: And Cohen said the allies' support is likely to depend on the Russian reaction. The allies want to maintain good relations with Russia, which opposes a U.S. missile shield.

WILLIAM COHEN: So you can't get the support of the allies unless you at least try to work it out with the Russians. The Russians may see this as an opportunity to simply promote dissent and try to exploit that dissent, and therefore preclude the United States from moving forward. I think what we have to do is persuade our allies we are acting responsibly, we're dealing with the Russians.

JEFFREY KAYE: Cohen and other missile defense advocates say that despite foreign opposition, the system is crucial for U.S. defense. They argue that North Korean missiles could be ready to be launched against the U.S. by 2005. And they say if work isn't started soon, the system won't be operational by then, and the U.S. will be vulnerable. They also worry about the capability of Iran and Iraq to threaten the United States with long-range missiles. Beyond self-defense, U.S. military planners have another purpose for a missile defense system. With it, the United States military would be able to act overseas without facing the threat of a missile attack on its own soil, according to U.S. Defense Department Undersecretary Jack Gansler.

JACQUES GANSLER, Undersecretary of Defense: By having this defense system, the United States is more likely to come to the aid of our allies in third world conflicts, regional conflicts, because they will not be able to deter us from entering by threatening to launch a missile against us. If we have a defense capability, then we can say, "well, we can still go into that region and help you, in a conflict that you might have in your local region." If we didn't have a defense capability, they may be able to deter us enough from coming in.

JEFFREY KAYE: This capability worries some foreign leaders concerned that the U.S. won't be deterred from military intervention. The Chinese and Russians also suspect that as part of a major military build-up, the U.S. intends eventually to build a much wider missile defense system than the one now planned. They fear that by using a missile shield in combination with weapons like new Stealth aircraft, sensors in space, and precision munitions, America would be able to strike first with nuclear weapons, then defend against a missile retaliation. Sha Zukang, China's top arms negotiator, expressed his concern at a recent United Nations conference.

SHA ZUKANG (Translated): Today, a superpower which rampantly intervenes in other countries' internal affairs and willfully resorts to force is continuously improving its overwhelming first strike nuclear capability. On the other hand, it also spares no efforts in developing an advanced missile defense system capable of neutralizing any counterstrike launched by a small- or medium-sized nuclear weapon state after sustaining a nuclear first strike.

JEFFREY KAYE: John Steinbruner of the University of Maryland says some foreign governments suspect the U.S. of deviousness.

JOHN STREINBRUNER: We're proposing to add this system on top of an offensive capability that's already superior to anyone else's. And it's that relationship between defense and offense that causes the problem. We should not be surprised that people are not comfortable with the United States or anyone else aspiring to be the dominant single country. Everyone wants equitable standards of security.

JEFFREY KAYE: John Holum, the senior advisor for arms control at the State Department, says the U.S. has not forsaken deterrence. He rejects the notion that a U.S. Missile defense system is a way to achieve global military dominance.

JOHN HOLUM: I know this argument comes up, but I don't think it's a broad license for the United States to engage unilaterally. This is not an abandonment of deterrence. Deterrence works in two ways. It... you can convince the other side that the cost of attacking would be overwhelming. You also want to convince them that the benefit of attacking is negligible. What this would do is persuade a country like North Korea that an attack on the United States would be both fatal and futile, so it would reinforce deterrence.

JEFFREY KAYE: But Russia believes a delicate balance would be upset because the planned U.S. missile defense system would violate the antiballistic missile, or A.B.M. Treaty. That 1972 agreement, signed by Soviet President Leonid Brezhnev and U.S. President Richard Nixon, prohibits nationwide missile defenses. The intent was to stop a spiraling offensive-defensive arms race. The Clinton administration wants to renegotiate the treaty-- something Vladimir Putin, the president of Russia, opposes. Putin's government has agreed to reduce its nuclear arms, but he says if the U.S. deploys a national missile defense system, Russia will not shrink its nuclear arsenal. Igor Ivanov is Russia's foreign minister.

IGOR IVANOV (Translated): Further reductions in strategic offensive weapons can only be considered as closely complimentary to the preservation of the ABM Treaty. The historic importance of that instrument lies in the fact that it opened the way toward far- reaching reductions in strategic offensive weapons on a stable and transparent basis.

JEFFREY KAYE: Critics say a U.S. defensive shield might encourage hostile nations to acquire even more long-range weapons to try to overwhelm U.S. missile defenses. Their fears were reinforced by a classified national intelligence estimate. According to newspaper reports, the estimate says China will probably expand its nuclear arsenal from 20 to 200 warheads in response to the U.S. deploying a missile shield. John Pike of the Federation of American Scientists opposes a missile defense system because of the potential, in his view, of an arms race.

JOHN PIKE: The Chinese are looking at the plan. They are saying to themselves, "we have about 20 long-range missiles that can get to America. The Clinton administration plans to build a system that can intercept about 20 missiles. We are the only country that has just exactly the number that this system is designed to counter. This thing looks like it's aimed at us." Other countries gauge their standing in the world by what countries like China and Russia are doing, and if these countries are not building down their arsenal or they're building up their arsenal, other countries are going to follow suit.

JEFFREY KAYE: In talks with foreign leaders, U.S. officials have tried to ease fears of an arms race by stressing the limited nature of the planned missile defense system as well as the U.S. goal of reducing nuclear arms.

WILLIAM COHEN: The characterization of the United States being a hegemon, someone who is determined to dominate the world and to contain china, is simply untrue.

JEFFREY KAYE: While Clinton administration officials are defending their plan abroad as a modest system, they are facing election year criticism from Republicans who argue the plan is too limited.

SPOKESPERSON: It is time to move beyond the cold war.

JEFFREY KAYE: At the Republican National Convention when speakers promised to build up U.S. military strength, the only weapons system advocated by name was national missile defense.

GOV. GEORGE W. BUSH: At the earliest possible date, my administration will deploy missile defenses to guard against attack and blackmail. (Cheers and applause) Now is the time... Now is the time, not to defend outdated treaties, but to defend the American people. (Cheers and applause)

JEFFREY KAYE: The Republican missile defense plan is much more ambitious than the one President Clinton supports. Unlike the Clinton plan, which would be limited to using land- based missiles to attack incoming warheads in space, the Bush version would use various weapons systems-- which might include missiles from land and sea, as well as lasers in space-- to shoot down warheads soon after they lift off. Richard Perle, a former Pentagon official during the Reagan administration, now an advisor to Governor Bush, says Bush is unconcerned about the ABM Treaty. Bush believes the U.S. should withdraw from the treaty so that the best available technologies can be explored without constraint.

RICHARD PERLE: The Bush ballistic missile defense would be quite different from anything the current administration seems prepared to propose. First, he would instruct our technical community to look at the best and most effective technologies, without regard to whether they are limited or prohibited by the ABM Treaty. The Soviet Union no longer exists. Russia is not an enemy of the United States. The idea that the balance between our offensive and defensive forces should be determined in consultation with a successor that is not an enemy, when we have other enemies who are not parties to any agreement, really makes no sense.

VICE PRESIDENT AL GORE: I will keep America's defense strong. I will make sure our armed forces continue to be the best equipped, best trained, and best led in the entire world. (Cheers and applause)

JEFFREY KAYE: Presidential candidate Al Gore did not mention national missile defense at the Democratic National Convention, though his party's platform echoes the Clinton administration's plans and intention to have a functioning system by 2005. However, unlike George W. Bush, al gore wants to preserve the ABM Treaty with modifications.

VICE PRESIDENT GORE: The ABM Treaty remains the cornerstone of strategic stability in our relationship with Russia. It prevents either the Russians or ourselves from deploying defenses... defenses pervasive and powerful enough, assuming anyone can solve the engineering problems, to neutralize the deterrent of either side.

JEFFREY KAYE: Pike believes that both major parties support missile defense for domestic electoral reasons.

JOHN PIKE: Missile defense is one of the very few things that the Republican Party can agree on in the field of foreign policy. Both interventionists and isolationists like it. The Republicans want to campaign on missile defense. The Democrats want to campaign on other issues. And so they basically embraced the Republican missile defense position in order to make it go away in the campaign.

JEFFREY KAYE: Voters evaluating Bush and Gore on the basis of missile defense have a choice only in terms of the scale and cost of their plans. The administration's plan is expected to cost $60 billion by 2015. The Bush campaign doesn't have a cost estimate for its more ambitious proposal.

SPOKESPERSON: Five, four, three, two, one...

JEFFREY KAYE: But as to the basic question of whether the U.S. should even have a missile defense system, the domestic debate doesn't approach the heated political reaction from overseas.

UPDATE - STEM CELL RESEARCH

GWEN IFILL: Now, new guidelines in cell research. Susan Dentzer of our health unit begins. The unit is a partnership with the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation.

SUSAN DENTZER: Human stem cells hold out the potential of almost unimaginable cures for a myriad of diseases. That's because they can develop into most of the specialized cells and tissues of the body. And that means new tissues or entire organs could one day be grown in a lab then used to treat everything from heart disease to spinal cord injuries.

DR. JOHN GEARHART, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine: Just think about it, we have a renewable cell source in a laboratory setting that we can then take at our desire to then produce a specific cell type. I mean, it's kind of mind boggling when you think about it.

SUSAN DENTZER: In adults, stem cells can be found in some tissues and organs, such as bone marrow and the brain. But most of the excitement has focused on stem cells found in human embryos like this one that are just days old. That's based on the as-yet unproved belief that embryonic cells alone can be made to grow into almost any other type of cell, whereas some researchers believe that adult stem cells can't.

DR. JOHN GEARHART: As an organism develops, you have populations of cells that, and I think you can appreciate, early on have to have the ability to produce everything. After all, we do come from a single cell initially, a fertilized egg.

SUSAN DENTZER: But it's precisely the fact that these embryonic stem cells come from human embryos that's made this research so controversial. So after several years of debate, yesterday the National Institutes of Health issued formal guidelines spelling out the terms under which federally- funded embryonic stem cell research could proceed. The guidelines said that NIH dollars could only be used to fund research if stem cells were derived from unused frozen embryos created through fertility treatments, such as in vitro fertilization. By contrast, no NIH money could pay for research on cells that came from aborted embryos or terminated pregnancies. What's more, NIH money itself could not be used to remove the stem cells from frozen embryos. That work would have to be funded and carried out by private companies or non- government labs. President Clinton hailed the guidelines as balancing ethical concerns with patients' interests.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: We cannot walk away from the potential to save lives and improve lives, to help people literally get up and walk; to do all kinds of things we could never have imagined, as long as we meet rigorous ethical standards - and I'm convinced and Secretary Shalala is convinced that that has been done.

SUSAN DENTZER: But congressional critics and many right-to-life advocates bitterly disagree. They've vowed to continue their efforts to block federal funding of the embryonic stem cell research.

GWEN IFILL: For more on the debate over stem cell research, we're joined by Daniel Perry, chairman of the Patient's Coalition for Urgent Research, a patient advocacy organization in support of stem cell research; and Richard Doerflinger, associate director of the Secretariat for Pro-Life Activities at the National Conference of Catholic Bishops. They oppose the research. Mr. Doerflinger, we just saw in Susan Dentzer's report what all the upsides of this research are supposed to be. What are the downsides?

RICHARD DOERFLINGER: Well, the downsides of the embryonic stem cell research are, first of all, the moral issue. For the first time in federal history, U.S. History, the federal government will actually be taking a class of human beings, a form of developing human life which is what even the NHI calls these embryos, and destroying that life for the benefit of others. That's something that crosses a very important ethical line that's never been done in our country at any stage of fetal development. Even children who are slated for abortion cannot be singled out for federally funded research that does harm to them before the abortion because research is supposed to be always showing inherent respect for human life, even if they are tempted to take life for the sake of others. The upside of the research is, what was just said in the video about the fact that many adult stem cells may well be able to provide many of the same benefits, in some ways more promising and closer to actually treating patients so we don't have to cross that ethical line.

GWEN IFILL: Well, Mr. Perry, why not just adult stem cell research? Why even tread into this area of embryonic study?

DANIEL PERRY: We've had some two decades of research on adult stem cells from bone marrow, from chord blood, placentas and so forth. And as you know, in the case of breast cancer treatments where they use transplanted bone marrow transplants, very disappointing results -- even after all of these years, we have not been able to make adult stem cells replace potentially, any cell in the body. That's the great promise of embryonic stem cells. And we should do more research in adult stem cells and find out what benefit can come from that. Patient groups would applaud that. But at the same time, we should be exploring the potential of embryonic stem cell research which we know can turn into any cell in the body. How can we tell a young woman, diabetic at age 20, we're going to wait five years and just study adult stem cells and we may say, well that didn't work, now we're going to try something else -- when in the meantime, she may have faced the loss of sight, amputation, kidney failure? I think it would be immoral and unconscionable to tell patients wait until first we try this avenue that so far has not proven effective.

GWEN IFILL: So we're talking about relative morality, we're taking about a tradeoff between what you consider to be life at its embryonic stage and what he considers to be life in terms of adults who could benefit from this research?

RICHARD DOERFLINGER: Well, that would be the dilemma if what he just said about adult stem cell research were true, but, in fact, it's not true. Let's take the case of diabetes. Here is a news report from your own organization, Mr. Perry: The Alliance for Aging Research. This reported on a recent use of adult stem cells, and called it the most promising sign to date that stem cell research might yield remarkable treatments for currently incurable diseases. The scientific literature is filled with these things. Just last week, the NIH and the Christopher Reeve Paralysis Foundation funded a study that showed that stem cells from our own bone marrow can be used to make what they called a virtually unlimited supply of nerve cells for transplant to treat Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, spinal cord injury, and other neural diseases, much more easily obtained than the embryonic stem cells, much safer because we don't know yet how to make the embryonic stem cells stop growing into absolutely everything. That would kill a patient if you put them into the patient now.

GWEN IFILL: What the NIH tried to do yesterday was to try to draw up guidelines in which federal funds would not be used for this kinds of research. Did it succeed, or in your opinion, is this just a matter of the fact that this shouldn't be pursued at all by private research or federal research?

RICHARD DOERFLINGER: Oh, the NIH will federally fund the stem cell research and it will tell researchers how to kill the embryos to get those stem cells for federally funded research. The semantic game they are playing is you have to use a private dollar to do the actual act of killing the embryo. Then all of the federal funds flow in. You are still promising people a reward of millions of dollars for stem cell research if they can provide you with destroyed embryos.

GWEN IFILL: Semantic games?

DANIEL PERRY: It has been two years since this breakthrough this was hailed by thee scientific community as the greatest scientific breakthrough of 1999. Many believe it is the biggest scientific breakthrough in the last decade. And yet, two years later, just now, the NIH has been able to show American scientists the guidelines that they can use so that they can pursue answers from these stem cells that could save so many lives, and can do it in an ethical and moral manner.

GWEN IFILL: What's to stop a scientist from creating embryos precisely and only for research, and what would be wrong with that?

DANIEL PERRY: Well, the guidelines would not allow federal funding for that. The guidelines say specifically they can only do research on stem cells that come from embryos left over in fertility clinics, frozen and liquid nitrogen, destined to be discarded unless they can be donated for potential good through scientific research. Those guidelines are very strict. They create four different layers of regulatory hurdles and they are meant to bring the American public in support of this, which I believe it will do. I think any fair-minded person looking at these guidelines will realize we're not going to create a black market in embryos. We're not going to pay people for embryos. We're not going to allow them to donate embryos so that someone in their family gets a benefit -- this can only be donated to science in a way that the entire scientific community can engage in the research with public funding and with public oversight. And that's critical. We have always been able to do this research in private biotechnology companies that have a commercial goal, and I don't disparage that, but the best way...

RICHARD DOERFLINGER: They are all the members of your board of directors. You better not disparage that.

DANIEL PERRY: The best way to get answers for basic scientific questions, turn it over to the academic scientific researchers.

RICHARD DOERFLINGER: This is nonsense. The federal funds go to commercial interests as well. In fact the academic researchers were funded and are working very closely with the profit-making pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies which is Mr. Perry knows very well because their CEO's are a major part of his board of directors. This is ridiculous to say there's no profit motive. If you say here, I'll give you a million dollars for stem cell research if you can just go out and kill embryos in a certain way with a certain informed consent process to provide these stem cells and you come back and say, but we're not promoting you to kill those embryos, you are lying; you're being a hypocrite.

GWEN IFILL: So you are convinced that that's what will happen here.

RICHARD DOERFLINGER: That's exactly what is laid out in the guidelines. That's not the slippery slopes of the future. That's what they are designed to do right now. Now, what happens down in the future is another matter because as Ron McKy of the NIH said yesterday on National Public Radio, these guidelines are just the first step. This is an incremental process. We need to get people used to this first, and then we go down the road to specially creating embryos for research, to cloning. The British have already moved on to cloning embryos and then killing them specifically for research, having decided that's actually the only way using the embryonic cells you are actually going to get genetically matched transplants that won't be rejected by foreign tissue. That will be the next step here too.

GWEN IFILL: So if we are already on the slippery slope you are talking about, what do you do at this point when the argument is being made we have the cures for Parkinson's; we have cures for Lou Gherig's, if only you'll let us do the research -- how do you stop that?

RICHARD DOERFLINGER: I think the reasonable compromise would be this: The adult stem cell stuff that's now coming forward is far closer to actually being tried for clinical treatment in humans. Some of it is already curing diseases in humans, including the use of stem cells and gene therapy to cure immunological diseases. Let's give it six months; let's give it a year. Let's pour federal money, something that we can all agree on, into the adult stem cell research and see if its new promise works out and then we'll know if we even he need to broach this ethically controversial line.

GWEN IFILL: And, Mr. Perry, is there any way you can make this sale to Congress? As you know, there are some very powerful members of Congress who are already saying that they're going to try to stop this?

DANIEL PERRY: I think in the last two years the more that members of Congress have heard from patients, from families, from every-day Americans, yearning for answers to such devastating conditions as Lou Gehrig's Disease, Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, and so on. Weighing the issues, i think we're getting more leadership in Congress that is saying we fund biomedical research so we can cure diseases. We don't do it to keep scientists in full employment. We have the biggest breakthrough in decades. It is time to move that closer to cures, and to save lives. We have very conservative as well as liberal members of Congress, Republicans, Democrats -- those with very strong pro-choice record as well as those with a strong pro-life record - that are supporting stem cell development. I think things look very bright for bipartisan support for research for the benefit of patients.

GWEN IFILL: That will have to be the last word. Mr. Perry, Mr. Doerflinger, thank you both for joining us.

FINALLY - SURVIVING SURVIVOR

GWEN IFILL: Finally tonight, media correspondent Terence Smith asks: Will America and will television survive, "Survivor"? ("Survivor" theme playing)

TERENCE SMITH: An estimated 51 million Americans tuned in last night to the two-hour finale of "Survivor," this summer's television phenomenon. The contrived reality show drew the second-largest television audience of the year, second only to the Super Bowl. At the end, the desert island castaways awarded the $1 million grand prize to the sole survivor, Richard Hatch, a 39- year-old corporate trainer.

SPOKESMAN: The winner of the first "survivor" competition is... Rich.

SPOKESMAN: Congratulations, Rich. Congratulations. Kelly, congratulations.

TERENCE SMITH: Why did "Survivor" not only survive but succeed? And what does it tell us of television's future? Joining me now is Brian Graden, President of programming at MTV. That network's reality television program, "The Real World," launched the genre in 1992. And NewsHour essayist Roger Rosenblatt. Welcome to you both.

Roger Rosenblatt, let me begin with you and ask you what you think of this show, and the enormous appeal it seems to have for its audience.

ROGER ROSENBLATT: Everything that i think, Terry, has to do with its enormous appeal. I'll establish a context before talking about what I think it means later on. I just think this is as bad as television can get, indeed, as bad as the show can get. You had several unappealing, uninteresting people being watched by millions of other people with nothing better to do in a kind of faint-hearted voyeurism. I watched the whole thing last night, and I thought it would never end; it was a nightmare. Just when i thought it was over, Bryant Gumbel came on with the same people, this time cleaned up and shaven, and their mothers and their fathers and their pets and talking about the thing again and again. I've never seen such devotion to superficiality.

TERENCE SMITH: Brian Graden, I don't think roger liked that Roger liked that show, but let me ask you, what this show and maybe this whole genre of reality television says to you about network television today and about American popular culture.

BRIAN GRADEN: Right, I'll tell you what, you have to remember this generation of network viewers now has literally grown up watching Ricky Lake and Oprah and "The Real World" and the O. J. Trial, and the Lewinsky scandal. "Survivor" did not really come out of anywhere. We've been moving toward this kinds of programming, this kind of cultural television for about ten years and I think that there's just an endless fascination for trying to find some sort of human connection, especially the more insular our world becomes, the more we spend time in our little cubicles and socializing online, the more we're looking for waysto connect with people and I think seeing ourselves reflected back through these shows is the way to do that, and that's why i think they are so popular.

TERENCE SMITH: And therefore you expect more of it?

BRIAN GRADEN: Absolutely. In fact, out here in hollywood, the development place for all of the networks and indeed all cable channels include probably up to 30, 40 more reality projects - may of which will hit yet before the year is over.

TERENCE SMITH: What are some that you may know of that are in the pipeline?

BRIAN GRADEN: Well, there are all sorts. I mean, they're really moving even further. There's one show called "Chains of Love" where a woman will be chained with four different men -- this is not our network. by the way - and throughout the week she will eliminate one each day until she's left with one that she would like to spend the weekend with. There is actually a show where ten people will be locked up at a spa for a period of maybe two months or whatever and have to lose as much weight as possible and the first one to lose 100 pounds will be the winner of that particular show. So they're really, you know, moving further and further afield.

TERENCE SMITH: Well, Roger, do you see what you have to look forward to?

ROGER ROSENBLATT: Yeah. I can't wait. I heard one today that they're going to send a guy into outer space who wins. I'm for all of that. Actually, I'd send them all into outer space. The thing about this idea of reality television though seems to me to be specious -- here this show is called "Survivor". Survival was never really in doubt here -- not real survival. These people weren't in danger. There was a kind of sort of childish analogy to corporate competition. But real survival was never in question. And it strikes me this whole idea of survival is a word that Americans, particularly prosperous Americans nowadays, have invented and hoisted in order to sort of apologize for life being too good. I will survive. The question here is not survival. If you want to talk about survival, take a look at Africa, take a look at Asia, take a look at people who are really in the throws of trying to stay alive. This isn't survival; this is just a form of bad and superficial entertainment.

TERENCE SMITH: Brian Graden, talk to me about the economics of reality television. Why is it coming on? Is it a dollars and cents issue in part?

BRIAN GRADEN: You know, i don't really think it is initially. It is absolutely cheaper to make these shows. You might spend a half million dollars on an hour of these shows, a network drama might be a million and a half dollars. So it is much cheaper but the truth of network economics is that usually two or three shows carry the other 30 shows. And a hit is a hit is a hit. And the revenue potential upside is so much greater on any one hit, that it really doesn't matter what it costs. It is a nice bonus for CBS; it's a nice bonus for those who will make cheaper programs, but ultimately you pay a really high price for any kind of hit. I think you're going to see more of it not because of the economics but it is creatively connecting with the audience.

TERENCE SMITH: "Reality" -- that word -- Roger has trouble with it. Brian, do you? Is this reality?

BRIAN GRADEN: Well, you know, I don't think it is. I think there are a lot of producers who are mad puppeteers and there's sort of a spectrum - you know, the real world on MTV is probably a little more real than "Survivor" where you have certain challenges and that kind of thing and then you move on down the spectrum. But the truth is, "Survivor", I actually see it a little bit differently because it is, i think, a perfect reflection in ways of the Machiavellian dog eat dog world that we live in the 21st century where you really do have to sort of scrap your way to top and I think people feel burdened by this. And even though everybody says they love to hate Richard, I think they kind of like him because they all know he has got the modern world dialed in a way that maybe we all don't.

TERENCE SMITH: Roger, i can see you shaking your head.

ROGER ROSENBLATT: Well, the idea of this being some sort of model of a corporate competition, i suppose it is. But it is a soap opera version of it. If you want to see a model of corporate competition, watch "MacBeth". The whole difference between what's melodrama and drama and something important. Or take reality television at least as i remember it starting with an American family, the Loud Family. That did not offer a million dollar prize and it started out with a kind of Californiated family that looked as it everything was hunky dory. Eventually, the kids fell apart -- the parents fell apart before our eyes not for a million dollars and with a great deal of pain. I must say I thought that was worth watching and there, people could make a connection between their reality and the reality of people on television. I made certainly no connection of my meager reality with the folks that i saw last night.

TERENCE SMITH: Right. Brian Graden, do you think that this in anyway, the tendency towards reality television, in any way reflects a drying up of the creative juices in Hollywood that might have led to scripted drama or comedy?

BRIAN GRADEN: No, i really think it has to do with the taste of the culture - like I say -- the things they've been inundated with over the last ten years. There's still a lot of talented writers who will continue to work. I just think it is more driven by the taste of the consumers than it is by any lack of particular talent in Hollywood.

TERENCE SMITH: Not Roger's taste, I would judge. Roger, did you identify with any of these characters? I mean, who would you have voted off the island?

ROGER ROSENBLATT: I would have voted them all off the island. What i would have liked to do is to be the survivor, and work out my own so called strategy. I love the way people are talking about the brilliant strategy of this fellow, which was as simplistic as anything. In any case, what I would have done is allow everybody to see these others for two weeks and then i would have murdered them. That would have been my strategy and no jury in America would have convicted me.

TERENCE SMITH: Brian Graden, is this, other than the Rosenblatt approach, which we will have to let the courts decide, is this the way the networks can reclaim, in your opinion, the audiences that they have lost to cable and the other alternatives?

BRIAN GRADEN: You know, it is a great question. I think in the short term, absolutely. We're seeing that summer. The audiences have having record numbers, especially with young people. What is scary for the networks, if you think about it, is they used to be the monopolists, when it came to really expensive scripted dramas and comedies because they were the only ones who could afford it. Now they are making the lower cost program and there are literally probably 30 other cable channels who can afford the make the same kind of reality programming as the millionaire or "Survivor". So they're going to ramp up their development slates. So whatever made in network special a year ago, you may see across 40 channels a year or two from now, so in the short-term it's a great week for the network business; a year or two from now we might see them looking like everyone else.

TERENCE SMITH: All right. Brian Graden and the dyspeptic Roger Rosenblatt, thank you both very much.

RECAP

GWEN IFILL: Again, the major stories of this Thursday: On the NewsHour. Mexico's President-elect Fox said opening the border between Mexico and to the free flow of labor would take at least ten years. And late today a federal judge in New Mexico agreed to free former Los Alamos scientists Wen Ho Lee on a million dollars bail. Lee is awaiting trial on charges that he mishandled nuclear secrets. We'll see you online, and again here tomorrow evening with Tom Oliphant and Rich Lowery, among others. I'm Gwen Ifill. Thank you and good night.