Poll Question from 2000

I posted yesterday that the earliest poll I found concerning the issue of embryonic stem cell research was from 2001. However, I found a polling question from 2000 about stem cell research from the Kaiser Foundation. The foundation administered a poll to find out what important issues the public was following in the media. They do these polls in order to help the media know what to report and how much information they are conveying to the public. The question was asking respondents how closely they have followed news coverage of stem cell research. 56% reported they were not at all closely following the story. This may have also been asked due to the upcoming presidential election in 2000. Then in 2001, President Bush banned federal funding for stem cell research and it became a hot topic in the media and among the public. In 2001 poll organizations began asking the public their opinions regarding the issue. I also found out through research that this issue does not have a long history in the polls because stem cells were not extracted from embryos until 1998 when a man named James Thompson from Wisconsin University successfully did this. He is the head of the regenerative biology lab there. His website is posted below.

http://stemcells.wisc.edu/faculty/thomson.html