Ronald Reagan lived to a ripe old age, but he did not enjoy much of a quality life during the last years. As it does with all its victims, Alzheimer's robbed him of his mind as he slowly and irreversibly wasted away.

Imagine how that could have changed if a cure were available. How would the former president have added to the national discussion on pressing issues during the Clinton years and into the time when international terrorism began to hold the nation in its grip?

More than a year has passed since we began supporting, under strictly controlled conditions, somatic cell research and other stem cell work on excess embryos developed outside the womb. In that time, the idea has been gaining momentum. Now, with Reagan's death, the need seems so much more apparent.

Toward the end, Nancy Reagan became a staunch and vocal supporter of this type of research. Last month, a bipartisan group of more than 200 House members signed a letter urging President Bush to loosen his restrictions on federal funding for it. Last week, 58 senators, including Utah's Orrin Hatch, signed a similar letter.

The question isn't whether such research will take place. It's already progressing in places like Britain, Singapore and South Korea. And a lot of this nation's best scientists are going there, too. Private research also is legal in this country, but funding always is an obstacle.

The question is whether the United States wants to lead out in an area of research that demands sensitivity and a heightened sense of ethics.

Nearly three years ago, Bush signed an executive order restricting stem-cell research to existing stem-cell colonies. Since then, it has become apparent that those colonies are too few to allow for any meaningful work.

Of course, this issue comes with a large and heavy burden of moral concerns. That is how it should be when scientific research walks dangerously close to the ledge of tinkering with human life. Work must proceed carefully. But it is significant to note that some members of Congress who are staunch opponents of legal abortion-on-demand have concluded they are not compromising their beliefs by supporting this. Generally this comes after the realization that the embryos used for this research would otherwise be destroyed.

Science must never create life in order to exploit and destroy it. The need to cure diseases among the living must never take precedence over the needs of a viable human life that is developing. But neither somatic cell research nor the harvesting of stem cells from discarded embryos violates these concerns. The president ought to revise the rules.