Sunday, April 22, 2001 - 12:00 a.m. Pacific
Meeting on funding for embryo-cell research canceled
By Rick Weiss
The Washington Post
Under orders from the Health and Human Services Department,
the National Institutes of Health has canceled this week's inaugural
meeting of a committee that was to review the first applications
from scientists seeking federal funds for human embryo-cell research.

The order is the most direct action yet by President Bush or his
appointees in the scientific and ethical controversy over human
embryonic stem-cell research.

The cells have the potential to grow into all kinds of human tissues
and may someday prove invaluable in the treatment of many disorders,
including diabetes, Parkinson's disease and spinal-cord injuries.

But they are controversial because they are retrieved from "spare"
human embryos slated for destruction at fertility clinics.

The top HHS lawyer under the Clinton administration had deemed
such funding legal. However, new HHS Secretary Tommy Thompson
has ordered a review of that decision.

"The bottom line is the department felt that it makes the most sense
to hold off until the guideline review that the department is doing is
complete," said HHS spokesman Bill Hall.

Hall said there's no timetable for the review, but he expected it to be
finished this summer.

He said he didn't know whether Thompson or Bush decided to halt
the NIH meeting. Scientists and patient advocates who had hoped
the field was finally poised to get federal support expressed anger
and frustration as word of the cancellation spread.

Wednesday's meeting was to be the culmination of many months
of legal research, policy planning and the promulgation of new
scientific and ethical guidelines. Under the new guidelines, made
final last August, NIH-funded researchers aren't allowed
to destroy human embryos.

But they are allowed to study cells that other, privately funded
scientists have retrieved from spare human embryos discarded
at fertility clinics, as long as proper permission has been granted
by the mother and other ethics restrictions are followed.

The first applications for such research - and the first documentation
from potential embryo-cell distributors assuring that their cells have
been retrieved in accordance with the guidelines - were to be reviewed
Wednesday by a newly formed committee, the human pluripotent
stem cell review group.

"It's unfortunate," said one committee member who spoke
on condition of anonymity. "It certainly is holding up research
that could potentially affect a lot of people with a number of different
diseases. Time is being lost."

The committee member said the group included a wide range
of scientific, ethical and theological expertise and opinion,
and included at least one "mainstream Catholic."

Stanford researcher and Nobel laureate Paul Berg said he feared
that U.S. researchers may lose their edge in the biomedical revolution
since Britain, France and Canada have been passing more liberal rules
for research on embryo cells.

"We have a major part of the world's science talent pool, but our hands
are tied behind our backs in this area," Berg said.

"Why are we behind the eight ball on this?"

Some opponents have argued certain cells that can be obtained
from adults may have the same potential as embryonic stem cells.

Doug Johnson, legislative director of the National Right to Life
Committee, said he supported the review of the NIH guidelines.

The Clinton-administration opinion that it is legal to fund embryo
cell research is "not an opinion, it's an evasion of the law,"
Johnson said.

The law, in this case, is a rider to the appropriations bill for NIH
that precludes funding of research that causes the destruction
of embryos. The legal question is whether that language is violated
by funding research that does not itself destroy the embryos
but depends on their destruction by others as a source of cells.

Copyright © 2001 The Seattle Times Company

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com:80/html/nationworld/134287681_stem22.html

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