Sunday, July 22 2001
ARGUMENTS
Goverment Funding of Stem Cell Research

President Bush will soon decide whether to allow taxpayer
funding of experiments using cells from human embryos.
Joan Samuelson, president of Parkinson's Action Network,
and David Prentice, an Indiana State University Life Sciences
Professor, Squared off on the Issue in Congressional hearings
last week.

JOAN SAMUELSON: Scientists have made tremendous
progress in the search for a Parkinson's cure. One of the most
promising lines of research involves using human embryonic
stem cells to repair brain cells killed off by Parkinson's.
Scientific experts have said Parkinson's is the first disorder
expected to benefit from stem cells, and predict it could be done
within a decade if the funds needed to tackle this problem
were available. Many other diseases may be conquered with this
same biomedical wonder. But this potential is being squandered,
and lives are being lost, as this issue is held captive in the
arena of abortion politics and federal research funds are withheld
by presidential order. As a consequence, the 1 million Parkinson's
sufferers have a cure on hold. Meanwhile, we watch our bodies
surrender to symptoms that first make us prisoners of our frozen
bodies, and eventually end our lives. We deserve better.

DAVID PRENTICE: Parkinson's sufferers, as well as the millions
of other Americans who face diseases such as heart disease, stroke,
Alzheimer's, diabetes and liver disease, do deserve better - they
deserve better than just promises. Unfortunately, that's all that's
been delivered from embryonic stem cell research. While embryonic
stem cells have the potential to form adult tissues if left in
the intact embryo, when removed and placed into the culture
dish they have been relatively inefficient at forming specific tissues
that might be used to treat diseases. In addition, the stem cells
have several negative characteristics, including the tendency
to form tumors when injected into the body. There are much more
promising lines of research, such as adult stem cells, which should
be followed in our search for treatments for disease.

SAMUELSON: Of course we are holding only promises right
now - because America's best and brightest have been prevented
from doing the research! Some privately financed work has
produced significant indications of huge breakthroughs ahead.
But the research is largely stalled because the biomedical research
world revolves around federal funding - $18 billion in tax dollars
allocated to the National Institutes of Health - and is now barred
from going to stem cell research. The researchers can make little
progress until those funds are available.
You appear convinced that while embryonic stem cells have yet
to prove worthy, adult stem cells are far more developed
as a therapy. Recently, a group of Nobel laureates wrote President
Bush urging his speedy funding of embryonic stem cell research.
They would not have bothered if the potential were not great.
Can 80 Nobel laureates be so wrong?

PRENTICE: Actually, yes, 80 Nobel laureates can be pretty off base.
Knowledgeable people do not always perpetuate the truth.
Most of the laureates who signed the letter have no expertise
whatsoever in cell biology (some were actually economists and
physicists). In the letter itself, they quote several advances in
"stem cell research" - most of the advances they note were done
with adult stem cells!
Yes, I believe adult stem cells are much farther advanced
as therapies. For some conditions they are already being used
to treat patients. The embryonic stem cells actually have not
produced anything significant, and recent evidence indicates
they are genetically unstable. But the media hype embryonic
cells, and people buy into the myths.

SAMUELSON: Hmmmmmm . . . the Lyin' Laureates. I just don't
get their motivation. If, in fact, adult stem cells were so dramatically
more promising, why wouldn't we all happily avoid this whole
controversy? But prominent researchers in the field - including
Stanford's Irving Weissman and Cal Tech's David Baltimore - tell us,
in a recent Science magazine editorial, that they aren't. It is always
possible, perhaps even likely, that further research might reveal
a source for viable adult stem cells. But that is simply a hope,
and it would be foolish to abandon the surer path
for the unproven one.
That in a nutshell is why Nancy Reagan, Sen. Orrin Hatch
and patients like me are strongly advocating that adult stem cell
research continue, but that embryonic stem cell research
be funded aggressively, immediately.
It just doesn't seem credible that this is truly a scientific debate.
Isn't it really all about different ethical points of view - and
politics?

PRENTICE: Bingo, Joan! You've hit on the real root of the debate.
If this were just a scientific debate about fingernails, no one
would care. But it's really an ethical and political debate.
It comes down to how we view the moral status of a human
embryo, and how we balance that status versus current
disease sufferers. But don't get the impression that it's the
same old abortion debate. You've already pointed out
some "pro-life" people who favor embryonic stem cell research;
there are many "pro-choice" people opposed to it.
Some see it as a life issue; an embryo is a human being
scientifically (it's not some other species), and the question
is whether it is a person or property. Some see it as the
"slippery slope." In that respect, the scary thing is that there
are already some "ethicists" on academic campuses who
believe that scientists should experiment on folks who have
Alzheimer's, Down syndrome, are in a coma, etc., because
their "quality of life" isn't good. To whom will we choose
to assign value? And who will make that choice?

SAMUELSON: Assume for a moment that embryonic stem
cells are as promising as the 80 Laureates say. That, then,
is my rescue from my future with Parkinson's: losing my
mobility, independence, income, home, and, finally, my life.
The cells come from in vitro fertilization, which routinely
now gives infertile couples modern-day miracles;
the embryonic stem cells are leftovers from that process.
Hundreds of thousands are said to be sitting in freezers.
To let them sit until they are discarded is to choose suffering
and death for millions of Americans who may be rescued
by transplantation of them into our ailing brains and other
systems. What ethical code can ignore our need so utterly,
in favor of a five-day-old clump of cells the size of a pencil dot
that will never become a person? And fuzzing that choice
with fear of experimentation on a Down's baby is a big leap,
and a cheap ploy, I think. Your solution - do nothing
for fear of slippery slopes - is to abandon the dreams
of millions who might be rescued. Where's the morality in that?

PRENTICE: I'd still say they're selling you promises for
grant dollars. And unfortunately, the scare is real,
not a ploy. We've seen society go that route in the past,
and we don't need to go there again. But I'm not saying we
should do nothing. Let's talk about those embryos that are
supposedly discarded. Often it's made to sound that
thousands upon thousands are tossed away, but that's
not the case. In fact, even with consent forms saying
that they can discard them after several years,
many fertility doctors are very reluctant to do it.
The embryos can remain frozen and viable for at least
20 to 30 years, probably longer, and there are published
papers where after 7, 8, 10 years in the freezer, they were
implanted, gestated and born. One option for those frozen
human embryos is adoption. It's a relatively new idea
and needs much more publicizing, but it's a very viable
alternative to destruction. There are 6 to 10 million infertile
couples in the U.S., and estimates of up to 200,000 embryos
frozen in fertility clinics. Don't they deserve a chance for life too?
On the research front, let's put more tax dollars toward
supporting the adult stem cell research, which has shown
real success, as well as more federal funding for disease
research in general. The embryonic stem cell work will continue
in the private sector, and we can hopefully have an open debate
in society about just how we look at life, at any stage, and how
we balance choices that can affect suffering lives.

 SOURCE: San Francisco Chronicle Page D - 5
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2001/07/22/IN994653.DTL

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