This is an excellent editorial on the science and politics  of stem cell
research funding in the US.  - very useful to read if you are going to be
speaking to your Senators and Representatives during the PAN Forum next
week.
 From the May 9, 2003 issue of Science Magazine
Posted on the Coalition for the Advancement of Medical Research (CAMR)
web site :
 http://www.camradvocacy.org/fastaction/news.asp?id=582

Science
May 9, 2003
Stem Cells: Still Here, Still Waiting

By Donald Kennedy, Editor-in-Chief

"The science and politics of embryonic stem cells (ESCs) in the United
States form an extraordinary tapestry, in which scientific and political
threads are delicately intertwined. In this issue, we have two carefully
presented views on the subject. On p. 911, the director of the National
Institutes of Health (NIH) describes the various programs underway at his
institutes to classify, evaluate, and share the human embryonic cell
lines that were approved for federal funding by President Bush on 9
August 2001. And on p. 913, leading investigators who work with stem
cells lay out some of the scientific considerations that must underlie
further research based on these cells. Their essay concludes with a
recommendation that the United States establish a human ESC repository,
like the Stem Cell Bank proposed in the United Kingdom.

Both entries delicately avoid discussing two real political problems.
First, much of the scientific community remains unconvinced that the cell
lines now available meet research needs. Soon after the presidential
order specifying that only cell lines generated before the magic date of
9 August 2001 could be approved for federally funded research, NIH
scientists announced that over 70 different lines met that criterion. NIH
testimony before Congress in April, however, has indicated that of those,
only 11 are now available. The recommendations of the scientists clearly
imply that work with new lines will be needed. Second, the stem cell
issue has unfortunately been entangled with the issue of cloning, with
the result that the politics has tended to take over the science.
Congress and the public are already confused enough about cloning; to put
stem cells into the mix only compounds the problem.

Cloning actually has no necessary relationship to ESCs, which are usually
isolated from excess embryos employed in in vitro fertilization
procedures. These cells are clones of one another, but no scientist
cloned them! Neither their creation nor their use necessarily involves
nuclear transfer, although there are certain purposes for which that
technique will be important in the future. What concerns the scientific
community now is how access to new lines of stem cells can be arranged.

Why are new lines needed? The approved human ESCs have all been cultured
in the presence of mouse cells--called "feeder cells"--that apparently
supply needed growth factors. It is believed that contamination from
mouse viruses or proteins may make such cells unsuitable for introduction
into humans for therapeutic purposes. Fortunately, human ESCs can now be
grown and caused to differentiate without the mouse feeder cells. As
often happens in research, work done in the United States using
nonfederal funds, and in other nations that don't have restrictions like
ours, has brought new methods and skills to the task.

It is plainly not sound policy to retain the current restriction on work
with human ESCs. Some have argued that for therapeutic purposes, adult
stem cells (cells isolated from embryos in which tissues have already
undergone some differentiation) can be used instead. Such cells can
produce tissues of their own type, and possibly others by a process that
developmental biologists call "transdifferentiation." That has been a
topic for lively scientific debate. Not in debate, however, is whether
ESCs can be made to differentiate into any type of adult tissue. They
can. In contrast, the search for adult stem cells has produced useful
progenitors for some tissues but not for others. Further study on the
capacity of adult stem cells, including the transdifferentiation
question, is needed.

But in the meantime, we will need ESCs, especially if we hope to use
tissues made in culture to remedy certain human diseases and disorders.
For that, we will need to have embryonic cell lines derived from persons
with the genetic constitution corresponding to those conditions, as
Senator Alan Spector (R-Pa.) has urged upon President Bush. In this
respect, the problem with the existing cell lines is their lack of
genetic diversity. That provides yet another rationale for removing the
obstacles to making new lines. Political comfort might be taken from the
situation in the United Kingdom, where stem cell research proceeds apace
with the blessing of a friendly government. Unless U.S. policy changes,
more cell biologists here may decide it's so friendly they will go and
work there."

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