The San Jose Mercury News, CA
Posted on Sun, Jul. 06, 2003

Stem cell scientist vows to stay course
By Kim Vo
Mercury News

Stanford University scientist Dr. Irving Weissman was the first to isolate stem cells. Now he is their champion,
expounding to legislators and laymen alike the promise of stem cells for treating disease and why it would be wrong to
restrict their propagation. He doesn't mince words.

On the human pre-embryos some stem cells come from: ``I don't believe they're lives. I don't. Not for a second.''

On the terminology: `` `Embryonic cloning' is the language of the extreme Christian right and other groups trying to
block'' the research.

On the need for scientists to pursue stem cell research: ``You know something that can cure people. Not theoretical
people . . . but actual, living people.''

Weissman's willingness to talk and his stature in the scientific community -- he chaired the National Academy of
Sciences panel on cloning -- have made him a sought-after speaker at medical symposiums, legislative hearings and
university lectures. Come November, he and other scientists will meet with the Vatican science council.

But not everyone is pleased to hear him.

Moral implications

``He sometimes marginalizes others by dismissing their perspectives as private religious beliefs,'' explained Dr.
William Hurlbut, a Stanford colleague who is trying to foster a compromise between stem cell scientists and groups
worried about the research's moral implications. ``But there's more to it than that; this research is touching the very
heart of our humanity.''

Weissman admits he's outspoken. ``I tell the truth as I know it,'' he said.

Sometimes, what he calls truth, opponents consider deception. Weissman and Stanford landed in political trouble in
December when they launched a new Institute of Cancer/Stem Cell Biology and Medicine with the 63-year-old scientist as
the head.

The institute announced it might one day create human stem cell lines, causing some people to fear Stanford was
creating a baby farm. Stanford strained to explain the stem cells would only be used for therapeutic purposes and never
allowed to grow into a baby. In fact, Weissman opposes reproductive cloning.

But part of the confusion stemmed from Weissman's dogged refusal to acknowledge that Stanford might one day use a
technique scientists commonly call cloning. Weissman calls it ``nuclear transplantation.'' The head of the President's
Council on Bioethics chastised them for parsing words and proceeding with the research, as did groups against embryonic
stem cell research.

``They have lied. They have misled. And they have sown confusion,'' tsked an article in the conservative Weekly
Standard.

A lot of the ire was directed at Weissman. ``Most people keep their heads down, and he has a way of keeping his way
up,'' said Nigel M. de S. Cameron, a bioethicist associated with a Christian think tank who opposes embryonic stem cell
research.

Media flap

Weissman offered to resign to protect Stanford from further fallout, but Philip Pizzo, dean of the medical school,
urged him to stay. Weissman wasn't to blame for the media flap, he said.

Pizzo said he believes Weissman strives to speak the truth and to do so ``in an honest and forthright manner,'' adding
that Stanford is lucky to have such a ``remarkably able and capable and visionary leader.''

Weissman says he chooses his words carefully to ``remove emotion and put in fact.'' The public has mad-scientist
visions when they hear the word ``cloning,'' he said, and he tries to dispassionately explain the science, then detail
what it might accomplish.

Scientists believe stem cells may one day help treat diseases from Lou Gehrig's to Parkinson's to juvenile diabetes.
Weissman seems baffled that people are hesitant to pursue treatments for these diseases for the reason that some stem
cells can only be gotten by destroying blastocysts, tiny pre-embryos.

``How can someone be so morally superior as to say: The blastocyst counts, but the actual people -- tough luck?'' he
asks.

Treating disease has been a goal of Weissman's since he was 9. As a boy in Montana, he read ``The Microbe Hunters,'' a
1926 book by Paul de Kruif chronicling Pasteur, Ehrlich and other ``great scientists who learned about microbes,
diseases and how to deal with it.''

He knew then he wanted to be a medical researcher.

He came to Stanford and earned his medical degree in 1965. Hurlbut, who was a student at the time, remembers Weissman
as a young professor. ``He was like an early hippie. He had long, wild hair and was, as they used to say, a `cool guy'
willing to talk about unconventional ideas.''

In 1988, he was the first to isolate a stem cell and has since formed two companies to further the research. Most of
Weissman's work focuses on stem cells from mice and adult humans, though he has occasionally worked with the embryonic
ones that are now so controversial.

Political struggle

He didn't foresee the political struggle to come, which has him testifying before state and congressional panels, and
has bioethicists like William Saunders of the Family Research Council likening Weissman's work to Nazi experiments on
humans.

Weissman, who is separated from his wife and has four grown children from that marriage, declines to name his current
``significant other,'' as he calls her, and their child. He gets vilified plenty, he explains, and would rather keep
them out of it.

Despite the controversy, he's not giving up the scientific life to indulge full time in his other passions -- Stanford
football, watching ballet, fly-fishing or staying in his beloved Montana, where he has two homes, one he co-owns and
285 acres along the Smith River he bought to save from development.

``The last thing I'll do is retire,'' he said. ``That moment you understand something no one else has understood -- I
can't describe that feeling. Who would give up that life?''

Contact Kim Vo at [log in to unmask] or (650) 688-7571

SOURCE: The San Jose Mercury News, CA
http://www.bayarea.com/mld/mercurynews/news/6243780.htm

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