Seeing Pessimism, Not Science, as the Enemy
By CHRIS HEDGES

Published: March 19, 2004

PISCATAWAY, N.J.

THERE are few battles as divisive in science as human embryonic stem cell research. Those who believe in it as
passionately as Dr. Wise Young laud it as revolutionary, holding out hope for a cure for spinal cord injuries, while
others in the field see the possibility of treating diseases like Parkinson's and Alzheimer's. Those who oppose it,
including anti-abortion groups and the Roman Catholic Church, say it will allow scientists to play God, to control and
direct the course of life itself.

The Bush administration has restricted the use of federal money for embryonic stem cell research. But Gov. James E.
McGreevey, in a move that would place New Jersey at the forefront of state-sponsored stem cell studies, has not only
signed a law permitting research, but intends to provide $6.5 million as part of a five-year, $50 million plan.
California, the only other state to formally endorse research, has a ballot proposal planned for November to raise $3
billion over 10 years for such research.

The man at the center of New Jersey's program is Dr. Young, 54, the chairman of Rutgers University's department of cell
biology and neuroscience. It will be his task to take the proposed $6.5 million in state money and raise the rest to
create the New Jersey Stem Cell Research Institute. It would be run by Rutgers and the University of Medicine and
Dentistry of New Jersey and based at a center to be built in New Brunswick.

"We hope to create a critical mass for stem cell research," Dr. Young said during an interview in his campus office,
tapping his pipe on the palm of his hand before dipping it into a leather pouch.

"We want to attract a dozen of the top stem cell scientists in the world to New Jersey. The company or state or country
that discovers how to convert cells in the body to stem cells will have the Midas touch."

Dr. Young carries out his studies on umbilical cord blood because "it is a plentiful and diverse source of young stem
cells." But the institute, he said, would "study stem cells from all sources, embryonic, fetal, neonatal and adult, in
order to learn how to make stem cells from any cell."

The plan could make Dr. Young, who grew up in Hong Kong and Japan, a leader in the field. While skeptics point out that
stem cell research has yet to perfect any treatments, Dr. Young expresses confidence. When asked how far away he
thought he was from harnessing embryonic stem cells for medical treatments, he did not hesitate to answer: "Five or six
years."

With his beard; his pipe, which he fidgets with more than he smokes; and his pen-filled shirt pocket, Dr. Young looks
the part of a man whose life has been spent in a laboratory. He stumbled into work on stem cells as a medical school
resident in 1978, when he had to tell the parents of a 17-year-old boy who broke his neck in a wrestling accident,
"There is nothing I can do."

"I don't remember his name," he said of the quadriplegic teenager, "but I remember his face. I remember how awful that
feeling of helplessness was, the inability to do anything in the face of this devastating injury to a young person."

But, unlike many in the field who he said were gripped by "pessimism and a feeling that there was nothing we could do
to help," he decided to strike back. He obtained a grant to study spinal cord injuries at New York University and went
into research. He had a hunch, which turned out to be correct, that the swift injection of drug called
methylprednisolone in high doses would reverse some of the effects of trauma, upending the established idea that spinal
cord injuries were permanent.

"At the time, the conventional view among neuroscientists was that nothing would work,'' he said, "that a damaged
spinal column was like a strawberry that had been stepped on: nothing would put it back together.'' By 1990 he had
shown that an injection of the drug eight hours after an injury could "restore about 20 percent of function over a
nontreated group."

"It was not a miracle," he said, "but it was a start."

HE has always been precocious. He finished his undergraduate degree at Reed College in Portland, Ore., where he read
Homer in Greek and devoured vast swaths of the science curriculum, in three years. He raced through his graduate
degrees, earning his doctorate from the University of Iowa in three years and his medical degree from Stanford in two.
He devoted his summers to meetings with other neuroscientists, studying and experimenting, in Woods Hole, Mass. It was
there that he met his wife, Lily, now chairwoman of the department of environmental sciences at Rutgers.

"We met at the mailbox at Woods Hole," he said. "We had the same last name."

They have a grown son and daughter and spend their weekends in Manhattan, where they lived for many years before coming
to Rutgers. As much of the city flows one way on a Friday night, they flow the other, perhaps emblematic of a lifetime
of swimming against currents.

"When I began, experts laughed when we spoke about treating spinal cord injuries," Dr. Young remembered. "The word cure
was a four-letter word. I was naïve. I thought, once the science was done, people would rush to embrace this work, but
I found that the deadly combination of inertia and pessimism combined made the field hard to change."

SOURCE: New York Times, NY
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/19/nyregion/19profile.html

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