FROM: USA Today

States dive into stem cell debates
By Dan Vergano, USA TODAY

Cloned babies. Embryo farms. Miracle cures. Shoot the TV if you want to
avoid hearing the buzzwords of stem cell politics this year.

  In February, South Korean scientists announced that they had cloned the
world's first mature embryonic stem cell line.

You might want to aim for the radio, as well.

An annual Senate debate has hit the road, moving to 33 state legislatures
considering 100 bills that alternately condemn, condone or fund embryonic
stem cell research. The legislative battles culminate in a California
voter initiative in November that would, if approved, pump nearly $3
billion over 10 years into such research.

"There is a tremendous amount of legislation flying around on one area of
medical research. It is remarkable and unprecedented," says Dan Perry of
the Coalition for the Advancement of Medical Research, a collaboration of
83 patient groups, universities and medical organizations that support
the research.

Why all the activity?

Three years after President Bush severely limited federal spending on
stem cell research, private institutions are figuring out ways to do
end-runs. And onlookers in legislatures, on church councils and in the
scientific community are raising a ruckus on all sides of the debate.

Human embryonic stem cells are like blank slates. Early in a pregnancy,
they turn into — or, as scientists say, differentiate into — all of the
body's specialized tissues and organs. Since the University of
Wisconsin's James Thomson first isolated and grew the cells in 1998,
researchers have pondered how they might be used in medical treatments.

If produced from cloned cells genetically identical to a recipient,
embryonic stem cells could conceivably be grown into rejection-free
transplant organs, although the technology does not yet exist to do so.

Today, supporters such as the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation point
to cloned cell transplants as a way to treat, and even cure, diseases
such as juvenile (type 1) diabetes, cancer and Alzheimer's disease.

Critics say the research is immoral because the cells are harvested from
human embryos, most oftendiscarded ones donated by fertility clinics. The
days-old embryos are destroyed in the process.
--------------------------------------------------------------
Sidebar:    Which cell to use: Adult or embryonic?

In one side ring of the stem cell circus is the debate over adult stem
cells vs. embryonic cells.

Embryonic stem cells are found, obviously, in the embryo. They turn into
every type of tissue, except placental ones. Cloned versions of these
cells could potentially be turned into rejection-free transplant tissues
capable of curing many diseases.
Adult stem cells hide in adult tissues, serving as a repair system for
the body. They are more specialized cells that give rise naturally to
only a few kinds of tissues — for example, bone marrow stem cells that
regularly replenish blood cells.

Those who oppose the destruction of embryos to harvest stem cells
advocate the use of adult cells as a reasonable alternative. They note
that unlike embryonic cells, adult stem cells have been used for more
than 40 years in bone marrow transplants, and to treat inherited blood
disorders and leukemia.

Both types of stem cells are blank-slate cells without any function
except to multiply and divide, becoming more specialized with each
division, and turning into brain, blood, bone and every other type of
tissue.

Researchers are studying both types of cells to see whether they can be
grown in the lab, coaxed into becoming needed types of tissues — brain
cells for Parkinson's patients for example — and transplanted into
patients.

But in March, two studies in the journal Nature cast doubt on suggestions
that adult cells are as capable as embryonic cells of becoming a wide
variety of tissues.

Some of the published, initial adult cell reports may have been too
optimistic, and embryonic stem cells are still the "gold standard" for
flexibilty, says prominent adult stem cell researcher Catherine
Verfaillie of the University of Minnesota. For that reason, she and most
researchers would prefer to study both kinds of cells.

"The debate regarding whether adult stem cells or embryonic stem cells
are 'better' is a creation of politics and the press, not of the
scientific community," says stem cell scientist James Thomson of the
University of Wisconsin in Madison. "I know of no credible stem cell
scientist that does not believe that both should be studied; human
medicine will suffer if either is excluded."
----------------------------------------

Opponents warn of a future in which the essence of being human is
devalued, human eggs will become a commodity grown in "farms" and cloned
babies will be commonplace.

A bioethics standoff

The satirical weekly The Onion mocked the debate in a story headlined
"Potential Baldness Cure Leads Man To Reverse Position On Stem-Cell
Research." But the bioethics issue has settled into a battle between an
irresistible force and an immovable object:

•For the past five decades, utilitarian ethics have governed biomedical
experiments. Bioethicist Art Caplan of the University of Pennsylvania
summarizes the utilitarian position in the Feb. 20 Science magazine as
"the moral argument that investing in science and technology extends life
and improves the quality of life, despite exacting a toll in harms and
risks." For that reason, researchers widely view experiments on embryonic
cells as permissible because of their potential value in the search for
cures and in expanding knowledge of human development.

•On the other side are views that suggest "moral tradition does urge us
to treat each and every living member of the human species, including the
early embryo, as a human person with fundamental rights, the first of
which is the right to life," in the words of Richard Doerflinger of the
U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. For that reason, research opponents
consider the destruction of embryos for stem cells to be murder.

Events this year have only intensified disagreement over the federal
policy.

In August 2001, Bush restricted funding to research involving stem cell
lines already created. A stem cell line is a family of constantly
dividing cells, the product of a single embryo.

Of the more than 60 such lines then said to be available, only 18
actually ended up for use, for a fee, by researchers on a National
Institutes of Health registry.

"Many in the research community believe that the federal restrictions on
funding of human embryo research create a chilling effect on embryo
research generally," says the President's Council on Bioethics in its
March report entitled "Reproduction and Responsibility."

That chill has driven private institutes to take the lead. Nationwide
there are eight such institutes, both at universities and in private
firms.

On Friday, the University of Wisconsin announced the founding of a
150-person stem cell research institute. And Harvard is expected to
announce a $100 million stem cell research initiative this week.

Overseas, a privately financed South Korean team announced in February
the first embryonic stem cell line made from a cloned embryo. Creating
such a line is a first step in turning cloned cells into rejection-free
transplant tissues.

And last month, a team led by biologist Doug Melton, a Howard Hughes
Medical Institute researcher at Harvard, nearly matched the NIH registry
in one fell swoop. In a New England Journal of Medicine report, Melton
announced the creation of 17 embryonic stem cell lines available to
researchers for free. In one month, the 320 requests for his cells exceed
the roughly 300 filled requests for the stem cells on the NIH registry
since 2001.

University of Minnesota researchers say they will collaborate next year
on an effort to test the use of embryonic stem cells as a medical
treatment.

Adding to the politicization of the debate, former President's Council
member Elizabeth Blackburn, a cell biologist at the University of
California-San Francisco, says she was ejected from the group in February
because her support for such research clashes with the views of its
chairman, American Enterprise Institute fellow Leon Kass. Kass is the
bioethicist credited with crafting the Bush stem cell policy.

Meanwhile, Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., complains that the council
"tragically" supported some embryo research in its March report by
calling for a ban only on the use of embryos beyond 10 to 14 days of
their development. That's much later than they are actually used in
research. Brownback regularly sponsors legislation to ban embryonic stem
cell research and says he will do so again this year. And so the debate
continues.

At the same time, a federal ban on cloning embryos to make babies has
stalled in the Senate, even though a ban is supported by nearly everyone
involved in the debate, from the American Society for Reproductive
Medicine to the President's Council.

Opponents cannot even agree on terminology. Brownback believes all
cloning is reproductive, his aides say. Research supporters suggest
therapeutic cloning, in which harvested stem cells are transplanted into
a patient, involves research embryos that would never produce cloned
children.

A 'crazy quilt' of laws

Research advocate Perry worries that the legislative activity in various
states will lead to a "crazy-quilt" pattern of laws that will drive some
scientists to states that support the research. The point has been made
that Michigan State University biologist Jose Cibelli, a collaborator
with the South Korean cloning team, would have faced a $1 million fine
and 10 years in jail if he had conducted such research in Michigan.

If politics were not involved, "the field of embryonic stem cell research
would be much more advanced than it is today," research pioneer Thomson
says.

"It is difficult to estimate just how damaging the current restrictions
have been to the field to date, but if the current restrictions are not
eventually lifted, patients will suffer needlessly."

For now, researchers don't know what signals coax stem cells to grow into
specific tissues, says Catherine Verfaillie of the University of
Minnesota Stem Cell Institute. "The cells tend to decide for us, and we
have relatively little insight in how to control things.

"Some combination of genetic analysis with stem cell experiments will
have to occur to tease out those signals."

And despite all the debate, embryonic stem cells may end up offering
insight that is more scientific than therapeutic, Thomson says. "The real
lasting contribution of human embryonic stem cell research may be
increased knowledge of the human body, which could change human medicine
even more dramatically than new transplantation therapies."

Find this article at:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2004-04-20-stem-cell-cover_x.htm

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