FROM:  Wisconsin State Journal
U.S. unlikely to ease stem-cell curbs soon, official says
0:17 AM 5/15/04
Karen Rivedal

The director of the National Institutes of Health said Friday he didn't
expect easing of federal restrictions on embryonic stem-cell research
soon, despite the promise the controversial science shows in curing many
diseases.

"More (stem-cell) lines would always be better," Dr. Elias Zerhouni said.
"(But) the policy is based on moral and ethical concerns of (President
Bush) and those around him."

UW-Madison Provost Peter Spear said that was unfortunate. "The federal
restrictions have limited research. We're one of the key research centers
in the country for stem-cell work, and that decision impacts us."

Stem cells are the body's building blocks, blank-slate cells capable of
becoming every tissue in the body. They hold promise both as tools to
promote disease research and to replace diseased cells.

In an interview with the Wisconsin State Journal during a visit to
UW-Madison to address graduates of the Medical School, Zerhouni did not
dispute the healing potential of stem-cell research. That work is
especially important at UW-Madison, where the field got a major boost by
university researcher James Thomson, who in 1998 was the first to grow
and sustain human embryonic cells in a lab.

But Zerhouni Friday said he couldn't recommend more federal funding for
the creation of new stem-cell lines, which most scientists believe would
speed the technology. Bush, who is Zerhouni's boss, decided in 2001 to
limit federal funding for stem-cell research to the 78 lines then in
existence - of which only a fraction are now scientifically viable.

(UW-Madison controls five of the original lines.)

Zerhouni said private funding, such as the money recently committed by
Harvard University for new cell lines, must fill the gap until the nation
reaches a consensus on the matter. Stem-cell research is opposed by those
who believe the destruction of human embryos is akin to murder.

"We really need to explore all avenues to advance as fast as we can as
effectively as we can, within the moral and ethical boundaries around the
use of taxpayer dollars to do it," Zerhouni said. "I think it's good to
have this debate, but it's not a scientific one. That's not something the
NIH can decide."

But political pressure for more federally funded stem-cell lines is
building.

Some 200 members of Congress this year sent the Republican president a
bipartisan letter urging him to remove the federal restrictions, with a
similar version being circulated in the U.S. Senate. The research also is
supported by the American Medical Association, the American Bar
Association and some prominent Republicans, including U.S. Sen. Orrin
Hatch, R-Utah, and Nancy Reagan. <

On Friday, U.S. Rep. Dick Gephardt, D-Mo., said Bush's opposition to more
funding meant foreign countries would do the research, to the detriment
of U.S. medicine. Stumping for John Kerry, Bush's Democratic opponent in
the November election, Gephardt answered questions for Midwestern
reporters in a telephone press conference while Bush was in Wisconsin
giving a commencement address at Concordia University. <

"It's another example of the extreme position that (Bush) takes on issues
trying to hold onto his conservative base," Gephardt said. "We are the
most advanced country in terms of medical treatment, but we are on the
sidelines in what is the most promising area of research for finding the
answers to horrible diseases including Alzheimer's, Parkinson's disease
and diabetes." <

Back at UW-Madison, which last year received about $200 million from the
NIH for all types of research - or about half of all its federal research
funds - administrators were more diplomatic. <

WiCell Research Institute president Carl Gulbrandsen said people likely
needed to wait until after the presidential election to see movement on
stem-cell funding. If Bush wins, he may be more comfortable angering his
religious-conservative base by changing his mind on the issue,
Gulbrandsen said, and if Kerry wins, he has pledged already to relax the
restrictions. <

"We understand that there needs to be public debate about the ethics,"
agreed Martin Cadwallader, dean of UW-Madison's Graduate School. "We're
just willing to hang with that and see it through." <

Zerhouni on Friday also defended the NIH's decision to spend far more on
adult stem- cell research, which doesn't require the destruction of
embryos but also is generally considered not as useful as a potential
disease-eradication tool. Last year, the split was about $250 million for
the adult-cell research vs. $10 million for the embryonic form. <

Zerhouni said the grant applications from researchers studying adult stem
cells must have been judged by their peers to be more promising. He also
said the federal government has been funding adult-cell research for 25
years, but the embryonic version only since 2001. <

"NIH is a science agency that funds according to the quality and research
importance of the applications," he said. "If there's exciting science in
a field, we fund it." <

Contact Karen Rivedal at [log in to unmask] or 252-6106. <


 http://www.madison.com/wisconsinstatejournal/local/74354.php

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