FROM:
New York Times
June 7, 2004
Reagan's Next Victory
By WILLIAM SAFIRE


 WASHINGTON — The outpouring of respect and affection for Ronald Reagan —
the principled president and principal Alzheimer's victim — may help
resolve the impasse blocking greater federal support of the use of
embryonic stem cells in biomedical research.

Today's stem-cell debate is more far-reaching than Iraq, tax policy or
Medicare. How do we follow the promise of genetic cures for terrible
diseases without falling into the abyss of unrestricted human cloning?

President Bush wrestled with this two years ago. He came up with a
compromise that permitted federally financed research on the few cell
lines existing then, but not on new lines until we thought this issue
through.

Embryonic stem cells may bring new life to dying organs, including the
brain. They are taken from blastocysts, the union of sperm and egg that —
less than two weeks old — can fit on a pinhead. Opponents say the
harvesting of these cells destroys potential human life; proponents say
these are left over from in vitro banks and already destined for
destruction, donated by people to whom "pro life" also means saving the
lives of suffering patients.

But Washington neither starts nor stops the progress of science. A
Harvard biologist, privately supported, developed 17 new lines of cells
and is making them freely available. South Korean researchers went
further, extracting stem cells responsibly from a cloned human embryo.
And now the state of California will vote in November whether to go
deeper into debt with a $3 billion bond issue to advance this biomedical
research.

The genetics is out of the bottle. This research, whether the government
likes it or not, is growing apace. Unless we act now to direct it toward
morally acceptable ends — cure and treatment of disease and the extension
of active life, not monstrous manipulation and production of clones for
spare parts — we risk losing the imperfectability that makes us human.

Fortunately, the diverse commission of ethicists and scientists appointed
by Bush has done some serious thinking and writing about this. I called
attention to its "Beyond Therapy" last year, and urge you to read
"Reproduction and Responsibility" now. Its thought-provocation, a rarity
in government documents, is available free at www.bioethics.gov.

The commission chairman, Leon Kass, a lucid scientific ethicist, urges
scientists "to join the regulatory discussion and propose some principles
and boundaries." At the same time, the conservative Dr. Kass writes that
"prudent defenders of the sanctity of human life should realize that it
is a Pyrrhic victory to keep the federal government out of certain
activities, if the price of such a stance means that worse practices are
allowed to proceed without oversight or regulation in the private
sector."

Though the commission is silent on research based on biomedical cloning,
which the Koreans have already done, Dartmouth's Michael Gazzaniga, one
of the world's leading cognitive scientists, would go further than his
colleagues: "Congress could vote to outlaw reproductive cloning. At the
same time, they could allow biomedical cloning to go forward."

Congress may not be ready to take that step; any cloning seems like the
slippery slope, and some argue that we should see if adult stem cells may
someday do the regenerative trick. But "someday" doesn't help today's
victims. Support is growing for federal regulation of new reproductive
techniques, combined with approval of the use in medical research of some
of the several hundred thousand frozen embryos that are stored in
fertilization clinics and likely to be destroyed.

Here is where the ghost of Ronald Reagan comes in. Nancy Reagan has for
some time advocated bringing the talents and financial muscle of the
National Institutes of Health to bear on diseases like Alzheimer's,
Parkinson's and diabetes.

The widowed former first lady speaks for herself; her husband's views on
this will never be known. And perhaps it is unfair to allow sentiment to
influence an ethical debate.

But if public opinion, already trending toward the rights of the
afflicted, can be affected by the association of the warmly remembered
Reagan name with a federal impetus to stem-cell research and rigorous
cloning control, I say it's a good thing. If such regulatory legislation
passed by Congress included a Reagan Biomedical Research Initiative at
N.I.H, President Bush should feel comfortable in signing it.

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