Washington Post
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Stem Cell Legislation Is at Risk
Backers Say Promise of New Techniques Threatens Senate Bill's Passage

By Ceci Connolly and Rick Weiss
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, July 9, 2005; A03



Promising but still unproven new approaches to creating human embryonic
stem cells have suddenly jeopardized what once appeared to be certain
Senate passage of a bill to loosen President Bush's four-year-old
restrictions on human embryo research.

The techniques are enticing to many conservative activists and scientists
because they could yield medically valuable human embryonic stem cells
without the creation or destruction embryos.

Embryonic stem cells are coveted because they have the capacity to become
virtually every kind of body tissue and perhaps repair ailing organs, but
they are controversial because days-old human embryos must be destroyed
to retrieve them.

"The new science that may involve embryo research but not require
destruction of an embryo is tremendously exciting," Senate Majority
Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) said recently. "It would get you outside of
the boundaries of the ethical constraints."

But because the value of these new scientific methods remains
speculative, they have complicated the political calculus in the highly
partisan Senate, which could take up the issue as early as next week.

Proponents of embryonic stem cell research are divided over how strongly
to promote the new work because of fears it will undermine efforts to
expand federal funding of conventional embryo research, which they say
has better odds of success.

But some opponents of embryo research are uncomfortable with the emerging
alternatives, too. That is because they involve cells that closely
resemble human embryos, raising novel questions about what, exactly, is a
human life.

The science poses a strategic dilemma for both groups: Should they
support newly circulating legislation that would fund the new methods or
try to defeat what some decry as a Trojan horse?

"This is something that could be very valuable if it works, no doubt
about it," Stanford University stem cell researcher Irving Weissman said
of the new work. "But don't tell me we should stop doing [embryo]
research until we find out, because people's lives are at stake."

In May, the House easily passed bipartisan legislation allowing federally
funded scientists to study stem cells derived from some of the thousands
of human embryos destined for disposal at fertility clinics -- a
significant expansion of the Bush policy. Until this week, Sens. Arlen
Specter (R-Pa.) and Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) expressed confidence that
they had more than enough votes to pass the same bill in the Senate,
despite threats of a presidential veto.

Last week, however, opponents began circulating a competing bill that
shifts attention toward the more distant but ethically more palatable new
procedures. The House version, sponsored by Rep. Roscoe G. Bartlett
(R-Md.), was written with assistance from the White House, a Bartlett
spokeswoman said.

The administration is eager for Bush to sign legislation supportive of at
least some types of stem cell research, according to several lobbyists
close to the congressional negotiations. Signing such a bill could take
some of the sting out of a veto that is sure to infuriate patient groups
and could rile a majority of Americans, who tell pollsters they back
expanded funding of embryonic stem cell research.

During the Fourth of July recess, many Senate Republicans struggled with
the question of whether the new legislation should be brought to the
floor as a substitute for the House-passed bill or as a competing bill --
and if both were to come up, then how to vote on each. At least a handful
of senators have hinted in recent days that they may transfer their vote
to the new bill, Hill sources said -- among them Hatch, Johnny Isakson
(R-Ga.) and Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Tex.).

The issue will get its first formal airings at a Senate subcommittee
hearing Tuesday and at a Hill media event on Wednesday at which
pro-research celebrities Michael J. Fox and Dana Reeve, widow of
"Superman" star Christopher Reeve, will call for an immediate loosening
of Bush's policy.

Some supporters of the research say they would be happy if both bills
passed. But for some of the more ardent advocates of an immediate
expansion of the Bush policy, Bartlett's alternative legislation is a
diversion.

"Don't stop embryonic stem cell research now, hoping there will be some
other way to do it in the future," Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) said in an
interview. "These alternative methods of deriving stem cells -- we don't
know whether they'll work. The one thing we do know how to do is derive
embryonic stem cells."

The new techniques fall into two major categories. In one, a single cell
is removed from a days-old embryo created for fertility purposes and
coaxed to become a self-replicating colony of stem cells, leaving the
remainder of the embryo to develop normally.

The technique shows great promise, according to researchers at Advanced
Cell Technology Inc. in Worcester, Mass., who pioneered it. But critics
have raised the possibility that individual cells removed from such young
embryos may have the biological potential to become embryos themselves,
which would mean their destruction or cultivation as colonies could still
raise ethical issues.

Bush's Council on Bioethics also expressed concerns recently that such a
technique may subtly harm an embryo, even if it does not kill it.

"You may get a human being, but you may not get the same human being,"
said William B. Hurlbut, a Stanford professor and a council member. "You
might find that late in life, there are some strange differences between
those people and others."

Hurlbut is the leading proponent of a different approach, which he calls
altered nuclear transfer, or ANT. It involves the creation of an embryo
-- or what Hurlbut says is something akin to an embryo -- that lacks a
gene necessary for the development of a placenta. Because a placenta is
required for an embryo to implant in a woman's womb, the altered embryo
would be genetically incapable of becoming a fetus or a baby. For many,
that would obviate ethical concerns about destroying it to get its stem
cells.

Researchers have tried the technique in mice with some success, but its
usefulness as a source of human stem cells remains hypothetical. Some,
such as Weissman, think the difficulties inherent in making such a system
work are being overlooked by Hurlbut, who is a physician but not a
research scientist.

"I've been telling Bill, 'Why don't you go work in a lab this summer? Why
not see how easy or hard it really is?' " said Weissman. He said he has
no problem with the funding of such research as long as it does not
interfere with increased funding for existing programs of embryo
research.

Practical or not, ANT has gained a quickly widening circle of support.
The Roman Catholic archbishop of San Francisco, William J. Levada, has
written a letter to Bush assuring the president of his support.

But other conservative leaders have mixed views on whether it makes sense
to pursue the new alternative therapies or to focus single-mindedly on
defeating any expansion of the current policy.

"I have significant concerns about all the alternatives," said David
Prentice, senior fellow for life sciences at the Family Research Council,
which he said does not yet have a formal position on the science.

Jessica Echard, executive director of the Eagle Forum, the public policy
organization founded by Phyllis Schlafly, said her group opposes "middle
ground" legislation that pursues alternative methods for producing
embryonic stem cells.

"Most scientists will say it's never enough," she said. "We will be
giving ground to more and more unethical research."

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