>From the Chicago Tribune, April 30, 1995

[FROM THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE, APRIL 30,19951

An Ethical Dilemma--In Defense of Fetal Tissue Transplants to Treat
Neurological Disorders

(BY JOAN BECK)

He was 59 years old and he had had Parkinson's disease for eight years.  His
body was becoming increasingly rigid andi obile.  He had trouble moving and
talking clearly.  He had tremors he couldn't stop and he had to give up his
job. The medication that had helped early in the onset of the illness could
no longer give him much relief, despite increasing doses. the disease
inexorably progressed, he decided to try a new, experimental treatment,
despite the intense political and medical controversy that has marked its
development.

Surgeons inserted several grafts of fetal tissue into one side of his brain.
 A month later, they repeated the procedure on the other side.  The
transplants came from seven donors, aborted babies from 6 1/2 to 9 weeks old.

Within a few weeks after the surge , the man's condition improved markedly,
according to a report in the current issue of the New England Journal of
Medicine.  He could once again handle daily activities, even take part in an
active exercise program.  He needed less medication, but now it was much more
effective.

A year and a half after the first transplant, the patient had surge on his
ankle to repair damage from a fracture years earlier. he was recovering from
the operation, he suffered a massive pulmonary embolism and died.

Studying his brain after death, doctors found conclusive evidence that the
transplants had worked as hoped.  The fetal neurons had survived, grown and
were functioning, replacing the patient's damaged brain cells, just as the
improvement in his symptoms had indicated.

estimated 200 transplants of fetal tissue into human brains have been done
over the past several years.  Some have been performed in other countries,
some under scientifically questionable circumstances.  Results have been
uneven and often discouraging.

The case reported this week is important because it is the first to prove
that fetal tissue transplants can survive and function and that they can be
linked to a patient's improvement.

The long-range implications are medical, political and ethical.  The success
sto offers eventual hope for hundreds of thousands   patients, not only with
Parkinson's disease but also with Huntington's disease, zheimer's disease and
other disorders caused by brain cell impairment and destruction for which no
good treatment or cure is now available.

Much research is still necessary, however.  More data are needed about
optimal size of the grafts, whether the tissue can be frozen in advance,
which patients are likely to benefit, how long improvement will last, whether
the underlying disease will eventually destroy the new brain cells.

Fetal tissue is considered necessary for transplants because it can survive
and grow where grafts of more mature cells do not.  It can take on new
biological functions, unlike other cells. d the recipient's body is not so
likely to reject it.

But the research has been slowed in the past for political and ethical
reasons.

The problem is that such transplants almost always must come from
abortions--and that has raised fierce and intractable opposition from
pro-life forces.  They see the possibility that women will deliberately get
pregnant and have an abortion to provide a graft for a loved one--or even
worse, sell the tissue on some sort of medical black market.

Even with tight controls, abortion opponents argue, using tissue from aborted
fetuses will make it easier for women to decide to have an abortion because
they can rationalize that some desperately ill person could benefit and that
might ease any guilt feelings they may have.

Should fetal transplants eventually prove to be of great medical benefit and
become widely used, it will be even harder to rally the nation to oppose
abortion--the source of such grafts--pro-life leaders fear.

In response to anti-abortion fervor, the Reagan administration prohibited the
use of federal funds for research using

fetal tissue for humans, a major setback because most research grants are
based on federal approval.  Some experiments did continue, however, using
private money, and in other countries.

Under mounting pressure from Congress, President Bush attempted a compromise.
 He authorized a grant of more than $2 million to study whether fetal tissue
obtained as a result of miscarriages and ectopic pregnancies--not deliberate
abortions--could be used for transplants.

The answer turned out to be no.  Out of 1,500 such fetuses tested, all but
seven were unsuitable because of chromosome errors (a major cause of
miscarriage) or problems with bacteria and virus contamination.

In 1993, President Clinton finally lifted the ban on federal funding for
fetal tissue research.  The use of such transplants is carefully governed by
state and federal laws and govenitnent and medical guidelines similar to
those that cover other transplants, including the Uniform atomical Gift Act
which has been adopted in all states.

The starkf acts remain.Abortion is legal in the United States.About.5 million
abortions
occur ever year.  Aborted tissue is now discarded, even though it holds the
potential for successfully treating several terrible, intractable diseases.

Abortion is a tragedy, as is death from gunshot wounds and traffic accidents.
 But the success of fetal tissue grafts isn't going to encourage abortion any
more than organ transplants increase car crashes and murders.

Research is under way to find other means to treat neurological disorders,
some of it building on findings from fetal tissue studies.  But until these
experiments are successful, surely it is more ethical and merciful to try to
use fetal tissue than simply destroy it.