Senate Prepares to Debate Stem Cell Research
by Maggie Fox, Health and Science Correspondent
WASHINGTON, April 27, 2000 (Reuters) - Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin held up a
piece of paper on which he had made a small dot with the point of his
pencil.
"That's how big the embryo is," he said. Harkin sides with scientists
and senators who want to
press ahead with research involving embryonic stem cells. But opponents
say getting the cells
involves the taking of a human life, and that no end justifies it.
The debate should start coming to a head next month when the Senate
debates a bill designed to accelerate the research.
Experts think the research has the potential to transform medicine,
offering treatments and even cures for diseases such as juvenile
diabetes, in which the pancreas is partly destroyed, heart disease and
PARKINSON'S.
The cells seem so powerful because, when taken from very early embryos,
they still "know" how to become any kind of cell in the body. The hope
is to direct this development so they can be used for tissue and even
organ transplants.
But current law forbids the use of federal funds to harm a human embryo,
so federally funded
scientists may not extract these cells from human embryos to use for
research.
Harkin, who supports a bill that would specifically allow such research,
was challenging one of the bill's main opponents, Kansas Republican Sen.
Sam Brownback.
"The Stem Cell Research Act of 2000 seeks to allow federal funding for
researchers to kill living human embryos," Brownback told Wednesday's
hearing of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and
Human Services.
"Clearly we must continue to fight to help cure disease and alleviate
suffering. However, it is never acceptable to deliberately kill one
innocent human being in order to help another."
Pennsylvania Republican Sen. Arlen Specter, the bill's sponsor, says he
does not believe that the tiny, frozen embryos, left over from in-vitro
fertilization (IVF) fertility treatments, are human beings. Specter
points out that the embryos will be discarded if they are not used for
research.
Many scientists classify the tiny clusters of fewer than a dozen cells
as "pre-embryos" because they are not yet at the stage where, if they
were developing inside a woman's body, they would have implanted in the
uterus. They also lack the "primitive streak" -- the first signs of a
spinal cord.
"In some cases, you cannot see it without a microscope. To equate that
with an individual person that Nazis were experimenting on is to stretch
the meaning of humanness," Harkin said.
"There are leftover humans of this size -- about a hundred thousand of
them, in liquid nitrogen. Regardless of what you think about IVF, what
are you going to do with them?"
Christopher Reeve, an actor paralyzed in a riding accident who has
become a spokesman for people with spinal injuries, told the hearing it
would be "criminal" to let the frozen embryos go to waste.
"I have only a small lesion about the width of your pinky at the second
cervical vertebra," Reeve told a news conference after the hearing.
He said his hope was that stem cells could be injected into the spinal
cord and would take cues from their new environment to form new nerve
cells to restore the connection.
"They would become new neurons to replace those that have been damaged
by atrophy," Reeve said.
Specter said he hoped the debate would go the way of the fight over
using tissue from aborted fetuses for treating diseases such as
PARKINSON'S. "After extensive consideration, fetal tissue is now used
for medical research," Specter said.
"There had been concerns that the use of fetal tissue for medical uses
would promote abortion and I think those fears have been laid to rest."
He said South Carolina Republican Sen. Strom Thurmond had been
instrumental in turning around conservative opinion on fetal tissue
research and he hoped Thurmond would do the same for the stem cell
debate.
"Stay tuned, ladies and gentlemen. This debate isn't over," Specter
said.
Copyright © 2000 Reuters Limited.
--
Judith Richards, London, Ontario, Canada
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