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Mobile Register - 06/03/01 Keep Hope Alive by CHRIS DYAS Special to the Register As a physician who's also the father of a son with Type I diabetes, I know from professional and personal experience what it's like to struggle with an incurable disease. Every day at our house, my son takes insulin shots and has to prick a finger four or five times to test his blood-sugar level. That adds up to more than 2,500 shots and finger sticks for my son every year, a routine that will continue for the rest of his life unless we find a cure for diabetes. Without a cure, he and other people with diabetes will also be at risk for kidney failure, blindness, circulatory failure, the early loss of limbs, and a shorter life expectancy. You can imagine how excited I was when I learned last year about breakthrough medical research on human stem cells, which could speed the search for a cure for my son and others like him. That excitement, however, has changed to worry. Politics | Forum In the next few weeks, President Bush faces an important decision on whether to continue federal funding for stem-cell research. I'm worried because a great deal of confusion and controversy has grown up around stem cells. As a Republican, a doctor and concerned father, I hope President Bush will take a dispassionate look at the facts, and then move forward with federal support. Stem cells are specialized cells that can come from three sources: adults, fetal tissue or surplus fertilized eggs created by couples at fertility clinics. In 1998, scientists learned that stem cells derived from leftover fertilized eggs can grow into any tissue or organ in the body. These stem cells could replace defective or missing cells, which means they could lead to dramatic new treatments or even cures for diseases such as Alzheimer's, cancer, Parkinson's, juvenile diabetes, heart disease and spinal cord injuries. However, this research has become controversial because some people believe that using fertilized eggs for research violates right-to-life principles. In my view, however, this kind of stem-cell research seems more analogous to organ and tissue donation. It's important to keep in mind that, under National Institutes of Health guidelines, the stem cells that could most help my son would be obtained from frozen fertilized eggs that are left over after a couple completes an infertility treatment called "in vitro fertilization." Known as IVF, this treatment can produce many excess eggs. There are already about 100,000 frozen fertilized eggs in IVF clinics. Since almost all of them are to be disposed of or remain frozen forever, I believe the moral choice is to use them to save lives. The facts are that the research would use only a small fraction of the now-frozen eggs, all of which would be donated with the informed consent of IVF couples. Moreover, if federal funding were banned, the strict NIH regulations and oversight that prevent ethical abuses would be gone, too. Pro-life Republicans - including our own Rep. Sonny Callahan, former Sen. Connie Mack, R-Fla., and Sen. Gordon Smith, R-Oregon, support public funding for stem-cell research using excess fertilized eggs from fertility clinics. They were recently joined by 80 Nobel laureates, who wrote to President Bush. In their letter to the president, the laureates also addressed some of the confusion raised by recent news reports about "breakthroughs" in research with adult cells. The Nobel winners said it is much too early to tell whether stem cells taken from adults have the same potential as stem cells from fertilized eggs. More recently, news articles about stem cells in human fat have caused a stir. But the research studies behind the news reports make clear that scientists don't yet have conclusive proof that fat tissue really does contain stem cells. The American public and a wide spectrum of religious believers do not view stem-cell research as a pro-lifecompassionate conservative." Federal support for stem-cell research is a matter of life and death for my family and millions of others. I hope that President Bush will show his compassion by allowing federal funding for responsible and ethical research on human embryonic stem cells. Chris Dyas, M.D., a surgeon practicing in Mobile, is president of the Central Gulf Coast Chapter of the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation. Readers may contact him via e-mail at [log in to unmask] http://www.al.com/news/mobile/?Jun2001/3-a448675a.html ********** ---------------------------------------------------------------------- To sign-off Parkinsn send a message to: mailto:[log in to unmask] In the body of the message put: signoff parkinsn