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Sunday, July 22 2001 ARGUMENTS Goverment Funding of Stem Cell Research President Bush will soon decide whether to allow taxpayer funding of experiments using cells from human embryos. Joan Samuelson, president of Parkinson's Action Network, and David Prentice, an Indiana State University Life Sciences Professor, Squared off on the Issue in Congressional hearings last week. JOAN SAMUELSON: Scientists have made tremendous progress in the search for a Parkinson's cure. One of the most promising lines of research involves using human embryonic stem cells to repair brain cells killed off by Parkinson's. Scientific experts have said Parkinson's is the first disorder expected to benefit from stem cells, and predict it could be done within a decade if the funds needed to tackle this problem were available. Many other diseases may be conquered with this same biomedical wonder. But this potential is being squandered, and lives are being lost, as this issue is held captive in the arena of abortion politics and federal research funds are withheld by presidential order. As a consequence, the 1 million Parkinson's sufferers have a cure on hold. Meanwhile, we watch our bodies surrender to symptoms that first make us prisoners of our frozen bodies, and eventually end our lives. We deserve better. DAVID PRENTICE: Parkinson's sufferers, as well as the millions of other Americans who face diseases such as heart disease, stroke, Alzheimer's, diabetes and liver disease, do deserve better - they deserve better than just promises. Unfortunately, that's all that's been delivered from embryonic stem cell research. While embryonic stem cells have the potential to form adult tissues if left in the intact embryo, when removed and placed into the culture dish they have been relatively inefficient at forming specific tissues that might be used to treat diseases. In addition, the stem cells have several negative characteristics, including the tendency to form tumors when injected into the body. There are much more promising lines of research, such as adult stem cells, which should be followed in our search for treatments for disease. SAMUELSON: Of course we are holding only promises right now - because America's best and brightest have been prevented from doing the research! Some privately financed work has produced significant indications of huge breakthroughs ahead. But the research is largely stalled because the biomedical research world revolves around federal funding - $18 billion in tax dollars allocated to the National Institutes of Health - and is now barred from going to stem cell research. The researchers can make little progress until those funds are available. You appear convinced that while embryonic stem cells have yet to prove worthy, adult stem cells are far more developed as a therapy. Recently, a group of Nobel laureates wrote President Bush urging his speedy funding of embryonic stem cell research. They would not have bothered if the potential were not great. Can 80 Nobel laureates be so wrong? PRENTICE: Actually, yes, 80 Nobel laureates can be pretty off base. Knowledgeable people do not always perpetuate the truth. Most of the laureates who signed the letter have no expertise whatsoever in cell biology (some were actually economists and physicists). In the letter itself, they quote several advances in "stem cell research" - most of the advances they note were done with adult stem cells! Yes, I believe adult stem cells are much farther advanced as therapies. For some conditions they are already being used to treat patients. The embryonic stem cells actually have not produced anything significant, and recent evidence indicates they are genetically unstable. But the media hype embryonic cells, and people buy into the myths. SAMUELSON: Hmmmmmm . . . the Lyin' Laureates. I just don't get their motivation. If, in fact, adult stem cells were so dramatically more promising, why wouldn't we all happily avoid this whole controversy? But prominent researchers in the field - including Stanford's Irving Weissman and Cal Tech's David Baltimore - tell us, in a recent Science magazine editorial, that they aren't. It is always possible, perhaps even likely, that further research might reveal a source for viable adult stem cells. But that is simply a hope, and it would be foolish to abandon the surer path for the unproven one. That in a nutshell is why Nancy Reagan, Sen. Orrin Hatch and patients like me are strongly advocating that adult stem cell research continue, but that embryonic stem cell research be funded aggressively, immediately. It just doesn't seem credible that this is truly a scientific debate. Isn't it really all about different ethical points of view - and politics? PRENTICE: Bingo, Joan! You've hit on the real root of the debate. If this were just a scientific debate about fingernails, no one would care. But it's really an ethical and political debate. It comes down to how we view the moral status of a human embryo, and how we balance that status versus current disease sufferers. But don't get the impression that it's the same old abortion debate. You've already pointed out some "pro-life" people who favor embryonic stem cell research; there are many "pro-choice" people opposed to it. Some see it as a life issue; an embryo is a human being scientifically (it's not some other species), and the question is whether it is a person or property. Some see it as the "slippery slope." In that respect, the scary thing is that there are already some "ethicists" on academic campuses who believe that scientists should experiment on folks who have Alzheimer's, Down syndrome, are in a coma, etc., because their "quality of life" isn't good. To whom will we choose to assign value? And who will make that choice? SAMUELSON: Assume for a moment that embryonic stem cells are as promising as the 80 Laureates say. That, then, is my rescue from my future with Parkinson's: losing my mobility, independence, income, home, and, finally, my life. The cells come from in vitro fertilization, which routinely now gives infertile couples modern-day miracles; the embryonic stem cells are leftovers from that process. Hundreds of thousands are said to be sitting in freezers. To let them sit until they are discarded is to choose suffering and death for millions of Americans who may be rescued by transplantation of them into our ailing brains and other systems. What ethical code can ignore our need so utterly, in favor of a five-day-old clump of cells the size of a pencil dot that will never become a person? And fuzzing that choice with fear of experimentation on a Down's baby is a big leap, and a cheap ploy, I think. Your solution - do nothing for fear of slippery slopes - is to abandon the dreams of millions who might be rescued. Where's the morality in that? PRENTICE: I'd still say they're selling you promises for grant dollars. And unfortunately, the scare is real, not a ploy. We've seen society go that route in the past, and we don't need to go there again. But I'm not saying we should do nothing. Let's talk about those embryos that are supposedly discarded. Often it's made to sound that thousands upon thousands are tossed away, but that's not the case. In fact, even with consent forms saying that they can discard them after several years, many fertility doctors are very reluctant to do it. The embryos can remain frozen and viable for at least 20 to 30 years, probably longer, and there are published papers where after 7, 8, 10 years in the freezer, they were implanted, gestated and born. One option for those frozen human embryos is adoption. It's a relatively new idea and needs much more publicizing, but it's a very viable alternative to destruction. There are 6 to 10 million infertile couples in the U.S., and estimates of up to 200,000 embryos frozen in fertility clinics. Don't they deserve a chance for life too? On the research front, let's put more tax dollars toward supporting the adult stem cell research, which has shown real success, as well as more federal funding for disease research in general. The embryonic stem cell work will continue in the private sector, and we can hopefully have an open debate in society about just how we look at life, at any stage, and how we balance choices that can affect suffering lives. SOURCE: San Francisco Chronicle Page D - 5 http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2001/07/22/IN994653.DTL * * * ---------------------------------------------------------------------- To sign-off Parkinsn send a message to: mailto:[log in to unmask] In the body of the message put: signoff parkinsn