FROM: New York Times
November 1, 2001
Stem Cell Registry to Be Posted Within a
Week, Official Says
By WARREN E. LEARY
WASHINGTON, Oct. 31 — A much- anticipated registry of
human embryonic stem cells that could be used for
federally
financed research should be available to scientists and the
public within a
week, a government health official said today.
The official, Dr. Wendy Baldwin of the National Institutes
of Health, which is
coordinating federally sponsored research in the promising
but controversial
area, said at a Senate subcommittee hearing that the Human
Embryonic Stem
Cell Registry was almost ready for posting on the Internet
after several
delays.
The panel's chairman, Senator Arlen Specter, a Pennsylvania
Republican
who is a strong supporter of stem cell research, pressed
Dr. Baldwin to set a
date, finally asking if it could be done "within a week."
Dr. Baldwin replied, "I think that is a reasonable
expectation."
Mr. Specter then said he would hold the agency to that
timing.
President Bush announced in August that he would allow
federal financing for
some stem cell research, but only if it involved the 60 or
so colonies, or lines,
of embryonic cells, that existed before his decision. The
embryos are
destroyed in the process of obtaining the cells, and Mr.
Bush said he would
not support research that required further destruction of
embryos.
On Sept. 5, Tommy G. Thompson, the secretary of health and
human
services, told another Senate panel that a registry listing
64 stem cell lines,
including details of their biological characteristics and
availability, would be
put on the health institutes' Web site within two weeks.
Scientists and
advocates for patients have grown impatient with delays in
posting the
registry, noting that researchers could not draft
applications for financing
without the information.
Stem cells have the ability to grow into any of the body's
more than 200 cell
types, and scientists hope to use them to create
replacement tissue that might
cure many ailments, including spinal cord injury, diabetes,
Alzheimer's
disease and damaged heart tissue. While acknowledging the
promise of the
research, others have moral objections because obtaining
the cells requires
destroying human embryos.
Dr. Baldwin said after today's hearing that the health
institutes expected to
begin financing research with the acceptable stem cell
lines early next year.
Posting the registry has taken longer than expected, she
said, because of
governmentwide disruption and renewed security concerns
after the Sept. 11
terrorist attacks.
She added that government representatives had met with the
10 laboratories
in five countries that developed the cell lines to discuss
their terms for making
the cells available to others. And she said the government
wanted to detail
the characteristics of each cell line, some of them fully
developed and others
in earlier stages.
"The registry is 99.9 percent done," Dr. Baldwin said. "We
are crossing the
t's and dotting the i's to make sure we have everything
right before it goes
up."
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