 |
 |
Source: Financial Times (London, England) October 22, 2004 Friday USA Edition 2 SECTION: COMMENT; Pg. 13 HEADLINE: How to resolve America's stem-cell dilemma: by DAVID SHAYWITZ and DOUG MELTON: The US has always been a nation of innovators. We seek out the unknown, the unexplored, the unsolved and then work until we figure out the answer. Above all, we never stop pursuing something just because it has not worked yet. However, as the nation agonises over the future of stem-cell research, a persistent objection - voiced again in this year's presidential debates - is that so far embryonic stem cells have not cured anybody. As stem-cell researchers passionately interested in freeing diabetic children from their daily insulin injections, we agree: no one has been cured yet. But this is precisely what makes embryonic stem-cell research essential. In contrast to the glossy vision of television dramas, scientific research is maddeningly slow and fitful. But if researchers gave up just because something was hard, we would never have transplanted hearts or largely eradicated polio. New medical therapies are notoriously difficult to create. The development of a new drug typically takes more than 10 years, and fewer than one in 1,000 potential compounds will prove usable. Entirely new technologies take even longer to develop. Human embryonic stem cells were isolated less than a decade ago; they attracted the interest of scientists because of their ability to develop into any cell type and because they offer a window on the body's astonishing capacity for self-renewal and repair. The hope is that, by adjusting the conditions under which these cells are cultured, it will be possible to grow specific types of cells that could be given to patients who need them. Embryonic stem cells usually come from fertility clinics, where couples have several eggs fertilised in a culture dish; these cells are grown for a few days and the most promising reimplanted in the mother. The others are frozen, in case the procedure is repeated. Once the treatment has been completed, the remaining frozen cells are commonly discarded. However, they can be used as the source of new embryonic stem-cell lines. Unfortunately, in the US, federal restrictions introduced in August 2001 prohibiting government funding of new stem-cell lines have had a chilling effect on the field - particularly on the recruitment of young researchers. Who would commit themselves to an area where funding may depend more on the results of an election than on those of an experiment? For some scientists, the answer has been to pursue their research overseas. These concerns are very real; we cannot use federal funds either to establish new stem-cell lines or to study any cell line developed after August 2001 - even if only to compare it with its older brethren. Were it not for the generosity of independent funding agencies, many of the cell lines currently in existence would never have been created. Some critics have suggested that researchers devote themselves to the exclusive study of a type of stem cell found only in adults. Although adult stem cells are very useful in treating certain blood cancers, these cells are considerably less versatile than embryonic stem cells and are unlikely to prove therapeutically useful for the treatment of many other diseases, including diabetes. Even if embryonic stem cells represent the best hope for replacing damaged pancreas cells in diabetic patients and even if we can figure out how to turn stem cells into insulin-producing cells, the eventual use of such therapy requires a belief in the underlying ethics. Here, it seems, reasonable people can, and do, disagree (although one wonders whether some of the fiercest opponents of embryonic stem-cell research actually would decline treatments when they became available). To foster the development of the field while respecting its critics' concerns, we would propose the following simple compromise: prohibit the use of federal funds for deriving new embryonic stem-cell lines but permit these funds to be used to study embryonic stem-cell lines, whenever they were derived, provided the cells were obtained in an ethically acceptable fashion. This would require the approval of a review board and, of course, the consent of the donating couple. This compromise would not be perfect. But it would acknowledge the special nature of human embryonic stem cells while providing a framework for the sort of research that will replace our vision of medical promise with a time-honoured expression of American innovation - the introduction of a new clinical practice. David Shaywitz is an endocrinology fellow at Harvard University. Doug Melton is professor of natural sciences at Harvard and co-director of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute ------------------------------------------------------------------------ MY NOTE: These guidelines are similar to the policy for federal funding of stem cell research adopted by the NIH in 2000, during the Clinton Administration in 2000. Before the funding could begin, the guidelines were reversed by President Bush's order in August 2001 - limiting federal funding to research using stem celll lines created before Aug 9, 2001. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- To sign-off Parkinsn send a message to: mailto:[log in to unmask] In the body of the message put: signoff parkinsn