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The source of this article is the Seattle Post-Intelligencer: http://tinyurl.com/3toce Thursday, October 21, 2004 A personal look at stem cell research By ANN HEDREEN GUEST COLUMNIST Dr. Tony Blau, a stem cell researcher at the University of Washington, was blunt with me. Any benefit to people with Alzheimer's disease that might come from embryonic stem cell research is still many, many years away. Diabetes and heart disease patients are more likely to be the first direct beneficiaries. My mother has Alzheimer's disease, so this was not necessarily the answer I wished to hear but I was grateful for his honesty. I went to Blau's forum on embryonic stem cell research because I wanted to hear what the scientists who are actually doing this work have to say about it. I was also curious to hear from the three politicians on the panel -- former Vice President Al Gore, gubernatorial candidate Christine Gregoire and 8th Congressional District candidate Dave Ross. I went not knowing quite what to expect: Would it be more of a political news conference or a medical lecture? There were elements of both. Gregoire vowed that if she is governor, she "will not let ideology get in the way of finding a cure for these dread diseases." Gore praised Washington's history of supporting stem cell research, saying, "this state is experienced in understanding issues that are complicated but important." Blau and his UW colleague Charles Murry took us through some of the basics, explaining that the embryos used in this research are "leftovers:" typically coming from couples who have banked them at fertility clinics and then voluntarily released them for research. The doctors explained that the great promise of embryonic stem cells, as opposed to adult stem cells, is that they have the potential to grow into whatever types of cells the body might require, even the muscular, beating cells of a heart. I learned that most of the 60 embryonic stem cell lines that President Bush OK'd three years ago for federally funded research have reached the limits of their usefulness. Many did not pan out at all. This has tied the hands of researchers at public universities. And the great irony, as Gore pointed out, is that "everything opponents fear" about stem cell research -- such as coercion of donors and human cloning -- could come true if it continues to be driven into unregulated private laboratories. Gloomy news. But then I had a moment of hope. This modest forum at a Seattle hotel might actually be a vision of the future that the late Christopher Reeve fought so hard for; one in which open discussions about science, ethics and public policy would be the norm. If Sen. John Kerry is elected president, if Gregoire and Ross are elected, our future could be one in which controversial research won't be forced out of the public eye -- or out of the country. Our future could be one in which "the penicillin of the 21st century," as Gregoire called it, could be an embryo the size of a period on this page that would otherwise have been thrown away: an image that hardly speaks of respect for life. As Alex Goldberg, a 20-year-old survivor of heart disease, explained to us, he is alive because of medical discoveries that have all occurred within his lifetime. Like me, Goldberg is a documentary filmmaker. My film, "Quick Brown Fox," airing at 8 p.m. today on KCTS, is about my mom's losing battle with Alzheimer's disease and the painstaking progress of Alzheimer's research. Goldberg's film, still in production, is about Murry's stem cell work and why it may lead to the next breakthrough therapy for heart disease. I look forward to seeing it. I hope it has a happy ending. Ann Hedreen and her husband Rustin Thompson are Seattle filmmakers. For more information about "Quick Brown Fox: An Alzheimer's Story," go to http://www.quickbrownfoxfilm.com. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- To sign-off Parkinsn send a message to: mailto:[log in to unmask] In the body of the message put: signoff parkinsn