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NIH knocks stem cell laws The Washington Post April 8, 2005 WASHINGTON - Breaking with a tradition of deference to top administration officials, several institute directors at the National Institutes of Health on Wednesday went public with their distaste for current federal restrictions on human embryonic stem cell research. Their comments, in writing and in testimony before the subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services and Education, reflect festering frustration over the policy initiated by President George W. Bush in 2001. "Progress has been delayed by the limited number of cell lines," wrote Elizabeth Nabel, the new director of the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute. "The NIH has ceded leadership in this field." The science, which aims to develop treatments for a range of diseases using cells from five-day-old human embryos, stirs controversy because embryos are destroyed in the process. Under the Bush policy, researchers cannot use federal funds to conduct research on stem cells isolated after Aug. 9, 2001. That keeps taxpayers from contributing to embryo destruction but also keeps the federal research enterprise from exploring newer and in some respects more promising colonies, or lines, of cells. This summer, Congress is expected to consider legislation that would allow federal funding of research using embryos slated for destruction at fertility clinics - a change the administration has said it opposes and which NIH leaders have until now avoided addressing. But several of them made clear their antipathy for the status quo Wednesday. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, complained that gaining access to the relatively few approved stem cells lines is "complicated and expensive." James Battey, director of the Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, also was unusually blunt. "The state of the science is moving very, very rapidly," Battey testified, drawing attention to new lines of cells developed in Chicago that show biomedical promise. "These cell lines, however, were all created after Aug. 9, 2001, and are therefore ineligible for federal funding." Battey has applied for a job with a newly formed California stem cell research institute. "If they're going to be destroyed [anyway], where is the moral issue?" Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) asked NIH director Elias Zerhouni, referring to the legislative proposal to allow funding of research on embryos destined to be discarded. "I think you'll have to ask that from those who hold that view," Zerhouni replied. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- To sign-off Parkinsn send a message to: mailto:[log in to unmask] In the body of the message put: signoff parkinsn