At 10:50 09/12/96 -0500, [log in to unmask] wrote:
>Excerpt from the December 1996 Parkinson's Action Network "Action Reporter",
>an Advocacy Report for the Parkinson's Community-
>Parkinson's Bill Will Come Back Next Congress
>by Robert Dolezal
> The Mo Udall Parkinson's research bill now rests in the limbo of
>legislative near misses. Which is a national disgrace. For Udall is a
>splendid bill, a sound investment of public funds not only for those
>Parkinson's victims whose dopamine has run out, and their families whose
>resources may entirely run out by the time they die, but for all America.
____________________________________________________________________________
Excerpts from Canada's Fetal Wall, an article published in The Toront Star,
7 December 1996-
by Lynda Hurst
"WE COULD have been leading the world on this, but now we're going
nowhere."
Canada's Dr. Alan Fine, an internatioally recognized research
scientist, is explaining why he has given up his ground-breaking work on a
cure for Parkinson's disease.
"The funding situation is horrific," he says flatly. "The government
continues to show cowardice and blind stupidity. It's appalling."
The Dalhousie University physiologist and biochemist is referring to
the ban on federal money for research using human fetal cells, that came
into place in July 1988.
That's when, as one government scientist puts it, then Health
Minister Jake Epp "flippantly" responded to a question in the House of
Commons by saying that as long as he was minister there would be no
government funding for this purpose.
The ban followed on the heels of a similar one enacted earlier that
year by the Reagan goverment in Washington.
In January 1993 President Bill Clinton rescinded the moratorium.
Since then, the NIH have spent almost #3 million a year on research programs
that transplant fetal brain cells into victims of Parkinson's disease.
Ottawa's ban remains in effect to this day.
Dr. Fine was the head of a six man team that began a five year fetal
transplant project in Halifax in 1991. It was privately funded at $40,000 a
year by the Parkinson Foundation of Canada. Three members of the team,
including the neurosurgeon, donated their services, as did the hospital.
The research showed that the technique was safe but that the fetal
cells to be more effective, should be transplanted at an earlier stage in
the disease.Phase two is now underway, with 10 patients less impaired than
the first group, having fetal cells transplanted on both sides of the brain.
The funding is now coming from several sources, including some
American biotech companies.
They're aware of the pioneering work Dr. Fine was doing in the lab,
developing a technique to keep cells dividing in vitro. That process, along
with genetically engineered cells, could mean that tissue taken directly
from fetuses may not be needed in the future.
That's what frustrates the new director, neurosurgeon, Dr. Ivar
Mendez. Research on alternative sources of tissue could come to fruition in
three or four years, he says, but right now science still needs the direct
product of abortion.
Dr. Mendez says the British government has poured almost $40 million
into a new brain-regeneration centre at Cambridge University that is
researching fetal transplants as well as spinal cord injuries.
The U.S. is running two experimental programs, with 40 patients
each, compared to Halifax's 10. When the Halifax program is complete, there
will be no human research in Canada whatsoever.
Dr. Alan Fine says, "This research has suffered severely and
possibly irrevocably from the politically motivated and irresponsible
unwillingness of government to support it."
(end of excerpt)
As Robert Dolezal wrote:
> is any moral or ethical purpose served when a life-sustaining
>resource is trashed?>
On a personal note to Bob and Tina, it was great meeting you and having
dinner with you in the seafood restaurant in Vancouver. There are no songs
like the old songs... :)
Judith Richards
