>From the Philadelphia Inquirer - Wed, 2/11/97 Results are near on fetal-tissue research Many who suffer various diseases may be helped. A ban had stalled progress. By Shankar Vedantam INQUIRER WASHINGTON BUREAU WASHINGTON -- Four years after President Clinton lifted a ban on federally funded fetal-tissue research, a ban important to abortion foes, scientists say they are close to discovering whether the tissue transplants will help cure Parkinson's and other diseases. By spring, preliminary results from a major government study may give the first taste of success. But the research remains controversial, and anti-abortion groups say it condones destroying fetuses. ``The most important thing is that the ban unfairly stigmatized an important area of research and had the effect of inhibiting researchers from looking at the possible uses of fetal cells,'' said Eugene Redmond of Yale University, a top researcher into the medical uses of fetal cells. ``That stigma has been eliminated [ among researchers ] . It's made a huge difference for the scientists.'' Before Clinton's action, which came a day after his inauguration in 1993, fetal-tissue research had been stalled for five years. The ban on federal funding was instituted by President Ronald Reagan and continued by George Bush. Anti-abortion groups applauded the ban, concerned that using fetal tissue for medical research implicitly endorsed abortion, because the cells used for research mostly come from aborted fetuses. ``Our position hasn't changed,'' said Douglas Johnson, federal legislative director of National Right to Life. ``We're opposed to abortion-dependent fetal tissue transplants.'' Researchers obtain the fetal tissue from hospitals and abortion clinics, after obtaining permission from the woman whose pregnancy has been terminated. Women cannot choose to have an abortion in order to donate fetal tissue to help a sick patient, nor can they sell fetal tissue. Every year, researchers estimate, a few hundred aborted fetuses have been used for the transplants and research. Johnson said his group only opposed use of aborted fetal tissue, not use of tissue from miscarriages or ectopic pregnancies, in which a fertilized egg implants itself outside the uterus and can be fatal for the mother if not removed. ``The one is a victim of a deliberate killing, and the other is not,'' Johnson said. ``The second case would be analogous to organ transplants after an accident.'' Even with the federal ban lifted, fetal-tissue research is not a big program, although it is closely watched by the more than a million Americans who suffer from Parkinson's, and those afflicted by other illnesses as diverse as Alzheimer's disease, Huntington's disease, spinal cord injuries and diabetes. Their hopes are high. Curt Freed, professor of medicine and pharmacology of the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center in Denver, said of a pilot study on Parkinson's: ``We have a woman who could never walk prior to taking her first dose of drugs in the morning. Now she can walk before her first dose of drugs, [ and ] has resumed playing tennis. A typical transplant patient cuts their drug by 40-50 percent.'' The amount of federal tax money being spent on fetal tissue work is hard to estimate, since the research spans everything from clinical trials to laboratory work. Some private money also is available, and was unaffected by the ban. Fetal-tissue research is primarily about transplantation. Just as young trees are easier to transplant than older ones, fetal cells have properties that enable them to survive and grow when transplanted, said Naomi Kleitman, a University of Miami researcher who is studying fetal-tissue nerve cell transplants to cure paralysis. Most of the fetal-tissue work so far has focused on Parkinson's disease, which is caused by the loss of a crucial chemical messenger called dopamine. Although the drug L-dopa can replace some of the missing dopamine, Colorado researcher Freed said: ``When you are down to your last cells, you need your own brain's dopamine to have motor control.'' ``Only fetal dopamine cells in a very early stage of development, when the fetus is less than an inch long, could survive when transplanted in the adult brain,'' Freed said. Freed's research involves transplanting fetal tissue into 40 patients with Parkinson's disease. The work is being done in conjunction with New York's Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center. A second Parkinson's study, being conducted by New York's Mount Sinai School of Medicine, follows the same path. It is at least a year away from preliminary results, according to Warren Olanow, chief of the school's neurology department. The main problem for scientists working in the field is the difficulty of keeping the fetal cells alive after transplantation. Barely 5 percent of the transplanted cells survive, and researchers are studying ways to boost the number of survivor cells with chemical growth factors. No matter how the research comes out, scientists argue that the biggest benefit of overturning the ban is that it has allowed them to conduct rigorous studies to evaluate fetal-tissue transplants -- the only way the benefits of the technique can be established or disproved. ``As long as the ban was on, the political considerations and philosophical considerations were driving research,'' said Redmond, of Yale. ``People were advancing research ideas because they were an alternative to fetal tissue and not because they may work.'' ``It was like Russia, where certain research had to be done because certain people believed it was true,'' he said. Margaret Tuchman (55yrs, Dx 1980)- NJ-08540 [log in to unmask]