>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
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