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>From the Chicago Tribune, April 30, 1995 [FROM THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE, APRIL 30,19951 An Ethical Dilemma--In Defense of Fetal Tissue Transplants to Treat Neurological Disorders (BY JOAN BECK) He was 59 years old and he had had Parkinson's disease for eight years. His body was becoming increasingly rigid andi obile. He had trouble moving and talking clearly. He had tremors he couldn't stop and he had to give up his job. The medication that had helped early in the onset of the illness could no longer give him much relief, despite increasing doses. the disease inexorably progressed, he decided to try a new, experimental treatment, despite the intense political and medical controversy that has marked its development. Surgeons inserted several grafts of fetal tissue into one side of his brain. A month later, they repeated the procedure on the other side. The transplants came from seven donors, aborted babies from 6 1/2 to 9 weeks old. Within a few weeks after the surge , the man's condition improved markedly, according to a report in the current issue of the New England Journal of Medicine. He could once again handle daily activities, even take part in an active exercise program. He needed less medication, but now it was much more effective. A year and a half after the first transplant, the patient had surge on his ankle to repair damage from a fracture years earlier. he was recovering from the operation, he suffered a massive pulmonary embolism and died. Studying his brain after death, doctors found conclusive evidence that the transplants had worked as hoped. The fetal neurons had survived, grown and were functioning, replacing the patient's damaged brain cells, just as the improvement in his symptoms had indicated. estimated 200 transplants of fetal tissue into human brains have been done over the past several years. Some have been performed in other countries, some under scientifically questionable circumstances. Results have been uneven and often discouraging. The case reported this week is important because it is the first to prove that fetal tissue transplants can survive and function and that they can be linked to a patient's improvement. The long-range implications are medical, political and ethical. The success sto offers eventual hope for hundreds of thousands patients, not only with Parkinson's disease but also with Huntington's disease, zheimer's disease and other disorders caused by brain cell impairment and destruction for which no good treatment or cure is now available. Much research is still necessary, however. More data are needed about optimal size of the grafts, whether the tissue can be frozen in advance, which patients are likely to benefit, how long improvement will last, whether the underlying disease will eventually destroy the new brain cells. Fetal tissue is considered necessary for transplants because it can survive and grow where grafts of more mature cells do not. It can take on new biological functions, unlike other cells. d the recipient's body is not so likely to reject it. But the research has been slowed in the past for political and ethical reasons. The problem is that such transplants almost always must come from abortions--and that has raised fierce and intractable opposition from pro-life forces. They see the possibility that women will deliberately get pregnant and have an abortion to provide a graft for a loved one--or even worse, sell the tissue on some sort of medical black market. Even with tight controls, abortion opponents argue, using tissue from aborted fetuses will make it easier for women to decide to have an abortion because they can rationalize that some desperately ill person could benefit and that might ease any guilt feelings they may have. Should fetal transplants eventually prove to be of great medical benefit and become widely used, it will be even harder to rally the nation to oppose abortion--the source of such grafts--pro-life leaders fear. In response to anti-abortion fervor, the Reagan administration prohibited the use of federal funds for research using fetal tissue for humans, a major setback because most research grants are based on federal approval. Some experiments did continue, however, using private money, and in other countries. Under mounting pressure from Congress, President Bush attempted a compromise. He authorized a grant of more than $2 million to study whether fetal tissue obtained as a result of miscarriages and ectopic pregnancies--not deliberate abortions--could be used for transplants. The answer turned out to be no. Out of 1,500 such fetuses tested, all but seven were unsuitable because of chromosome errors (a major cause of miscarriage) or problems with bacteria and virus contamination. In 1993, President Clinton finally lifted the ban on federal funding for fetal tissue research. The use of such transplants is carefully governed by state and federal laws and govenitnent and medical guidelines similar to those that cover other transplants, including the Uniform atomical Gift Act which has been adopted in all states. The starkf acts remain.Abortion is legal in the United States.About.5 million abortions occur ever year. Aborted tissue is now discarded, even though it holds the potential for successfully treating several terrible, intractable diseases. Abortion is a tragedy, as is death from gunshot wounds and traffic accidents. But the success of fetal tissue grafts isn't going to encourage abortion any more than organ transplants increase car crashes and murders. Research is under way to find other means to treat neurological disorders, some of it building on findings from fetal tissue studies. But until these experiments are successful, surely it is more ethical and merciful to try to use fetal tissue than simply destroy it.