http://dailynews.yahoo.com/headlines/sc/story.html?s=v/nm/19990520/sc/health_stem_2.html
May 20, 1999
New Group Pushes For Controversial Cell Research
By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Correspondent
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Patients with diseases ranging from Parkinson's
to juvenile diabetes demanded Thursday that the government drop its
squeamishness over stem cell research, which they say can offer
treatments
and even cures for their ailments.
A patients' lobbying group released a poll suggesting that
three-quarters of Americans favor such research, which uses cells from a
variety of sources, including embryos left over from attempts to create
test-tube babies.
``If they don't do this they are taking lives away from people and they
are pretty much taking my life away, too,'' Michelle Puczynski, 15, of
Toledo, Ohio, said in an interview.
Puczynski has juvenile or type-I diabetes, an incurable disease that
researchers think has great potential to be treated or even cured by
stem cell research.
The stem cells in question have the potential to grow into any kind of
cell in the body and scientists hope to use them for tissue transplants,
drug screening, basic research and perhaps some day to grow new organs.
U.S. law forbids the use of public money to pay for research that
involves damaging or manipulating live human embryos and anti-abortion
groups oppose the research.
Much of the work has been funded by private companies, although National
Institutes of Health (NIH) director Harold Varmus believes there are
legal ways around this, including using material harvested from embryos
by
private companies.
The patients, the researchers and support groups say this is not good
enough. They want to make sure the research focuses on treating human
diseases such as the incurable and fatal Parkinson's or Huntington's
diseases, which may
be treated through brain tissue transplants.
The new lobbying group, the Patient's Coalition for Urgent Research
(CURE), released a survey of 1,000 adults that showed 74 percent of them
supported human stem cell research -- even when the cells came from very
early
embryos left over from in vitro fertilization (IVF or test-tube)
attempts.
``I think if Congress hears clearly the voices of Americans facing these
diseases, more than 100 million of them, their constituents, they will
do the right thing,'' Dan Perry, executive director of the Alliance for
Aging Research, which supports the new group, told a news conference.
The new group worries that debate over the ethics of stem cells research
will hold up vital scientific progress.
``It's not that I don't have ethics,'' John Gearhart of Johns Hopkins
University in Baltimore, whose stem cell work has been funded in part by
biotechnology company Geron, said in an interview. ``I'm just explaining
the facts.''
Patients say they, too, have considered the arguments against stem cell
research but reject them.
``I think it is a little bit squeamish,'' Puczynski said.
Scientists hope to grow the type of pancreatic cells destroyed in type-I
diabetes, freeing patients from the need to monitor their blood sugar
and inject themselves with insulin several times a day to stay alive.
Gearhart cautions that the research is at a very early stage, but says
this is why government involvement is needed.
``We are not growing brains. We are not growing limbs,'' Gearhart told
the news conference.
``This is daunting work. But it is the kind of area where we need
substantial funding and we need the involvement of a variety of
interests,'' he added.
``We don't want 100,000 investigators doing the same thing. We need some
kind of oversight. The NIH does that.''
And he said there is little time to delay. ``There is a degree of
urgency to this. We need to go ahead.''
Copyright © 1999 Reuters Limited.
--
Judith Richards, London, Ontario, Canada
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