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In a front-page April 19 story, "Embryonic Breakthroughs," the Washington
Post reports that "publicly funded scientists remain banned from
the field [of stem cell research] because federal guidelines for the
ethical conduct of stem cell research languish unfinished."
In fact, most of the promising research cited as examples by the Post
would be unaffected by the proposed NIH guidelines. Some of this
research is already eligible for federal funding now, while some of it
would not be eligible even if the guidelines were approved as currently
written.
The Post cites the following examples of promising stem cell
research:
- Dr. Evan Snyder's work in Boston in regenerating nerve cells. But
Snyder's team has been using adult and fetal neural stem cells
that are eligible for federal funding now (see: Paul Recer, "Stem
Cells May Restore Neurons," Associated Press, June 8, 1999; Maggie
Fox, "New way found in U.S. to grow human brain cells," Reuters,
Oct. 30, 1998). This work is unaffected by the current ban on funding
destructive human embryo research.
- Dr. John Gearhart's work in Baltimore using "embryonic germ
cells" from aborted fetuses. Though certainly the subject of much
ethical debate, this work as well is unaffected by the current embryo
research ban; the cells are not harvested from live embryos but taken from
later-stage fetuses after they are already dead. Such research is
authorized and regulated by a separate federal law (42 USC §§289g-1,
289g-2).
- Research on stem cell cultures obtained from human embryos by
University of Wisconsin researchers. Federal support for such research is
currently banned; but it would remain banned under the proposed NIH
guidelines, because the Wisconsin team did not meet the NIH's
"informed consent" requirements for obtaining the embryos from
their parents. (The Post article notes that these researchers hope
to be "grandfathered in" by the NIH. That is, they want a
retroactive exemption from the law, even though the NIH claims that its
informed consent requirements are exactly what help make the research
"ethical." No such exemption has been proposed by the NIH as
yet.)
In all three cases, the NIH guidelines as presently written are
essentially irrelevant to advances in stem cell research. That was
the real story, unfortunately never made clear by the Post report.
The Post further suggests that while the guidelines "would
be binding only on federally funded researchers," they are
"designed to prevent.. abuses" by providing a "gold
standard" for privately funded research as well. But this ignores two
facts. First, there is already a federal standard on embryo
research — not mere "guidelines," but statutory language
enacted by Congress in each of the last four fiscal years, forbidding
federally funded research in which embryos are destroyed — and privately
funded researchers are not hesitating to ignore this "gold
standard." Second, the NIH guidelines themselves are not designed to prevent
privately funded research from doing things that are forbidden using
federal funds research -- they are designed to encourage them to do
these things. The guidelines leave in place the current ban on funding the
direct destruction of human embryos, but instruct researchers in how to
kill the embryos with other funds so their research on the resulting cells
can receive federal funds. Such a "division of labor," in which
privately funded research is encouraged to take up whatever unethical
tasks cannot directly be supported with federal funds, is a key concept
behind the proposed guidelines.
In a follow-up article on adult stem cell research on April 24, the Post
apparently tried to balance its April 19 story on the claimed benefits of
embryonic stem cells by reporting on "an alternative to embryo
studies." But even this article provided an incomplete picture in two
regards:
First, the follow-up article concentrates on only one aspect of stem
cell research: The finding that adult stem cells may be unexpectedly
capable of turning into other categories of cells if given the right
signals. The article notes that the adult cells may nonetheless not be
quite as versatile as embryonic cells. Neglected here is the fact that no
such "alchemy" (the Post's word) is needed for the
great majority of applications cited in the article, because adult stem
cells have already been discovered of exactly the type needed for the
research. Researchers can now obtain viable stem cells from nerve,
bone marrow, blood and pancreatic tissue. This article also does not point
out the potentially hazardous "down side" of embryonic cells'
great versatility, though this is mentioned in the April 19 article –
the fact that such changeable cells could "turn into the wrong type
of tissue or become tumors" once transplanted into the body. The
evidence is growing that adult stem cells may actually be both safer and more
clinically useful than embryonic cells.
Second, the April 24 article claims that "work on embryonic and
fetal stem cells is much more advanced than work on adult cells,"
with some predicting clinical trials for nerve disorders "within the
next year or so." This claim is confusing and needs clarification.
Fetal stem cells are biologically in the "adult" realm, already
specialized as particular kinds of cells; and they are eligible for
federal funding now. In any case, Evan Snyder's team announced in June
1999 that its work using adult neural stem cells to "re-seed"
and repair human brain tissue would be ready for clinical trials
"within two years" (MSNBC, June 7, 1999) -- in other words, in a
year or so from now. Osiris Therapeutics' research using adult bone
marrow stem cells to repair and regenerate bone, cartilage and other
tissues is already in human clinical trials now. Clearly, adult stem cell
research is closer to actual treatment of patients in many areas than
embryonic stem cell research is.
As one researcher, Fred Gage, says in the April 24 story: "In
general, I think we don't know enough about the potential of any of
these cells to say that one has greater potential than another."
Since adult cell research may have equal or greater potential, and
everyone agrees that funding it is not immoral or illegal, shouldn't the
federal government find out more about the promise of these cells before
forcing taxpayers to help destroy human lives for a project that may be
completely unnecessary? |
