A rchive Date
[ 28-01-2001 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ U.S ]
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[Stem cell research hinges on funding
Bush's opposition wouldn't halt work
By LAURAN NEERGAARD
Associated Press
Jan. 27, 2001, 8:52PM
WASHINGTON - A team of researchers carefully injects vials of some of science's most precious yet contentious cells into the spinal cords of monkeys stricken with a disease like the one named after Lou Gehrig.
It's a pivotal new experiment that tries to determine if stem cells - "master cells" found in human embryos and fetuses that give rise to all human tissue - can regrow healthy neurons, a necessary step to treat incurable, deadly Lou Gehrig's.
And it comes at a pivotal time: Scientists who contend stem cells' unique growth ability could lead to revolutionary therapies are nervously watching whether the new Bush administration will heed anti-abortion calls to block federal funding of stem cell research.
Even if it does, the monkey experiment - an important step toward gaining Food and Drug Administration permission to one day test stem cells in desperate patients - won't stop. Researchers from Harvard, Johns Hopkins and Yale universities are privately funded by Project ALS, a group raising millions for Lou Gehrig's research.
But the scientists, who report promising early signs in the first-treated monkeys, say public funding would greatly speed the hunt for therapies for numerous other diseases, from Parkinson's to diabetes, by letting researchers now banned from such work get involved. The first grants from the National Institutes of Health are expected this spring.
"To revoke this at this point I think would really be damaging," says Hopkins stem cell pioneer Dr. John Gearhart, a researcher on the monkey project. On the other side, anti-abortion activists call it immoral to use the cells because they originally came from embryos discarded by fertility clinics or from aborted fetuses. Even Pope John Paul II condemned such research last summer.
Congress bans federally funded research that destroys human embryos. President Bush has agreed. Taking stem cells from embryos, done when the embryos are the size of a period at the end of a sentence, does destroy them.
The critical distinction: Privately funded researchers already have culled embryonic cells and then multiplied them in laboratory dishes to create "cell lines." The NIH plans to fund only research using already grown cell lines so NIH-funded scientists never touch an actual embryo.
Critics call that a technicality. Bush's nominee to head the Health and Human Services Department, Tommy Thompson, would oversee NIH and decide the issue. As Wisconsin's governor, he publicly praised University of Wisconsin scientists who created the first embryonic stem cell line as medical pioneers, but on Friday he dodged the funding question.
Regardless of the political wrangling, science is racing ahead. Already, Harvard's Dr. Evan Snyder, lead researcher on the monkey project, and Gearhart are talking with the FDA about how much animal testing is needed before stem cell implants might be tried in people.
Testing people probably won't happen for another few years, despite early optimism about the monkey project.
When Hopkins and Harvard researchers tested mice partly paralyzed by Lou Gehrig's, stem cells restored movement and helped some live longer. Nobody is sure if the stem cells grew new motor neurons or cranked out chemicals to help damaged neurons recover.
Scientists simulate Lou Gehrig's in monkeys by killing certain motor neurons in their spinal cords, disabling the corresponding limbs. Snyder calls promising early signs that the first stem cells then implanted are starting to grow.
 World Fact Book (CIA]
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