At 03:59 PM 6/22/2006, burgytwo@juno.com wrote:
A political battle over stem cell research during
this spring's special session of the Texas
Legislature killed funding for a $41 million
bioresearch center in Houston. Tonight at 7 p.m.
in Houston, author Chris Mooney will outline the
far right's continuing war on science. - From the Houston Chronicle
~ jb
@ An "outline" of that misrepresentation can be found below. ~
Janice
Stem-Cell Sense - Clear thinking on a stem-cell anniversary.
National Review Online ^ | May 25, 2006 | Eric Cohen
http://article.nationalreview.com/?
q=3DMzUzZjg2OGIyM2Y2MTZmMGZhZjE4N2YxNTE0M=mQwOGM=3D
We are entering a summer of stem-cell
anniversaries. August 9 of this year will mark
the fifth anniversary of President Bush's
embryonic-stem-cell funding policy, which seeks
to support basic stem-cell science without
encouraging the ongoing destruction of embryos.
Wednesday, meanwhile, marked the first
anniversary of the vote in the House of
Representatives to overturn President Bush's
policy and replace it with one that would
encourage the destruction of human embryos for
research. On May 24, 2005, the House voted
238-194 in favor of a bill sponsored by
Representatives Mike Castle and Diana DeGette
that would,
<http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/05/20050524-12.html>as
the president put it last year, "take us across a
critical ethical line by creating new incentives
for the ongoing destruction of emerging human life."
Following that vote, Senate action on the bill
appeared to be imminent, and it seemed likely
that stem cells would be the subject of President
Bush's first veto. The momentum for a Senate vote
seemed to grow stronger still when Senate
Majority Leader Bill Frist announced last July
that he would support the Castle-DeGette bill.
Frist's reversal,
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/29/
AR2005072900158.html>the
Washington Post noted then, "is likely to win over some
undecidedlawmakers."
Months have passed without a Senate vote,
however, and Wednesday's Washington Post told a
very different story. "The political calculus
around stem cells has changed in unexpected
ways,"
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/23/
AR200605230=1746.html>notes
the<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/23/
AR2006052301746.html>Post.
And much of that change, the Post adds, has been
not political but scientific. The facts on the
ground simply don't support the opponents of President Bush's policy.
Before last year's vote, backers of the
Castle-DeGette bill generally made four key
arguments to persuade lawmakers: (1) that
embryonic-stem-cell advances were coming fast and
furious, (2) that the stem-cell lines funded by
the Bush policy were contaminated and therefore
not very useful, (3) that American leadership in
the field depended on overturning that policy,
and (4) that public support for funding the research was broad and deep.
You still hear these same arguments, but a year
after the House vote, not one of them really holds up to rigorous
scrutiny.
The greatest embryonic-stem-cell success that
advocates could point to a year ago was actually
a cloning success--and, as it turns out, was not a
success at all. On May 19, 2005, a week before
the House voted, Senator Diane Feinstein released
<http://feinstein.senate.gov/05releases/r-stemcell0519.pdf>a
statement that said:
The achievements made by scientists in South
Korea prove that it is possible to derive
patient-specific embryonic stem cell lines using
the Somatic Cell Nuclear Transplantation
technique. This is a major achievement for the
future of regenerative medicine. We are one big
step closer to eventually developing treatments
for deadly conditions like spinal cord injury and
juvenile diabetes. There is no question that this
country needs an effective stem cell policy--both
to provide federal funding for additional
embryonic stem cell lines and to provide federal ethical guidelines.
The "achievements" Feinstein spoke of were, it
now turns out, a total fraud. A team of South
Korean researchers led by Hwang Woo Suk claimed
to have produced cloned human embryos and derived
embryonic stem cells from them. In the last few
months, it has been revealed that the
researchers' publications were faked, their
experiments unsuccessful, and their treatment of egg donors grossly
appalling.
In fact, human embryonic-stem-cell research is at
a very early stage. There have been no
therapeutic applications, or even human trials.
Most researchers argue it will be many years
before it can be clear whether such applications
will be possible. If anything, it now appears
they are further behind today than they (thought
they) were a year ago. This is not to deny the
potential--and potentially unique--value of
research using embryonic stem cells. But the
excessive hype has long been premature and irresponsible.
The kind of basic science being done in the labs
for the moment is well served by stable,
thoroughly characterized lines of stem cells like
those funded by the Bush policy. In fact, since
last year's vote we have learned just how well
the so-called "Bush stem-cell lines" have served
the needs of researchers. Contrary to the
assertions of those who oppose the Bush policy,
it turns out the funded stem-cell lines are used
in the vast majority of all human
embryonic-stem-cell research; a study in the
April issue of Nature Biotechnology showed that
<http://article.nationalreview.com/?
q=3DOGFmM2E5N2E3NTI4NGU0ODIxZDU3MzdmZTk0=NzY5Yjk>more
than 85 percent of such research around the world
has used these lines, and most of it in the past
four years. The $90 million spent by the federal
government on such research has surely helped the
field, but it is also clear from these figures
that many researchers who do not receive NIH
funding are using the Bush stem-cell lines.
What, then, to make of assertions that these
lines are contaminated by exposure to animal
materials, and therefore useless? That notion,
central to the case for the Castle-DeGette bill
last year, has also since fallen apart. A series
of articles, including one by stem-cell pioneer
James A. Thomson in Nature Biotechnology
(<http://www.nature.com/nbt/journal/v24/n2/full/nbt1177.html>online
here; subscription required) have shown
successful methods of removing animal materials
from the funded lines. Other studies have shown
results similar to Thomson's, and the
contamination argument has gone the way of the others.
These technical arguments against the lines were
key to the further assertion, frequently heard a
year ago, that the Bush policy was causing
America to fall behind other countries in
stem-cell research. In her statement praising the
Korean research last year, Senator Feinstein also
argued that "federal inaction has created a void
that has been only partially filled by states and
by private entities, and it has allowed other
countries to move ahead of the United States in
this important area of cutting-edge medical research."
Even setting aside the fact that some of the
research Senator Feinstein was worried about was
actually faked, her larger comment about "other
countries" moving "ahead of the United States"
was totally wrong. The same April Nature
Biotechnology study
(<http://www.nature.com/nbt/journal/v24/n4/full/nbt0406-391.html>online
here; subscription required) that showed how
widely the NIH-funded lines are used also showed
that American scientists are by far the world
leaders in embryonic-stem-cell
research--publishing 46 percent of all articles on
the subject, with the remainder divided among 17
other countries. American publications in the
field have been growing each year (from 3 in 2002
to 20 in 2004). Publications around the world
have also been accelerating, of course, but no
single country comes close to America's dominant position.
The Castle-DeGette bill's backers have just one
card left: public opinion. Even if none of their
arguments hold up, they claim that they have
persuaded the public, and that this is reason
enough to change the policy. But even this claim doesn't hold up.
Castle-DeGette supporters, Wednesday's Post
notes, "point to new polling data indicating that
a greater majority of Americans than ever, 72
percent, support the research--a finding that
candidates, they say, cannot afford to ignore."
But note how the
<http://www.camradvocacy.org/resources/POLL_5_2006.pdf>poll
they cite actually frames the issue:
Embryonic stem cells are special cells that can
develop into every type of cell in the human
body. The stem cells are extracted from embryonic
cells produced in fertility clinics and then
frozen days after fertilization. If a couple
decides that the fertilized eggs are no longer
needed, they can choose to donate the embryos for
research or the clinic will throw the embryos
away. Scientists have had success in initial
research with embryonic stem cells and believe
that they can be developed into cures for
diseases such as cancer, Parkinson's, heart
disease, juvenile diabetes, and spinal cord injuries.
Those being questioned are given a vastly
exaggerated impression of the promise of the
science. And they are never told the research
involves the destruction of human embryos--in
fact, the way the poll frames the issue almost
suggests the research is an alternative to the destruction of embryos.
Moreover, they are not then asked what they think
of the current federal policy, or whether it
should be changed. They are not told that the
government already funds this research, and funds
it in ways that do not encourage the further
destruction of embryos. Instead, they are asked:
"Having heard this description, do you strongly
favor, somewhat favor, somewhat oppose, Aor
strongly oppose medical research that uses stem
cells from human embryos?" Forty-two percent say
they strongly favor it, while another 30 percent
"somewhat favor" the research.
Given his funding policy, it may well be that
President Bush himself would be among that 72
percent of supporters--after all, he was the first
president to fund the research, even if within moral limits.
Very few polls actually ask the public for views
on the existing funding policy, rather than
general impressions about stem-cell research. And
those that do find a rather different picture
than the one portrayed by advocates of
embryo-destroying research. The most recent of
these polls was actually done just at the time
the supporters of the Castle-DeGette bill were
making their case most fervently and publicly,
the very week the House voted a year ago. As the
House was preparing to vote (with many
congressmen operating on the assumption that a
vast majority of the country supported
overturning the Bush policy),
<http://www.cbsnews.com/htdocs/CBSNews_polls/stemcells.pdf>this
poll found that only 37 percent of those
questioned actually wanted to fund more stem-cell
lines. In other words, support for embryonic
stem-cell research does not necessarily translate
into support for a federal funding policy that
promotes and pays for the ongoing destruction of human embryos.
A year after the House vote, very little remains
of the arguments that seemed so persuasive then.
On the contrary, developments in
<http://www.eppc.org/programs/bioethics/publications/pubID.
2590,programID.35/pub_detail.asp>techniques
to derive embryonic-like stem cells without
requiring the destruction of embryos have given
new ammunition to supporters of the current
policy. The momentum has shifted firmly against
the Castle-DeGette bill, even if most advocates
continue to spout the same arguments, and many in
the press continue to parrot them.
What this will mean politically remains an open
question. But it is undeniable that much has
happened in the field of stem-cell research this
year that should make Senators look at the
Castle-DeGette bill in a new light, and better
appreciate the Bush policy's successful effort to balance science and
ethics.
-- Eric Cohen is editor of
<http://www.thenewatlantis.com/>The New Atlantis
and director of the program on Bioethics and
American Democracy at the
<http://www.eppc.org/>Ethics and Public Policy Center.
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Received on Sun Jun 25 16:52:49 2006
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