The Politics of Stem Cells
Posted 3-21-01
The Good News You Never Hear.
by
Wesley J. Smith
Stem
cells are undifferentiated “master cells” in the body that can develop into
differentiated tissues, such as bone, muscle, nerve, or skin. Stem cell research
may lead to exponential improvements in the treatment of many terminal and
debilitating conditions, from cancer to Parkinson’s to Alzheimer’s to
diabetes to heart disease. Indeed, breakthroughs in stem cell research reported
just in the last six months take one’s breath away:
•
Italian scientists have generated muscle tissue using rat stem cells, a
discovery that may have significant implications for organ transplant therapy.
•
University of South Florida researchers report that rats genetically engineered
to have strokes were injected with rat stem cells that “integrated seamlessly
into the surrounding brain tissue, maturing into the type of cell appropriate
for that area of the brain.” The potential for stem cell treatments to
alleviate stroke symptoms such as slurred speech and dizziness—therapy that
would not require surgery—has the potential to dramatically improve the
treatment of many neurological diseases.
•
The group of scientists who achieved worldwide fame for cloning Dolly the sheep
have successfully created heart tissue using cow stem cells. The experiment
demonstrated that stem cells could be transformed into differentiated bodily
tissues, offering great impetus to further research.
•
Scientists at Enzo Biochem, Inc., inserted anti-HIV genes into human stem cells.
The stem cells survived, grew, and developed into a type of white blood cell
that is affected adversely by HIV infection. In the laboratory, these treated
cells blocked HIV growth. The next step is human trials, in which stem cell
therapy will be attempted using bone marrow transplantation techniques currently
effective in the treatment of some cancers.
What
will surprise many people is that none of these remarkable achievements relied
on the use of stem cells from embryos or the products of abortion. Indeed, all
of these experiments involved adult stem cells or undifferentiated stem cells
obtained from other non-embryo sources. The rat muscle tissue in the first
example was generated using adult rat brain cells. The brain tissue generated in
the Florida research was obtained using human stem cells found in umbilical cord
blood—material usually discarded after birth and a potentially inexhaustible
source of stem cells, since 4 million babies are born in the United States alone
each year. Dolly’s creators obtained cow heart tissue by reprogramming adult
cow skin tissue back into its primordial stem cell state and thence to cardiac
cells. The exciting HIV experiments were conducted using stem cells found in the
patients’ own bone marrow, spleen, or blood.
The
opportunities for developing successful therapies from stem cells that do not
require the destruction of human embryos should be very big news. But where are
the headlines? These and other successful experiments have been all but drowned
out by breathless stories extolling the miraculous potential of embryonic stem
cell research. How many readers are aware, for example, that French doctors
recently transformed a heart patient’s own thigh muscle into contracting heart
muscle cells? When these cells were injected into the patient’s damaged heart,
they thrived and, in association with bypass surgery, substantially improved the
patient’s heartbeat. Such research is now on the fast track, offering great
hope for cardiac patients everywhere.
With
all of the hype surrounding embryo research, it is important to note that embryo
stem cell research—and its first cousin, fetal tissue experiments—may not
actually produce the therapeutic benefits its supporters have told us to
anticipate. Such worries are not mere speculation. The March 8, 2001, New
England Journal of Medicine reported tragic side effects from an experiment
involving the insertion of fetal brain cells into the brains of Parkinson’s
disease patients. The patients thus treated showed modest if any overall
benefits by comparison with a control group who underwent “sham surgeries”
without receiving fetal tissue. But over time, some 15 percent of the patients
who had received the transplants experienced dramatic over-production of a
chemical in the brain that controls movement. The results, in the words of one
disheartened researcher, were “utterly devastating,” with the unfortunate
patients exhibiting permanent uncontrollable movements: writhing, twisting,
head-jerking, arm flailing, and constant chewing. One man was so badly affected
he no longer can eat, requiring the insertion of a feeding tube.
While
some studies using stem cells culled from embryos to treat Parkinson’s type
symptoms in mice have been encouraging, grafts of fetal and embryonic tissue may
provoke the body’s immune response, leading to rejection of the tissue and
potentially death, since once the cells are injected they cannot be extracted.
Even more alarming, a May 1996 Neurology article disclosed a patient’s death
caused by an experiment in China in which fetal nerve cells and embryo cells
were transplanted into a human Parkinson’s patient. After briefly improving,
the patient died unexpectedly. His autopsy showed that the tissue graft had
failed to generate new nerve cells to treat his disease as had been hoped.
Worse, the man’s death was caused by the unexpected growth of bone, skin, and
hair in his brain, material the authors theorized resulted from the
transformation of undifferentiated stem cells into non-neural, and therefore
deadly, tissues.
Even
some of the most enthusiastic boosters of embryo stem cell research see trouble
ahead. For example, University of Pennsylvania bioethicist Glenn McGee admitted
to Technology Review, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology publication,
“The emerging truth in the lab is that pluripotent stem cells are hard to rein
in. The potential that they would explode into a cancerous mass after a stem
cell transplant might turn out to be the Pandora’s box of stem cell
research.” Thus, it could be that adult tissue-specific stem cells are
actually safer than their counterparts culled from embryos since, being
extracted from mature cells, they may not exhibit the propensity for
uncontrolled differentiation.
These
concerns arise just as the long-time ban on using federal funds for research
that destroys human embryos is under renewed scrutiny. That longstanding ban was
effectively reinterpreted out of existence in the waning months of the Clinton
administration, and the National Institutes of Health are currently accepting
grant proposals for research using embryos originally created for in vitro
fertilization but now deemed “in excess of clinical need.” The new
administration is taking a long, hard look at the policy; during the campaign,
George W. Bush declared his opposition to research that involved destroying
human embryos.
All
of this raises intriguing questions: Why is federal funding for embryo and fetal
research pushed so hard and so publicly—while adult stem cell and other
alternative therapies are damned with faint praise? Why do the media applaud
fetal stem cell experiments and provide klieg-light coverage of stories
promoting the use of embryos, as an afterthought, if that? Indeed, why do some
scientists assert that alternative stem cell research offers but uncertain hope,
while they promote embryo and fetal tissue research as the keys to the Promised
Land?
I
suggest three answers: celebrities, abortion, and eugenics.
In
a society that has often denigrated its true heroes, the only people who now
stand head above the clouds are figures from the world of entertainment.
Increasingly, these celebrities are using their power to promote public
policies. They know that their participation can define issues and shape the
debate by attracting media coverage, generating fan support, and, most
important, stimulating a Pavlovian response in politicians.
Three
high-powered celebrities have weighed in recently in the stem cell controversy,
each promoting full federal funding of embryo research: the popular Michael J.
Fox, stricken at a tragically young age with Parkinson’s disease; the
television icon Mary Tyler Moore, a diabetes patient; and actor Christopher
Reeve, paralyzed from the neck down in an equestrian accident. With such kiloton
star power favoring federal funding of embryo research, promoters of research
relying on adult stem cells and other alternative sources, along with those
opposed to the destruction of embryos on ethical grounds, have been reduced to
background noise or, worse, made to look heartless by denying these celebrities
medical breakthroughs they need.
At
a deeper level, just as in the nineteenth century many national issues led back
to slavery, today numerous public policy disputes lead ultimately to abortion.
The controversy over destroying human embryos to obtain their stem cells has
brought an outcry from the pro-life movement, which views human life as sacred
from the moment of conception. This has led to reflexive support for embryo
research by many pro-choicers, who have seized on the issue as a way to further
their depiction of pro-life forces as caring little about people once they are
born. Thus the embryo stem cell debate offers abortion rights advocates a
“two-fer”: It furthers their primary political goal of isolating and
marginalizing pro-lifers, and it enables them to seize the PR high ground by
“compassionately” pressing for research that offers hope against
debilitating diseases. To acknowledge the tremendous potential of adult stem
cell research would interfere with this political pincer movement.
Finally,
in my view, the ultimate purpose of promoting federal funding for embryo
experiments over adult stem cell research—particularly among many in the
bioethics movement—is to open the door to the eugenic manipulation of the
human genome. Once embryos can be exploited for their stem cells to promote
human welfare, what is to stop scientists from manipulating embryos to control
and direct human evolution—equally for the purpose of improving the human
future?
Indeed,
some of those who signed a recent open letter to President Bush urging an end to
the ban on federal funding for human embryo research were scientists and
bioethicists well known as favoring eugenics. For example, James D.
Watson, a co-discoverer of the DNA helix, has written that newborns should not
be considered “alive” for three days, to permit genetic screening. Newborns
who fail to pass genetic muster should be discarded—much as the ancient Romans
left unwanted babies outdoors to die of exposure. Another co-author of this
letter, Michael West, head of the for-profit research company Advanced Cell
Technology, proposes permitting human cloning as a way to obtain genetically
matched stem cells for transplants, which might overcome the problem of tissue
rejection in embryo stem cell therapy. Not coincidentally, many neo-eugenicists
in the bioethics and science communities view cloning as a prime vehicle for
directing the eugenic manipulation of human evolution.
All
of this will come to a head in the coming weeks and months. Some recent news
stories indicate that Health and Human Services secretary Tommy Thompson may be
troubled by a federal ban on embryo stem cell research and thus inclined to
retain the Clinton administration’s funding policy. But why go down that
controversial path, when adult stem cells and alternative sources offer such
tremendous hope for treating every malady that research using embryos and fetal
tissue seeks to ameliorate? Instead of turning this important field of medical
research into another battlefield in America’s never-ending culture war (the
first lawsuit has already been filed to prevent federal funding), why not focus
our public resources with laser-like intensity on the incredible potential of
adult and alternative sources of stem cells?
®
Wesley
J. Smith, a frequent contributor to The Weekly Standard, is the author of
Culture of Death: The Assault on Medical Ethics in America, recently published
by Encounter Books.
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