Subject: Nat Henthoff: Adult Stem Cell Research Deserves Support
Source: Washington Times; July 23, 2001

Nat Henthoff: Adult Stem Cell Research Deserves Support

[Pro-Life Infonet Note: Nat Henthoff is widely respected as a leading
pro-life liberal Democrat voice. He writes regularly for the Village Voice
and a weekly column for the Washington Times.]

Not even the national debates about abortion or the patients bill of
rights equal in intensity -- and in future impact -- the controversy as to
whether there should be full-scale federal funding of embryonic stem cell
research, which appears to have great promise for remarkable therapy for
especially serious diseases. These embryonic stem cells can turn into any
kind of cell or tissue in the body.

Such dread conditions as Alzheimer's, strokes or muscular dystrophy might,
in time, be treated by these embryonic stem cells if enough federal
research funds will be committed for this research.

What has caused, however, intense controversy about this use of human
embryos -- even those extra embryos frozen in fertility clinics and likely
to be destroyed -- is illustrated by this definition of an embryo from the
1989 edition of the "American Medical Association Encyclopedia of
Medicine" -- "From the time of conception until the eighth week, the
developing baby is known as an embryo."

Such technical scientific names as blastocyst (the embryo four days after
fertilization) are not emphasized in that widely known medical reference
book's definition. The word, "baby," is at the heart of this debate.

From the very beginning of human life -- as Professor Dianne Irving has
written in "When Do Humans Beings Begin_" in the International Journal of
Sociology and Social Policy (1999): "This new human being -- the
single-cell human zygote -- is biologically an individual, a living
organism -- an individual member of the human species."

Or, as Georgetown University bioethicist Patricia King, who is in favor of
abortion rights, told the New York Times: "I think the early embryo is not
nothing. I don't think of it as just tissue."

In 1996, the National Advisory Bioethics Commission recommended that
federal funds be used for embryonic stem cell research, but the commission
said clearly that federal funding is "justifiable only if no less morally
problematic alternatives are available for advancing the research."

Now, as pressure increases -- even from such pro-life advocates as Sen.
Orrin Hatch -- there is increasing evidence of an alternative that would
not require the use of human embryos for this research. On PBS's "Jim
Lehrer News Hour," David Prentice, a professor of Life Sciences at Indiana
State University and a founding member of Do No Harm, The Coalition of
Americans for Research Ethics, reported that scientific evidence does
indicate that adult stem cells are a viable alternative.

"They're actually being used now," he said, "to treat human patients for
new corneas for restoring sight to the blind. In the animal models and
actually the adults themselves, I believe they have shown more success
than in any of the embryonic cells -- reversing diabetes in mice, treating
Parkinson's spinal cord injury, repairing heart damage. So I do think we
have a less morally problematic alternative here."

As for the claim that discarded frozen embryos used in research would have
otherwise been destroyed, Mr. Prentice noted that "there are embryo
adoption options -- the Snowflake program, for example, in California, and
others."

And in a recent letter to President Bush, Rep. Chris Smith and 13 other
House members -- as reported in the Wall Street Journal -- asked the
president to meet with three young children that had been "kept in
storage, as frozen embryos, until they were adopted by infertile couples."

Moreover, as The Washington Post reported, research for an article in the
prestigious journal Science showed that "embryonic stem cells are
surprisingly unstable, at least in mice. If the same is true for human
embryonic stem cells, researchers said, then scientists may face
unexpected challenges as they try to turn the controversial cells into
treatments for various degenerative conditions." Part of that finding was
deleted from the article in Science at the last minute, said The
Washington Post, to not give ammunition to opponents of embryonic stem
cell research.

Also, the widely respected journal Cell notes: "Several recent reports
suggest that there is far more plasticity than previously believed in the
developmental potential of many different adult cell types." Adult bone
marrow cells, for example, "have tremendous differentiative capacity" as
they can turn into "cells of the liver, lung," and other parts of the
body.

Both scientific and ethical priorities require federal funding of adult
stem cell research that has such potential for the lives of all of us.