Subject: ESCR Advocates Are Short on Facts
Source: National Review; July 23, 2001

ESCR Advocates Are Short on Facts
By Michael Fumento

[Pro-Life Infonet Note: Michael Fumento is a senior fellow at the Hudson
Institute, where hes completing a book tentatively entitled: BioEvolution:
How Biotechnology Is Changing Our World.]

The embryonic full-court press is on, fielding an all-star team.

Injured and sick celebrities like Christopher Reeve, journalists such as
Morton Kondracke (whose wife Milly has late-stage Parkinson's disease),
and prominent politicians like Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch, Tennessee Sen. Bill
Frist, and former Florida Sen. Connie Mack are all demanding that the ban
on federal funding of embryonic-stem-cell research be lifted.

Anybody with the least conservative credentials who favors lifting the ban
gets splashed onto Page One. Most recently this includes Nancy Reagan, as
if being a conservative president's wife makes someone an authority in
issues deeply involving ethics and biology. What makes them authorities,
of course, is that they favor lifting the ban.

To see just how bad the distortions have become in this new push, look no
further than Newsweek's July 9 issue, which presents the entire argument
on the cover. "The Stem Cell Wars," declare the boldest words. "Embryo
Research vs. Pro-Life Politics: There's Hope for Alzheimer's, Heart
Disease, Parkinson's and Diabetes. But Will Bush Cut Off the Money_"

Yet, (A) the money has been cut off since 1996, well before Bush became
president; (B) when the media aren't portraying all those who support
keeping the ban as fanatical pro-lifers, they're filling their pages with
testimonials from abortion opponents calling for an end to the ban; and
(C) even without federal funds, nay even without embryonic cells,
stem-cell research has made tremendous strides toward bringing hope to
persons with the very diseases Newsweek's cover lists, along with many
others.

Focus in on the third anomaly. Why aren't we hearing about this_

Simple: It's scientific ignorance, with a dollop of disinformation tossed
in for good measure. Advances in tissue-regeneration research are coming
fast and furious because of something either ignored or pooh-poohed by
embryonic-cell advocates -- non-embryonic stem cells.

Scientists are finding such stem cells in tissues throughout the body,
then converting them into an incredible array of mature cells with the
ability to combat a vast number of devastating diseases and injuries.

Yet across the board, proponents of lifting the embryonic-cell research
ban either are ignorant or pretend to be ignorant of the tremendous
advances in non-embryonic stem cell research. Often they fail even to
recognize that there are stem cells that are not embryonic. (Some of these
are properly called "adult stem cells," whereas others such as those from
umbilical cords resist the "adult" nomenclature. Regardless, the only
valid distinction regarding the current debate is between embryonic and
non-embryonic.)

Thus the title of Connie Mack's June 19 Wall Street Journal op-ed: "I'm
Pro-Life -- And in Favor of Stem Cell Research" is only the contradiction
it aims to be if you ignore non-embryonic stem cells.

Yet even as his commentary appeared, the New Scientist was reporting that
researchers have removed stem cells from adult human hair follicles and
converted them into skin grafts for victims of severe burns and ulcerated
wounds.

In other developments over the past two years:

*Two studies published last December in Nature Medicine reported that
non-embryonic stem cells injected into rodents can transform themselves
naturally into neurons and insert themselves into the brain, giving hope
to persons with Parkinson's and other disorders. A third study found that
injecting a chemical into damaged areas of rats' brains stimulated stem
cells to grow and differentiate into a massive number of normal, fully
developed nerves. The cells repaired damage and restored mobility to the
rodents. Ironically, it was funded in part by the Christopher Reeve
Paralysis Foundation which supports lifting the embryonic-stem-cell ban.

At least four rodent studies (some published and some not) and one pig
study have shown that non-embryonic stem cells can be used to repair heart
tissue in animals whose hearts had been intentionally damaged.

As reported in Molecular and Cellular Neuroscience, rats with degraded
retinas were injected with non-embryonic stem cells that traveled to the
site of damage. There they showed signs of making connections with the
optic nerve, which would be expected to improve or even restore vision.

Johns Hopkins School of Medicine researchers injected non-embryonic stem
cells into the spinal fluid of paralyzed mice and rats, half of which
partially or fully recovered. This paves the way for human trials for
those afflicted with ALS and muscular dystrophy.

Cells from liposuctioned fat (our nation's most plentiful resource) have
been transformed into bone, muscle, cartilage, and mature fat cells,
according to an article in the April issue of Tissue Engineering.

Sen. Mack's commentary did allude to this study, but only to assert that
"there is no conclusive proof that fat tissue really does contain stem
cells." Wrong. "These are adipose-derived stem cells," the lead author of
the study, UCLA assistant professor of plastic surgery Dr. Marc Hedrick,
told me. In any case, even Sen. Mack unwittingly admitted that cells of
some type of cell has been removed from adult tissue and converted into
the same types of tissue that embryonic cells have been made into. For our
purposes, who cares if they turn out to be stem cells or not_

Time and again, scientists involved in non-embryonic-stem-cell work,
including even some who say they support lifting the funding ban, have
commented that one of the important results of their and other's findings
is that they would bypass the emotion-charged embryonic-tissue debate.

Among them:

UCLA's Hedrick told the Los Angeles Times his findings "could take the air
right out of the debate about embryonic stem cells." The fat cells'
surprising usefulness, he said, "makes it hard to argue that we should use
embryonic cells."

Dr. Adam J. Katz, a member of a research team separate from Hedrick's that
span fat into body tissues: "This discovery potentially could obviate the
need for using fetal tissue."

Eric Olson, chair of the Department of Molecular Biology at the University
of Texas Southwestern Medical Center: Almost "every other week there's
another interesting finding of adult cells turning into neurons or blood
cells or heart muscle cells. Apparently our traditional views need to be
reevaluated."

Ira Black of the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, referring to his
research showing that various adult cells could be teased into becoming
neuronal ones: This "essentially circumvents all the ethical concerns with
the use of fetal tissues."

Markus C. Grompe, a professor of molecular medical genetics at Oregon
Health Sciences University: "This would suggest that maybe you don't need
any type of fetal stem cell at all -- that our adult bodies continue to
have stem cells that can do this stuff."

Dr. Neil Theise of the New York University School of Medicine and
co-author of a stem-cell study declared, "This study provides the
strongest evidence yet that the adult body harbors stem cells that are as
flexible as embryonic stem cells."

While it's true that 80-odd Nobel laureates have signed a letter
supporting lifting the ban, claiming it's "far too early to know whether
adult stem cells are as promising as the cells from fertilized eggs," Dr.
Donald Orlic of the National Genome Research Institute told NBC News in
late March that "we are currently finding that these adult stem cells can
function as well, perhaps even better than, embryonic stem cells." It's
also noteworthy that of those Nobel laureates, only 27 had science
backgrounds and only two had backgrounds in embryology.

Yet the disinformation piles on like a collapsing slag heap, to where it's
utterly conflicting.

Thus William Safire, in his July 5 column stating, "I head a foundation
that supports research in brain science, neuro-immunology and
immuno-imaging," also says, "scientists may find, in time, that stem cells
can be developed from adult cells rather than blastocysts [embryonic
cells]."

It seems the foundation needs a new head, one with a bit of a science
background.

You don't "develop" an adult stem cell. Like blastocysts, they're always
there. The only scientific discussion is whether such cells are as readily
harvested and converted into other types of cells as are embryonic ones.

And if it's harvesting you're talking about, nothing will ever compete
with the non-embyronic stem cells removed from umbilical cords and
placentas from babies born alive.

Companies like Viacell, Inc. of Boston have been extracting stem cells
from human umbilical cords for years now. Recently New Jersey-based
Anthrogenesis Corp. announced it had been able to collect 10 times as many
stem cells from a single post-birth placenta as have been gathered from
any other single source.

"These are the same type of cells used in fetal development, and we
capture what's left in placenta and umbilical cords," Cynthia Fischer,
founder and president of Viacell, Inc. and its subsidiary, Viacord, Inc.,
told me.

Each year, over four million umbilical cords are simply discarded.
Connected together, they would stretch from New York to Houston.

But such information seems to be more closely guarded than Britain's Crown
Jewels.

Consider the stem-cell report the National Institutes of Health just
released.

NIH has long pushed for embryonic research funding, so it would be rather
strange if it didn't take this opportunity to do so as well.

Yet even the report admits: "Published scientific papers indicated that
adult stem cells have been identified in brain, bone marrow, peripheral
blood, blood vessels, skeletal muscle, epithelia of the skin and digestive
system, cornea, dental pulp of the tooth, retina, liver, and pancreas."

Essentially, the places where stem cells have not been found are those
where scientists haven't looked.

So instead the report falls back on a mass of mush words like "it may be,"
and "it appears," along with such worthless assertions that: "It has not
been demonstrated that one adult stem cell can be directed to develop into
any cell type of the body." That's absolutely true. It's also absolutely
true of embryonic cells, but don't expect to read that in the report.

And yet.

Even were it to turn out that embryonic cells have no advantage over
non-embryonic ones, shouldn't pragmatism dictate that such research be
given an equal chance_ (The word "equal" is important, because private
labs continue to legally conduct embryonic-cell research.)

After all, wouldn't virtually any pro-lifer admit that the possibility of
killing innocent children shouldn't preclude an air strike against enemy
strongholds_

Yet perhaps the strongest argument against lifting the funding ban is
pragmatism.

Much of the current fear over therapeutic human biotechnology comes from
angst over embryonic-stem-cell research, and it's not just coming from
abortion foes.

People are scared. Rightly or wrongly, use of embryonic cells invokes
visions of Dr. Josef Mengele and a terrifying slippery slope towards
playing around with human life.

It would be tragic if the fantastic results of non-embryonic stem-cell
research were to be lost in a needless campaign to fund the embryonic
variety with the unwilling subsidies of Americans whose objections are
rooted in deeply held convictions.

We must ensure full public support for stem-cell research and all the
promise it holds. That can't be done unless we maintain the
taxpayer-funding ban.