Texans for Advancement of Medical Research

The Victoria Advocate
Friday, March 25th, 2005

In the 1830s, Charles Babbage, a brilliant British mathematician, developed a plan for what he called an “analytical engine.” Although primitive compared to today’s computers and never built, technology historians consider the design to have been that of the first general-purpose computer.

Not until a century later were the first digital computers built – in 1937-42 by John Atanasoff and Clifford Berry at Iowa State College and in 1937-40 by George Stibitz at Bell Labs.

On Aug. 2, 1939, President Franklin D. Roosevelt received a letter from Albert Einstein, the pre- eminent physicist of the 20th century, warning that German scientists working for Adolf Hitler’s Nazi regime probably would use the discovery of a “nuclear chain reaction in a large mass of uranium” to build “extremely powerful bombs of a new type.”

FDR responded by launching the Manhattan Project to pre-empt the Nazis. The project used atomic fission to create the world’s first nuclear bombs. Six years after Roosevelt received Einstein’s prescient warning, the United States detonated the first atomic bomb, on July 16, 1945, at the Trinity Site at White Sands Proving Grounds, N. M.

Scientific research takes time to evolve from early theories to productive results. This makes irrelevant the arguments of those who claim that, because embryonic stem cell research has yet to be used effectively to treat or cure diseases in humans, it never will be.

This type of scientific research is still in its infancy. Much more work will be needed to determine whether it lives up to the initial promise many – although not all – scientists in the field believe it offers. That it will is not yet certain. That it cannot if it is banned is certain.

Opponents of embryonic stem cell research also contend that because adult stem cell therapy has been used effectively numerous times, embryonic stem cell research and the therapies it may yield are not needed. But this is an overly simplistic either/or argument not based on sound logic or science.

What would medical science be like today if earlier scientists had concluded that, since aspirin is a good drug, no further pharmacological research is needed? Indeed, aspirin is an important, useful medication, but it is far from the only one medical science needs in its pharmacy.

Also consider the three major treatments for cancer: surgery, chemotherapy and radiation. No one of these is uniformly or always effective against all kinds of cancer. Some types of cancer respond more to one therapy than to the others. Without having all three regimens available, oncologists would be much more limited in their ability to treat cancer.

Adult stem cells have limitations that keep them from offering a cure-all treatment. According to Texans for Advancement of Medical Research (TAMR), a coalition of scientific and medical research groups and health advocacy organizations, adult stem cells:

..”May not exist for some tissues.

..”Exist in limited numbers; are difficult to identify, isolate and purify; are more likely to be rejected; appear to be more susceptible to chromosomal abnormalities; and have limited growth potential.

..”Cannot transform into every cell type. Experiments have suggested that they might have this ability, but recent studies have cast doubt on their ability to transform into cell types other than those from the tissues of their origins.”

This third limitation is the most important contrast with embryonic stem cells, which “can become any cell type of the human body, are capable of seemingly unlimited growth, have the potential to replace cells damaged by disease or injury, and provide insight into causes of diseases,” TAMR explains.

“Embryonic stem cells, which come from the inner cell mass of a human embryo, have the potential to develop into all or nearly all of the tissues of the body. The scientific term for this characteristic is ‘pluripotentiality,’” explains a fact sheet released by the White House in August 2001.

“Although scientists believe that some adult stem cells from one tissue can develop into cells of another tissue, no adult stem cell has been shown in culture to be pluripotent,” the fact sheet adds.

The potential for embryonic stem cell therapy is enormous. “Many scientists believe that embryonic stem cell research may eventually lead to therapies that could be used to treat diseases that afflict approximately 128 million Americans,” according to the White House.

“Many scientists believe embryonic stem cell research holds promise over time because of the capacity of embryonic stem cells to develop into any tissue in the human body,” the fact sheet explains.

Both adult stem cell research and embryonic stem cell research should continue. Together, they offer great promise for treating, curing and even preventing diseases that afflict countless Americans and people worldwide. Neither approach by itself is likely to accomplish as much as both ultimately may.

The Victoria Advocate
Sunday, March 27th, 2005

Speaking last July, Ron Reagan outlined the most promising type of embryonic stem cell research.

“Let’s say that 10 or so years from now, you are diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. There is currently no cure, and drug therapy, with its attendant side effects, can only temporarily relieve the symptoms,” the son of President Ronald Reagan said.

“Now, imagine going to a doctor who, instead of prescribing drugs, takes a few skin cells from your arm. The nucleus of one of your cells is placed into a donor egg whose own nucleus has been removed. A bit of chemical or electrical stimulation will encourage your cell’s nucleus to begin dividing, creating new cells which will then be placed into a tissue culture.

“Those cells will generate embryonic stem cells containing only your DNA, thereby eliminating the risk of tissue rejection. These stem cells are then driven to become the very neural cells that are defective in Parkinson’s patients. And finally, those cells – with your DNA – are injected into your brain where they will replace the faulty cells whose failure to produce adequate dopamine led to the Parkinson’s disease in the first place.”

What Reagan described is called somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT). It holds the promise of effective treatments and cures for many diseases and disabilities.

“SCNT is the only field of stem cell research that could eliminate immune system rejection because the cells contain the patient’s DNA,” according to Texans for Advancement of Medical Research (TAMR), a coalition of scientific and medical research groups and health advocacy organizations.

“SCNT cells can potentially grow into any cell type of the body, are capable of seemingly unlimited growth (i.e., production of more of the same cells), have the potential to replace cells damaged by disease or injury, and can provide insight into the causes of diseases,” TAMR continues.

Scientists believe this type of stem cell research ultimately could treat or cure Parkinson’s disease, as Reagan noted above, as well as diabetes, cancer, heart disease, spinal cord injury, traumatic brain injury, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (Lou Gehrig’s disease), blindness, multiple sclerosis, sickle cell anemia, strokes, muscular dystrophy and probably others.

Opponents of embryonic stem cell research contend that it involves the taking of human life. While that is arguable when applied to other types of embryonic stem cell research, it is not true of the SCNT process.

SCNT begins with an unfertilized human egg, also called an ovum or oocyte. Not even those who maintain that life begins at conception – the union of ovum and sperm – can logically claim that an unfertilized egg is a life.

Sperm activates repressed genes in a human ovum that may allow it ultimately to develop into a viable human being. Without that sperm, these repressed genes cannot be activated. So the egg – even if something else, other than sperm, is put into it – cannot develop into a viable human being, according to William Brinkley, the dean of the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston and one of the top cellular-molecular biologists in the nation.

According to TAMR, “30 percent to 50 percent of the genes necessary for fetal development are not properly expressed in SCNT cells. SCNT cells are intended to cure diseases, not to create babies.”

If a blastocyst – “a microscopic collection of 100-200 undifferentiated cells that divide in a Petri dish for about five days,” TAMR explains – created by SCNT were to be implanted in a human uterus, it would not develop into a viable human being, Brinkley notes.

The Victoria Advocate
Sunday, March 29th, 2005

Election-year politics, particularly a heated race for a congressional seat, in 2002 unexpectedly put stem cell research on the Iowa General Assembly’s agenda. That is rarely the best time or context for lawmakers to take a thoughtful look at such a complex issue.

Iowa legislators initially considered a draconian bill that would have outlawed all cloning and embryonic stem cell research. But the General Assembly ultimately opted for a less drastic measure, Senate File 2118, that prohibits reproductive and therapeutic cloning but allows some embryonic stem cell research. Gov. Tom Vilsack, a liberal Democrat, signed the bill into law.

Unfortunately, the Iowa cloning ban prohibits research into the most promising type of embryonic stem cell research, somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT), according to a briefing paper compiled by the University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine.

Once it is fully developed, SCNT would replace the nucleus of an unfertilized egg with the nucleus from a cell provided by the patient seeking treatment. As explained in detail in Sunday’s editorial, “Truly pro-life,” the cells this process then would produce would be used to treat, perhaps to cure, the patient.

The Iowa cloning ban, however, considers that to be therapeutic cloning – despite the fact that the cells SCNT produces cannot become a viable human being, according to William Brinkley, the dean of the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston and one of the top cellular-molecular biologists in the nation.

“Many people who might benefit from the therapy would be too sick to leave the state (or even the hospital) to donate their stem cells, so these people would be prohibited from receiving the therapy,” the University of Iowa briefing paper notes.

Beyond that very practical human aspect, on a larger scale, the SCNT ban in the long term will mean that Iowa will not be able to compete with states where SCNT is legal and public dollars help fund embryonic stem cell research. The Des Moines Register, Iowa’s largest newspaper, last week urged the General Assembly to revisit and revise the cloning ban.

This is a good example of what the 79th Texas Legislature should not do as lawmakers consider the baker’s dozen bills on stem cell research before them this session.

Texas legislators should reject out of hand House Bill 864, by state Rep. Phil King, R-Weatherford, and Senate Bill 943, by state Sen. Ken Armbrister, D-Victoria.

Like the Iowa law, both measures go beyond banning human reproductive cloning – a procedure this newspaper strongly opposes – and effectively prohibit SCNT research and therapy in Texas. Unlike Iowa, which has only one, Texas has multiple world-class medical schools – in Houston-Galveston, San Antonio and Dallas – so such a ban would devastate this state’s long-term competitiveness in biomedical research. This prohibition also would dearly cost Texans seeking treatment with SCNT therapy if they have to travel out of state for it, once it is developed.

To outlaw human reproductive cloning – a ban this newspaper strongly supports – but not prohibit embryonic stem cell research and therapy, the Texas Legislature should enact either House Bill 1929, by state Rep. Beverly Woolley, R-Houston, or Senate Bill 1733, by state Sen. Eliot Shapleigh, D-El Paso. The two bills are based on legislation sponsored by a much-respected conservative, U.S. Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, in Congress.

The Woolley and Shapleigh measures would prohibit human reproductive cloning in Texas. They also would keep embryonic stem cell research, including SCNT, legal. And both would establish an advisory committee on research to develop regenerative or reparative medical therapies or treatments. In other words, an ethics oversight committee. Its members would include biomedical researchers, medical ethicists, legal experts and religious representatives.

As local anti-abortion activist Wm. Paul Tasin wrote in an e-mail to this page last week, “To ignore the spiritual and moral implications of this debate is not a debate at all.” While we differ with Tasin in many regards, we agree that ethical oversight, as the Woolley and Shapleigh bills would provide, is necessary to ensure that research and the therapies it ultimately yields are ethical and to prevent abuses of sound science.

State Rep. David Swinford, R-Amarillo, and state Sen. Judith Zaffirini, D-Laredo, have introduced more narrowly focused bills to ban human reproductive cloning and keep SCNT research and therapy legal in Texas. Either of these would be a better alternative than the King and Armbrister bills.

“SCNT doesn’t destroy or create life,” says Baylor College of Medicine’s Brinkley.

That is the sound science upon which Texas law should be based. It should prohibit human reproductive cloning but not research that ultimately may yield therapies to prolong life and improve the quality of life for countless people in the Lone Star State and, indeed, worldwide.

The Victoria Advocate
Wednesday, March 30th, 2005

The Maryland House of Delegates on Monday approved, by an 81-53 vote, a bill to spend $23 million a year in public funds on stem cell research. The money would come from the state’s tobacco settlement income.

The Maryland Senate Health Committee earlier approved spending $25 million a year to fund embryonic and other stem cell research, and the bill may go to the full Senate soon.

The legislation’s backers contend that state funding is needed to maintain Maryland’s position as a leading biomedical research state.

Without state money to support embryonic stem cell research, they say, Maryland will lose both its competitiveness and many top researchers working there to other states that publicly fund this promising effort.

Last November, California voters approved Proposition 71, authorizing the state to raise $3 billion in bond money over the next decade to fund embryonic and other types of stem cell research.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and former first lady Nancy Reagan were among the prominent Republicans supporting the initiative.

“The University of California at Los Angeles will spend $20 million over five years to establish a stem cell research institute and compete for new state funds to fight cancer and other diseases,” Reuters news service reported earlier this month.

UCLA is only one of the Golden State’s many biomedical research centers competing for state money – and top researchers from other states that do not fund stem cell research.

Two weeks after the California vote, “Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle proposed to invest $750 million in biotechnology, including $375 million for an Institute of Discovery at the University of Wisconsin-Madison that would serve as a center for the more than 50 Madison scientists working with stem cells,” according to The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

In January, New Jersey “Acting Gov. Richard J. Codey entered what he called ‘the race for the cure’ by proposing to spend $380 million on research. New Jersey’s planned spending gives the state a lock on second place in the stem cell research race, behind California,” The New York Times reported.

Also in January, “Connecticut legislators introduced a bill that endorses research on embryonic and adult stem cells, and Gov. Jodi Rell has said she would take between $10 million and $20 million from the current budget surplus to promote stem cell research in the state,” according to The Scientist magazine.

Worried that New York will fall behind nearby New Jersey and Connecticut, legislators from both major parties are backing a proposal to invest at least $100 million of public money to fund embryonic and other types of stem cell research in the Empire State.

Earlier this month, the Illinois Senate Health and Human Services Committee approved a bill to put a proposition on the November 2006 ballot authorizing the state to sell $1 billion in bonds to create the Illinois Regenerative Medicine Institute and fund embryonic and other stem cell research.

With its world-class medical schools and research facilities in Houston-Galveston, San Antonio and Dallas and a thriving biomedical industry, can Texas afford to be left behind as other states provide public funding for stem cell research?

Five bills have been introduced in the 79th Texas Legislature to authorize public funding for various types of stem cell research.

State lawmakers should consider them in light of maintaining Texas’ biomedical competitiveness and retaining top researchers.

Legislators also should consider the overall economic development this promising research field offers for states that position themselves now to take advantage of it as it continues to develop.

This newspaper has endorsed Gov. Rick Perry’s Texas Enterprise Fund, which the 78th Legislature created and funded two years ago, and his proposed Texas Emerging Technology Fund, which the 79th Legislature is considering now.

The Enterprise Fund has brought new businesses and new jobs to Texas, contributing to the state’s economic development and the growth of its tax base. The Emerging Technology Fund, which would invest public money in high-tech research and technological developments, would do the same.

Texas lawmakers should consider making the same kind of investment in stem cell research. The biomedical field is already a key segment of the state’s economy, and stem cell research increases its potential for economic growth. Other states are making this investment.