A sensible step on stem cell research
- Sep 9, 2010 -
The saga on stem cells took two important twists in recent days. One was from a court standing behind its decision two weeks earlier that sent the pro-life community cheering by halting taxpayer dollars to unethical embryonic stem cell research. The second was from opponents in Congress hoping to keep the money flowing. The now uncertain future course on stem cell research helps to make a clear case for taking a sensible step: prioritizing funding for research that is ethical and has demonstrated success.
The positive turn came Tuesday as federal Judge Royce Lamberth rejected a request by the Obama administration to stay, or put on hold, his court’s Aug. 23 decision to temporarily block taxpayer funding of embryonic stem cell research mandated by President Obama’s 2009 executive order while the case works its way through the appeals process.
“A stay would flout the will of Congress, as this court understands what Congress has enacted in the Dickey-Wicker Amendment,” Judge Lamberth wrote, referring to a law reauthorized each year since 1996 to bar federal funding of research in which human embryos are destroyed or harmed. “Congress has mandated that the public interest is served by preventing taxpayer funding of research that entails the destruction of human embryos. Congress remains perfectly free to amend or revise the statute.”
And that’s exactly what some in Congress intend to do. In the second, albeit negative, turn on the stem cell front, Rep. Diana DeGette (D-CO), one of Congress’ most vocal supporters of such research, asserted just days earlier that “the stars are pretty well aligned” to move forward on her bill to bypass the court, according to the Politico newspaper. While Rep. DeGette’s Stem Cell Research Advancement Act (H.R. 4808) would authorize taxpayer dollars for research involving the killing of human embryos, it goes much further. Human cloning would also become legitimate. Under a deceptively written definition, human cloning would be permitted as long as a clone is not implanted. Fittingly, many call it the clone and kill bill.
Yet the congressional tug-of-war on a preferred route to finding treatments to diseases and other ailments using stem cells helps to make the case for another bill, one that has lingered in Congress since its introduction. The Patients First Act (H.R. 877) would do exactly as its title suggests: put patients ahead of politics, making the treatment of patients—not the pursuit of what’s been dead-end, unethical research—of paramount concern. Introduced by Reps. Randy Forbes (R-VA) and Dan Lipinski (D-IL), the bill would “prioritize” research “in terms of potential for near-term clinical benefit in human patients.” In other words, it stands to pump the most money into the forms of stem cell research demonstrating the most success.
That includes the broad category of adult stem cells, which are taken from such sources as an individual’s fat, bone marrow, and umbilical cord blood. The number of people treated with this type of research is growing by the day. The research boasts more than 70 kinds of treatments in all—from cancers and heart disease to Type 1 Diabetes and spinal cord injuries—compared to zero treatments using embryo-destructive research. The bill also favors induced pluripotent stem cell research, in which adult skin cells are “walked” back to an embryonic-like state, a recent breakthrough that many scientists believe could make destructive research unnecessary. None of these methods harms or destroys human life.
Few, it might seem, could argue with such a sensible approach. What makes the Forbes-Lipinski measure even more attractive is that it forbids directing any of that funding pie to widely controversial forms of stem cell research, specifically those which involve the creation, harm, or destruction of human embryos.
But sensibility is in short supply in Washington. The Patients First Act, for all its benefits, has been given hardly a second thought by the power-wielding liberal congressional leadership. They instead favor Rep. DeGette’s “clone and kill” bill, similar versions of which were met with President Bush’s veto pen in 2006 and 2007.
The Patients First Act, in contrast, is a welcome antidote to the highly charged effort to continue federal funding of research that lacks both results and moral high ground. Patients should not have to needlessly await treatments that are already at researchers’ fingertips. Nor should taxpayers be forced to fund research that requires the destruction of innocent human lives.
If you agree, please tell your representative and senators to oppose the Stem Cell Research Advancement Act (H.R. 4808) and to support the Patients First Act (H.R. 877).
Further Learning
Learn more about: Life, Stem-Cell Research,