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is becoming increasingly clear that the public is not being given
the straight scoop in the great embryonic stem-cell debate. This
unfortunate reality was illustrated by some very welcome, if unexpected,
reporting by the Washington Post last Friday. It turns out
that an important stem-cell study had language removed at the last
minute designed to lessen the political impact of research that
casts a potential shadow over the future of embryonic stem cell
medicine.
The Science
article in question reported that mice cloned from embryonic stem
cells were genetically defective. This is important news considering
the current effort in Congress to ban all human cloning. But the
report is also relevant to the debate over whether to federally
fund embryonic stem-cell research (ESCR). If human embryonic stem
cells are also genetically unstable, that could materially compromise
efforts to transform cells extracted from embryos into successful
human medical therapies.
According to
the Post, here's where politics came in: Up until a few days
before the report was published, the authors "called for research"
to see if the "genetic instability" of embryonic stem
cells might "limit their use in clinical application."
But at the last minute, that part of the article was deleted — not
because of the science but the politics. Indeed, the Post
story quotes the lead researcher explaining that the language was
removed because the researchers were afraid that any mention of
the potential problem would be misconstrued and exploited by opponents
of ESCR.
The Post's
expose of how politics skewed the study's reported conclusions follows
fast on the heels of a telling indictment of the media by the Statistical
Assessment Service (STATS), a nonpartisan group dedicated to
truth telling in political debates that involve science. STATS's
"Stemming the News Flow?" demonstrated that the Washington
Post's excellent reporting cited above was something of an anomaly.
Rather than journalists telling the truth, the whole truth, and
nothing but the truth about the great stem-cell debate, STATS discovered
that stories extolling the potential of embryonic stem cells have
been generally played to the sound of brass bands while research
breakthroughs involving adult or alternate sources have often been
little reported or completely ignored.
One of several
examples given by STATS was the general "silence" about
an important finding published in the prestigious scientific journal
Cell that "offered the strongest evidence to date that
the adult body harbors stem cells that are as flexible as embryonic
stem cells." This is a crucial issue. One of the main arguments
made by those who extol embryonic research over adult and alternatives
is the claim that only embryonic stem cells have the needed flexibility
to permit optimal use in cell medical therapies. Yet, when a prestigious
scientific journal reported that stem cells found in bone marrow
exhibited flexibility akin to that of their embryonic counterparts,
so quiet were the mainstream media that you could hear the sound
of crickets chirping. While the Cell story was featured in
Reuters and on the AP it made barely a ripple in the major media
organs or the national television news.
Another indication
of the politics at play in the great debate occurred last week.
Apparently Tommy Thompson, the Secretary of Health and Human Services,
ordered a National Institutes of Health (NIH) study comparing embryonic
versus adult stem-cell research to assist President Bush in his
decision-making about federal funding. Before it reached the president,
however, it was leaked to the New York Times — a strident
advocate of federal funding of ESCR and an implacable Bush administration
foe. This permitted supporters of embryonic funding to spin the
story so as to emphasize the potential wonders of embryonic research
over the alternatives.
Still, despite
these and other obfuscating efforts, it is increasingly clear that
the longer President Bush ponders the issue the stronger the case
against federally funding ESCR becomes. To make the right decision,
Bush need only heed the advice of the National Bioethics Advisory
Commission (NBAC), which initially recommended to President Clinton
that the feds fund ESCR. But the NBAC recommendation included an
important caveat that has generally been ignored by politicians
and in the media: Recognizing that human embryos are destroyed when
stem cells are extracted NBAC stated that ESCR is "justifiable
only if no less morally problematic alternatives are available for
advancing the research …"
It now appears
quite clear that morally unproblematic alternatives do exist
and are indeed readily available to advance the research. Since
the NBAC issued its recommendation, tremendous and exciting breakthroughs
in adult and other non-embryonic cell research have been reported
almost on a daily basis, dramatically altering the scientific field.
The following is only a very partial list of these recent exciting
scientific advances:
- Stem cells
have been extracted from cadaver brains capable of being transformed
into different kinds of brain and neuron cells offering tremendous
hope for future treatment of diseases such as Parkinson's and
Alzheimer's;
- Researchers
in Italy discovered a "molecular switch" that tells
immature brain cells to become fully developed neurons. The scientists
hope to be able create treatments in which doctors would extract
a small number of brain stem cells from patients, let them multiply
in the laboratory, and then transplant them into the brain where
they would form neurons to cure brain or nerve diseases or injuries.
- Adult mouse
pancreatic stem cells were injected into diabetic mice and achieved
full insulin production allowing the animals to live.
- Umbilical
cord blood stem cells have fully restored the immune systems of
several children that had been destroyed by cancer.
- White blood
cells implanted into a young woman's severed spinal cord helped
restore bladder control and some leg movements, offering great
hope for the effective treatment of paraplegia and quadriplegia.
- Researchers
in Singapore transformed human bone marrow cells into heart muscle.
- The scientists
who cloned Dolly the sheep made heart muscle out of cow skin.
- Human fat
may be a fecund source of stem cells that are capable of becoming
muscle, bone, or cartilage.
At the same
time, embryonic/fetal therapies have had decidedly mixed results.
True, some animal studies have demonstrated promise. In one report,
old rats performed better on a memory test after scientists injected
brain cells from aborted fetuses into the senile rodents' brains.
Embryonic mouse stem cells injected into diabetic mice produced
low levels of insulin — but unlike the adult stem cell experiment
mentioned above, the mice in the embryonic stem cell experiment
all died. (The STATS report noted that this embryonic stem cell
success was played big in the media but that the more promising
adult stem cell triumph went virtually unreported.) The NIH study
leaked to the New York Times reportedly extolled embryonic
cells as having an unlimited ability to proliferate. However, this
trait might also be the embryonic cells' Achilles heel: there is
a danger that such proliferation could cause tumors. Press descriptions
of the leaked NIH study also assert that in unpublished reports,
embryonic cells stimulated the production of dopamine in mice: the
degeneration of dopamine-making neurons is the cause of Parkinson's
disease.
There has also
been much bad news on the embryonic/fetal front. An article in the
May 1996 Neurology, described a tragic experiment in which
fetal cells were injected into a Parkinson's disease patient's brain.
The patient later died because of the growth cartilage and bone
tissue and hair in the man's brain that may have been caused
by the injection of early gestational cells.
More recently,
patients who were experimentally treated with fetal cells for their
Parkinson's suffered permanent nightmarish side effects, including
uncontrollable movements. "They chew constantly, their fingers
go up and down, their wrists flex and distend," one disappointed
experimenter told the New York Times.
Because of
the political filtering of the information being reported to the
general public, if you asked the average man and woman on the street
about stem cells they probably would say, "Embryo cells miraculous;
adult/alternatives, not worth very much." But it is quite clear
that this is not the case. Indeed, it is becoming increasingly likely
that embryonic stem cells have been oversold to a public eager for
cures to some of our most devastating diseases, at the expense of
full and fair reporting about the many uncontroversial alternatives.
There is no
question that President Bush should liberally fund stem-cell research.
But he should follow the advice of NBAC and restrict federal financial
support to adult and alternative therapies since these present reasonable
and viable alternatives to the use of embryonic stem cells which
tens of millions of Americans find morally objectionable both because
they destroy living human embryos and treat human life as a crop
ripe for the harvest.
Yes, such a
course would ignite a media and political firestorm. But then, most
profiles in courage do.
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