http://www.lp.org/lpnews/article_861.shtml
J. Daniel Cloud
LP News Editor Jul 1, 2005
Stop federal funding for stem cell research
Chances are you’ve heard of stem cells. They’re widely lauded as the possible building blocks for a cure for all that ails you.
And the evidence supports the claims ? or at least some of them. Thousands of people have benefited from the use of stem cell treatment for a host of different diseases.
But it’s the diseases that stem cell research has not yet found treatments for that are most interesting to many people.
Former President Ronald Reagan’s son, Ron, advocates stem cell research to find a cure for Alzheimer’s disease; before his death, actor Christopher Reeve called for stem cell research to find cures for spinal cord injuries and related problems; others say stem cell research could result in cures for heart disease, Parkinson’s disease, muscular dystrophy and diabetes.
Type “stem cell research” into Google, and “about 15 million” results pop up.
Scrolling through the results, the alert searcher will note a few major subcategories. There are Web sites sponsored by religious groups opposing stem cell research using embryos.
There are sites expounding on the benefits of such research. There are published studies regarding stem cell research done by privately funded scientists. And there are a host of sites that complain about President George W. Bush’s ban on embryonic stem cell research.
Banned research
Picking a site almost at random ? bioethics.org.nz, a publication from New Zealand ? I scrolled down the page to see what they said about American stem cell research.
There it was: “Privately funded stem cell research is permissible, but the federal ban has stifled stem cell research in the U.S.”
Correction: There is no ban on research on either embryonic stem cells or adult stem cells. No matter how disgustedly people talk about such a ban, it still doesn’t exist. What Bush did, in 2001, was prohibit the use of federal funds for embryonic stem cell research.
Former President Bill Clinton had earlier said such research was allowable as long as the cells weren’t actually harvested at federally funded laboratories. So they could be harvested elsewhere and simply delivered to the lab in question.
And everybody had a good chuckle about circumventing that particular prohibition.
Bush said federal funds could only be used for research on stem cells from embryos that were destroyed before his Aug. 9, 2001 pronouncement.
As Michael Tanner of the Cato Institute wrote in a 2004 column for Investor’s Business Daily, “This is not a debate about whether stem cell research should be legal. It is, and no one in Congress or the Bush administration has proposed banning it.”
Embryonic stem cells
Those who do want to ban certain types of stem cell research oppose research on stem cells derived from embryos.
Stem cells are, to put it quite simply, a type of cell that can divide and become many different kinds of cells. Rather than having a dedicated purpose ? like skin, blood or brain cells ? stem cells can divide off and become almost any kind of cells that are needed in the body at the moment.
There are two major kinds of stem cell research: adults and embryotic. Adult stem cells usually come from the bone marrow of the patient or a donor, and embryonic stem cells are harvested from human embryos that are usually less than a week old.
The debate regarding embryonic stem cells comes from people who oppose abortion ? who argue that growing a fetus and killing it just so scientists can harvest the stem cells is murder, just like abortion is. That’s why Bush decided to disallow using federal tax money to fund research on such stem cells: His conservative voter base demanded it.
His decision is even now being called into question: A bill that has already passed through the U.S. House and is in consideration by the Senate would ease the restrictions Bush put on embryonic stem cell research using federal funds in 2001.
The bill, the Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act, would allow federal money to be used for embryonic stem cell research under restricted circumstances: The cells must have been “derived from human embryos that have been donated from in vitro fertilization clinics, were created for the purposes of fertility treatment, and were in excess of the clinical need of the individuals seeking such treatment.”
Further, the bill requires that the people who had the embryos created for fertility treatment must donate the embryos with written consent, and without receiving compensation for the embryos.
In 2003, Slate.com editor Michael Kinsley noted that he found it strange and indefensible that anti-abortionists can celebrate the creation of embryos at in vitro fertilization clinics, which throw away thousands of embryos each year, while simultaneously opposing the creation of an embryo for research.
Apparently anti-abortion activists ? and the members of Congress who support funding for research using only embryos that are produced in fertility clinics ? haven’t considered the issue in that light.
Adult vs. embryonic
Proponents of embryonic stem cell research claim there is much more potential in embryonic stem cells than in adult stem cells; opponents say this is science fiction, unproven theory. They claim the use of embryonic stem cells is dangerous and a bad gamble.
“No currently approved treatments have been obtained using embryonic stem cells,” said Dr. Kelly Hollowell, a molecular and cellular pharmacologist, during a May 10, 2005, event at the Heritage Foundation. “After 20 years of research, embryonic stem cells haven’t been used to treat people because the cells are unproven and unsafe. [In animal tests] they tend to tumors, cause transplant rejection, and form the wrong kind of cells.”
Other scientists concur, saying that embryonic stem cell research has produced malignant carcinomas and other serious problems in test animals.
But the research continues, and that’s the point of research: To see if there’s a way to overcome the difficulties and develop a product that is valuable both in terms of lives saved and in monetary benefit. Too many people expect immediate results, and too many stem cell research advocates pretend a cure for Alzheimer’s is right around the corner.
William Haseltine, CEO of Human Genome Sciences Inc., has said that the routine use of embryonic stem cells for medical treatment is 20 or 30 years away ? that “the timeline to commercialization is so long that I simply would not invest” in it.
But other people are investing in it, and they’re doing so without taxpayer money.
Constitutionality
As noted, stem cell research ? whether adult or embryonic ? is not against the law. It’s not even discouraged.
President Bush didn’t bar scientists from performing such research; he simply said embryonic stem cell research wasn’t to be done with federal funds.
In doing so, he got it partially right, but for the wrong reasons. He wanted to ensure his voters that their tax money wouldn’t be used to pay for what they consider to be abortion. They oppose the harvesting of embryonic stem cells as immoral, and don’t want their money spent on it.
And there’s nothing wrong with that.
But there are many more reasons not to pay for any form of stem cell research with federal taxpayer money.
In a 2001 column, radio talk show host Larry Elder pointed out that while Bush strove to keep from “crossing a fundamental moral line” by using tax money to destroy human embryos, the president apparently had no problem crossing “a fundamental constitutional line,” since the federal government doesn’t have a constitutional right to pay for such research.
Why is the president willing to overstep his bounds?
“Bush’s willingness to spend ? taxpayers’ money for stem cell research reflects a statist, collectivist view of government” ? the assumption that the federal government can use tax money for whatever it chooses.
He’s right, of course, but Bush’s love of Big Government shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone, nor should his tendency to make the most of any opportunity to court voters.
Funding
Cato’s Michael Tanner points out that the stem cell research issue “is really a fight about money, about whether the federal government should fund the research. And as such, it is a perfect example of how science becomes politicized when government money is involved.”
As noted earlier, many people are under the impression that embryonic stem cell research is banned in the United States, simply because the government doesn’t currently pay for such research. They seem to think that no research gets done unless the government sponsors it.
They’re wrong.
There are several privately funded stem cell research centers across the country, mostly at universities.
“The largest, at Harvard University, employs more than 100 researchers and recently unveiled 17 new stem cell lines,” Tanner said in his 2004 column for Investor’s Business Daily. “The vast majority of medical and scientific breakthroughs in this country’s history have been accomplished by the private sector. There’s no reason for stem cell research to be any different.”
While some business owners think practical medical benefits from embryonic stem cell research are too far in the future to bother investing in currently, many others disagree and are funding the research.
And that research will continue, with or without government funding. “There are some practical reasons for the government to keep its red-tape encrusted mitts off embryonic stem cell research,” Drs. Michael A. Glueck and Robert J. Cihak wrote in a 2001 article in Health Care News, published by the Heartland Institute.
“Government-funded research is subject to the winds of political change and establishment thinking; cutting-edge ideas have a more difficult time getting money than do older and safer ideas,” they said. “At the same time, trillions of taxpayers’ dollars have simply disappeared, without a trace, down bureaucratic and research rat holes.”
On Election Day, 2004, California voters approved a $3 billion bond issue for stem cell research ? “the largest bond issue ever authorized by a voter initiative,” according to Patrick Basham of the Cato Institute.
And many other states worry that they will experience “brain drain” as scientists move to California to work in research labs there, if tax-funded stem cell research doesn’t begin in their own states. What about the privately funded research being done at labs in Wisconsin and Illinois, at Harvard and Stanford, and many other places? Obviously, not all of the brains are being drained into California’s tax-funded research.
Conclusion
Bush was on the right track when he decided not to allow federal tax money to fund embryonic stem cell research. He told his favored group of Americans, in essence, that they didn’t have to fund a type of research that they find repugnant.
But what about those Americans who find the congressional and presidential departure from their constitutional delegated powers to be equally repugnant?
Rather than expanding the research that can be done using federal funds, Congress should eliminate federal funding for such research altogether. Those who clamor for expanded stem cell research would be welcome to fund it privately.
You think that won’t happen?
Tell your concerns to the thriving, active research laboratories that have sprung up in recent years to address the perceived need.
No matter which camp you fit into ? the “embryonic stem cell research is abortion, and therefore, murder” side or the “stem cell research will revolutionize medicine, providing cures for maladies up to and including death” faction ? or even if you don’t particularly care about stem cell research, under a free-market system you have the right to support any project you believe will forward your personal goals.
Currently, however, we’re all paying federal taxes to support stem cell research, whether we like it or not.
And it’s time to put an end to it.
- Published in the July 2005 issue of LP News -