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The latest Anti-Cures news: Nothing new |
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January 26, 2007
Last weekend, January 13th to be exact, C-Span’s Washington Journal served up a classic stem cell debate. In one corner was the Anti-Cures mouthpiece, David Prentice. Across the table was Dr. Steven Teitelbaum of the Washington University School of Medicine. Since Teitelbaum was among the trio that debunked Prentice’s “list of 65 (sometimes 72) diseases successfully treated by adult stem cells” this promised to be an interesting show.
The broadcast was prompted by the reintroduction of the Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act, already passed by the House and on its way to the Senate. Teitelbaum explained that S-5, as the bill is called in the Senate, would expand the lines available for federal research funds through the National Institutes of Health, while creating ethical guidelines and safeguards currently absent in federal law.
Prentice opined that S-5 would “create incentive to destroy more embryos for research.” What struck me about that claim is how palatable that might sound to the uninformed. But of course, that’s the primary goal of the Anti-Cures movement – keeping the public uninformed, or better still, misinformed.
Reality check: S-5 would merely qualify additional stem cell lines for research funding. The “life and death decision” - as President Bush called it back in 2001 – would have already been made. S-5 would provide donors the option to offer their excess embryos for research instead of having them incinerated. But it would destroy no more embryos. Apparently, Prentice simply prefers their destruction without any valuable purpose over their destruction for life-saving research.
Prentice also claimed that S-5 “won’t expand…potential disease treatment a great deal.” (My, what clairvoyance!) Dr. Teitelbaum nailed him. Well, it was actually more like Prentice jumped overboard and Teitelbaum threw him an anchor: “Research opens twenty doors hoping to find gold behind one,” Teitelbaum explained, adding, “But we never know until we do the science.”
Prentice also attempted to downplay the empirical importance of removing Bush’s artificial barrier of August 9, 2001. He wandered through statistics from the Rand Corporation, saying that of the 400,000 cryogenically frozen embryos in IVF clinics, only about 7,000 would be available for research. And he professed that these 7,000 would yield “only about 275 new lines.” Note the use of the word ‘only.’
Reality check: The 7,000 “available” embryos are a) those leftovers which donors volunteered without any program in place to even ask for them, and b) those which have been abandoned altogether.
Dr. Teitelbaum countered with a study performed at Washington University which detailed that when offered the option to donate leftover embryos, donor rates rose to a whopping 93%. Thus, the estimate of 7,000 is extremely low.
More notable, however, was Prentice’s nonchalant shrug toward 275 newly available lines from that 7,000 embryo figure. Did he forget that currently only 22 lines are available for federal research funds? By his obviously conservative calculations, available embryonic stem cell lines would increase more than 12-fold. And by the way, that still does not include the 300 embryonic stem cell lines that exist worldwide today - right now – even without the creation of a single new line from those 7,000 embryos.
So, by Prentice’s math, if S-5 were passed, we’d have funding available on the 22 currently qualifying lines, and we would add another 300 lines spread throughout the world now, and we’d get the added bonus of another 275 lines (likely more). That would increase the available stem cell universe by 2,700%.
Only 2,700%? Hardly worth noticing, huh?
And the conservative right pumped out even more sludge this week. In another sleight of hand move on Tuesday, Senator Norm Coleman (R-MN) introduced a bill to extend the deadline by which research on embryonic stem cell lines could be federally funded to Jan. 24, 2007. While this is a monumental improvement over the current Bush policy, his political gamesmanship is still alive and well. You see, Coleman also introduced legislation to allocate $5 billion, $500 million annually for 10 years - virtually the entire NIH stem cell budget – dedicated to altered nuclear transfer (“ANT”) and to “human embryonic stem cell research using cells from embryos that have ‘died naturally.’"
The problems with this set of proposals span both politics and science. Politically, this is the latest version of the shell game we’ve witnessed over the last several years - $500 million for stem cell research but only $24 million for the kind with the most promise. Here’s a chart which explains…
This is where I turn it over to Dr. Teitelbaum to perform the scientific reality check…
On the use of “dead” embryos, Dr. Teitelbaum explains: “There is no way to determine precisely when an embryo has ‘died.’ [Excuse me for interrupting the good doctor, but give this some thought: When does a human being die? When the heart stops beating? When the lungs stop breathing? When the brain ceases to function? Blastocysts have none of these organs. Back to Dr. Teitelbaum…] Also, if stem cells were to be extracted from a ‘dead’ embryo, then the stem cells would be less than optimally functional, if at all viable or ‘alive.’
And on altered nuclear transfer: “This procedure, which creates a ‘crippled’ embryo, does not resolve either side of the presumptive ethical dilemma. If one believes that the unimplanted embryo is equivalent to a human, then destroying those which are disabled is unacceptable. Alternatively, if one believes we should be using excess embryos which would be otherwise destroyed to hopefully cure patients with presently incurable diseases, altered nuclear transfer represents an additional technical hurdle which will surely retard progress.”
What should be most heartening to us in the Pro-Cures movement is that when our opposition spreads misinformation or plays shell games we can count on experts like Steven Teitelbaum to counter with truth. What remains sad, however, is that Teitelbaum would much rather spend more time in the laboratory curing disease instead of fighting for the ability to do so.
Editor’s note: You can watch the entire Washington Journal segment. Click here, then find the listing for January 13. The archived segment will remain active until February 12.
- by Jeff Eisen —— To be notified by email of new editorials, CLICK HERE —— |
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