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the Stem Cell Page time and ignorance are the enemies |
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On Self-cancellation Stem Cell Voting |
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October 16, 2006
Lately, I’ve received a few emails questioning the wisdom of our editorials denouncing Missouri Senator Jim Talent and our unabashed support of pro-embryonic stem cell candidate Claire McCaskill. It seems some folks believe that the success of Missouri’s Amendment 2 at the polls requires a concerted effort to remain non-partisan, and their view on writing about specific candidates is that ‘silence is golden.’ They don’t want to offend Republicans willing to vote YES on the Amendment.
I concur that politics can certainly make for strange bedfellows but in the end, political myopia serves only to win the battle and risks losing the war.
Consider that what spawned Amendment 2 in Missouri – the proposed excessively restrictive stem cell legislation in Jefferson City – is also being offered up in Washington D.C. The ‘anti-cloning’ legislation forged by Senator Sam Brownback is eerily similar to what was proposed by State Senator Matt Bartle and State Rep Jim Lembke here in Missouri. SCNT would be banned and criminalized at the federal level if Brownback has his way, just as it would in Missouri if Bartle and Lembke have theirs.
Though Amendment 2 would halt Bartle and Lembke in Missouri, it can do nothing about Brownback. And while Missouri’s stem cell initiative is crafted to ensure and protect Missouri ‘stem cell rights’ up to the federal level, it wields no power over it. To the contrary, it yields to it. So Amendment 2, while a good and necessary step in Missouri, is not the end of the game. It is merely a qualification necessary to participate in the game – the fight against disease using embryonic stem cells including those derived by SCNT.
The Missouri Coalition for Lifesaving Cures will spend some $15 to 20 million toward the passage of Amendment 2 (for which I predict victory at the polls). But what next? If Jim Talent remains in the senate, we don’t know if he’ll ultimately support or reject Brownback’s bill. So far he’s done both – literally. At first a co-sponsor of the bill, he changed his mind when he discovered altered nuclear transfer (ANT) and thought Brownback’s bill might deny this course of research.
Talent also insists that ANT is not human cloning. Well, if he means human reproductive cloning he’s right, but it is therapeutic cloning. In fact, it’s a subset of SCNT; same enucleated unfertilized egg, same somatic cell. It’s just genetically pre-treated so as to cripple the formation of a placenta, disabling implantation in a uterus. While it might produce a disabled embryo, it’s also curable - though it’s unclear if Talent is aware.
As I’ve written previously, trying to grasp Talent’s logic and predict his ultimate vote on Brownback’s bill is like having a bucket of tennis balls, throwing them and trying to hit a small moving target from across a gymnasium after you’ve been spun around. At night. With no lights. Blindfolded. Good luck.
Still, we do know that he voted against HR810, the Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act. This would have allowed NIH funding for research on embryonic stem cell lines derived after the president’s arbitrary restriction date of August 9, 2001. Talent ducked the debate altogether and despite the strong bi-partisan support for HR810, which passed in the senate 63-37, he once again stood by his primary fundraiser, George W. Bush, and dutifully voted ‘No.’
So what if Bush calls Talent and says, “Listen, Jimmy, I need your vote on Brownback’s bill. I can count on you, right?” Is there any reason to believe Talent, who has a 94% ‘with the White House’ voting record, wouldn’t oblige?
One should not be so naïve as to believe that Bush wouldn’t ‘stack’ everything Brownback’s way. When it comes to embryonic stem cell research or therapeutic cloning, this administration is the ‘Monarchy of Stack.’ Just look at Bush’s original appointees to his Council on Bioethics. The original chairman, Dr. Leon Kass, is an outspoken critic of embryonic stem cell research and opposes therapeutic cloning. But that’s Kass’s more moderate side. Kass’s extreme side is revealed by his opposition to in vitro fertilization.
Let’s put that in perspective: Remember Bush’s HR810 veto photo-op, the one in which he surrounded himself with ‘snowflake’ babies? If Kass had his way, those snowflake children wouldn’t exist - nor would the other million or so kids that have come by courtesy of IVF.
Others on the President’s Council that supported embryonic stem cell research were simply dismissed. Among them was Elizabeth Blackburn, a biologist at the University of California at San Francisco. Ms. Blackburn, by the way, has won two scientific awards for her research – in just the last three weeks. Only days ago, she won the Gruber Genetics Prize and last month she won the Lasker Award. (Historically, the latter has proven to be a first step toward a Nobel Prize.)
When Blackburn was, without any warning, issued her pink slip from the council, White House spokesperson Erin Healy explained, “We decided to appoint other individuals at this point with different experience and expertise.” (Kass, however, remains on the council.)
English translation: “She didn’t share the President’s opinion so she’s gone.”
If we want to jump start the work toward defeating disease and healing serious injuries, we need a U.S. House and Senate that will ‘stack back’ against a veto so that embryonic and SCNT stem cell research can flourish. Amendment 2, left to stand alone, does not and cannot accomplish this.
It appears we’re making progress. Candidates like Harold Ford, Jr. in Tennessee, Jon Tester in Montana, Claire McCaskill in Missouri and others are making sure that voters understand their support for NIH funding to work on new stem cell lines. They are pointing to their support for the reintroduction of HR810 to distinguish between the ‘stay the course’ stem cell positions of their opponents, and their own.
I understand the campaign strategy to welcome Republican support for Amendment Two. But we need to ask ourselves, “Then what?”
It’s clear that as a senator, Jim Talent will do what it takes at the federal level to render Amendment Two impotent. He voted against HR810 and, more to the point, has publicly denounced Amendment 2. In the larger sense, a vote for both Talent and the stem cell initiative ultimately translates to stem cell votes of self- cancellation. As the old adage admonishes: You can’t have it both ways.
Are you thinking of voting for both Jim Talent and Amendment Two?
Think again.
- Jeff Eisen
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Claire McCaskill supports - Early Stem Cell Research - SCNT - HR810 - Missouri Amendment Two |
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Talent opposes them all. |
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