Haven't been around for a little and my reading is also being
neglected. Just got to this article and I thought most of you
would appreciate it.
Merry Christmas and best wishes to all of you, even if you
don't celebate.
<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width=640 border=0><TBODY><TR><TD vAlign=top width=498><TABLE cellSpacing=1 cellPadding=10 width="100%" align=center border=0><TBODY><TR><TD align=left>US News and World Report
December 27, 2004 Editorial: A Bright Hope to be Realized
By Mortimer B. Zuckerman
Something like a hundred million Americans suffering from disease and the incubus of age hold out hope that relief may come one day from regenerative medicine, meaning that science may be able to reprogram the human body so that it can heal itself and impede many of the symptoms of senescence. The promise lies in so-called stem cells. Having nursed her husband through a long twilight of Alzheimer's disease, one of the many age-related maladies stem cells could potentially cure, Nancy Reagan wants to see stem-cell research accelerated, but even her poignant advocacy has not persuaded those who object to such research on political, religious, and ethical grounds to yield.
Embryonic stem cells are taken from a blastocyst--a ball of cells about the size of a pinpoint that evolves within five or six days after an egg has been fertilized by a sperm. Stem cells can mature into any component of the body. Three years ago, President Bush announced that only pre-2001 embryonic stem-cell lines could be used in federally funded research. There were enough of these lines, more than 60, the president said, for adequate research purposes.
The plan, as many suspected at the time, has not worked. As it happens, there were far fewer lines--22 is the most common figure--and many were flawed. Since then, clean embryonic stem cells have been developed in the private sector, but they will never be a substitute for the broad access to stem-cell lines and the vast funding and research capacity of the National Institutes of Health. As one observer puts it, relying on private money is "like saying we should open the public schools from 10 [a.m.] to 10:15 [a.m.], but you're welcome to send your kids to private schools."
The best and the brightest. Some 70 percent of all Americans support stem-cell research. California voters just approved a $3 billion, 10-year research program. Other states are likely to follow. But this isn't the best solution. States simply cannot muster and focus the resources to repeat the great successes of American science and medicine. Think Manhattan Project. When we need to do something really big, we throw our best and brightest minds at the problem, then make sure they have every resource they need to get the job done. At the NIH, administrators award 40,000 grants a year, poring over the many applications to find the most promising and important research projects. Reliance on sporadic state-by-state initiatives in stem-cell research simply will not guarantee that the best proposals will be identified and funded.
A national stem-cell program could organize teams to tackle complex problems and avoid duplication; evaluate diseases most susceptible to attack; ensure that research findings are transparent; establish ethical guidelines for the use of human tissues in research; and, finally, decide at what point treatments could progress to human trials.
Limiting research to the private sector, on the other hand, means inhibiting the dissemination of results because private firms, naturally, want to profit from successful research and not share it with competitors. In short, the enormity of the research task and the breathtaking medical potential of stem cells make it more than abundantly clear that relying on either the private sector or individual states is not the recipe for success.
The real question, then, is how to amend the Bush policy in a way that might be acceptable to all. One possibility? In vitro fertilization technology, which is yielding growing numbers of frozen human embryos, many that will never be used and could be the source of new stem-cell lines. Fertility clinics destroy far more human embryos than stem-cell research ever will, so we need to ask: Does a human embryo on a dish in a fertility clinic, inevitably bound for destruction, have the same moral status as the lives of real children and adults suffering from disabling and fatal diseases? Like abortion, the answer in part converges on the question of when human life begins.
Some 58 senators now seek a change in the Bush policy, including 14 Republicans. "There is no greater way to promote life," says Utah's Orrin Hatch, "than to find a way to defeat death, and . . . stem-cell research may provide a way to do that." Hatch, a foe of abortion, concluded that an embryo in a laboratory dish can be used for stem-cell research because it has no capacity to develop into a person: "Only after an embryo is transferred into a woman's womb . . . is that natural capacity to become a person attained, and only then does the government gain an interest in protecting that entity." Provided the research is restricted to such cells, and federally supervised, is it not a sensible and moral way to accelerate the time when the fruits of this research can relieve human suffering?
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neglected. Just got to this article and I thought most of you
would appreciate it.
Merry Christmas and best wishes to all of you, even if you
don't celebate.
<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width=640 border=0><TBODY><TR><TD vAlign=top width=498><TABLE cellSpacing=1 cellPadding=10 width="100%" align=center border=0><TBODY><TR><TD align=left>US News and World Report
December 27, 2004 Editorial: A Bright Hope to be Realized
By Mortimer B. Zuckerman
Something like a hundred million Americans suffering from disease and the incubus of age hold out hope that relief may come one day from regenerative medicine, meaning that science may be able to reprogram the human body so that it can heal itself and impede many of the symptoms of senescence. The promise lies in so-called stem cells. Having nursed her husband through a long twilight of Alzheimer's disease, one of the many age-related maladies stem cells could potentially cure, Nancy Reagan wants to see stem-cell research accelerated, but even her poignant advocacy has not persuaded those who object to such research on political, religious, and ethical grounds to yield.
Embryonic stem cells are taken from a blastocyst--a ball of cells about the size of a pinpoint that evolves within five or six days after an egg has been fertilized by a sperm. Stem cells can mature into any component of the body. Three years ago, President Bush announced that only pre-2001 embryonic stem-cell lines could be used in federally funded research. There were enough of these lines, more than 60, the president said, for adequate research purposes.
The plan, as many suspected at the time, has not worked. As it happens, there were far fewer lines--22 is the most common figure--and many were flawed. Since then, clean embryonic stem cells have been developed in the private sector, but they will never be a substitute for the broad access to stem-cell lines and the vast funding and research capacity of the National Institutes of Health. As one observer puts it, relying on private money is "like saying we should open the public schools from 10 [a.m.] to 10:15 [a.m.], but you're welcome to send your kids to private schools."
The best and the brightest. Some 70 percent of all Americans support stem-cell research. California voters just approved a $3 billion, 10-year research program. Other states are likely to follow. But this isn't the best solution. States simply cannot muster and focus the resources to repeat the great successes of American science and medicine. Think Manhattan Project. When we need to do something really big, we throw our best and brightest minds at the problem, then make sure they have every resource they need to get the job done. At the NIH, administrators award 40,000 grants a year, poring over the many applications to find the most promising and important research projects. Reliance on sporadic state-by-state initiatives in stem-cell research simply will not guarantee that the best proposals will be identified and funded.
A national stem-cell program could organize teams to tackle complex problems and avoid duplication; evaluate diseases most susceptible to attack; ensure that research findings are transparent; establish ethical guidelines for the use of human tissues in research; and, finally, decide at what point treatments could progress to human trials.
Limiting research to the private sector, on the other hand, means inhibiting the dissemination of results because private firms, naturally, want to profit from successful research and not share it with competitors. In short, the enormity of the research task and the breathtaking medical potential of stem cells make it more than abundantly clear that relying on either the private sector or individual states is not the recipe for success.
The real question, then, is how to amend the Bush policy in a way that might be acceptable to all. One possibility? In vitro fertilization technology, which is yielding growing numbers of frozen human embryos, many that will never be used and could be the source of new stem-cell lines. Fertility clinics destroy far more human embryos than stem-cell research ever will, so we need to ask: Does a human embryo on a dish in a fertility clinic, inevitably bound for destruction, have the same moral status as the lives of real children and adults suffering from disabling and fatal diseases? Like abortion, the answer in part converges on the question of when human life begins.
Some 58 senators now seek a change in the Bush policy, including 14 Republicans. "There is no greater way to promote life," says Utah's Orrin Hatch, "than to find a way to defeat death, and . . . stem-cell research may provide a way to do that." Hatch, a foe of abortion, concluded that an embryo in a laboratory dish can be used for stem-cell research because it has no capacity to develop into a person: "Only after an embryo is transferred into a woman's womb . . . is that natural capacity to become a person attained, and only then does the government gain an interest in protecting that entity." Provided the research is restricted to such cells, and federally supervised, is it not a sensible and moral way to accelerate the time when the fruits of this research can relieve human suffering?
</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE><!---- Footer ------>
<HR color=#cccccc SIZE=2><CENTER>Coalition for the Advancement of Medical Research
2120 L Street, Suite 850
Washington, DC 20037
</CENTER></TD></TR><TR><TD align=middle width=400 bgColor=#c5e0fc colSpan=2 height=5></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>O</TD></TABLE><SCRIPT language=JavaScript>//document.frmTakeAction.cmdSubmit.focus();function auto_submit(){ if(validate_form()) document.frmTakeAction.submit();}function validate_form(){ var error_message; error_message=""; if(document.frmTakeAction.survey_lname.value=="" || document.frmTakeAction.survey_lname.value==null) error_message="You must supply a last name in the field provided before submitting."; if(document.frmTakeAction.survey_fname.value=="" || document.frmTakeAction.survey_fname.value==null) error_message="You must supply a first name in the field provided before submitting."; if(document.frmTakeAction.survey_address1.value=="" || document.frmTakeAction.survey_address1.value==null) error_message="You must supply a street address in the field provided before submitting."; if(document.frmTakeAction.survey_city.value=="" || document.frmTakeAction.survey_city.value==null) error_message="You must supply a city in the field provided before submitting."; if(document.frmTakeAction.survey_zipcode.value=="" || document.frmTakeAction.survey_zipcode.value==null) error_message="You must supply a zipcode in the field provided before submitting."; if(error_message!="") { alert(error_message); return false; } else { document.imgStep2.src=imgSteps[3].src; document.imgStep3.src=imgSteps[4].src; return true; }}function change_images(i){ if(i==1) { document.imgStep1.src=imgSteps[1].src; document.imgStep2.src=imgSteps[2].src; document.imgStep3.src=imgSteps[5].src; } if(i==2 && validate_form()) { document.imgStep1.src=imgSteps[1].src; document.imgStep2.src=imgSteps[3].src; document.imgStep3.src=imgSteps[4].src; }}</SCRIPT>
