11 replies to this topic

[Lazarus Long]

I am opening this thread to separate the politics, law, business, and other social related news articles away from the scientific research news. I will begin with this one from the NY Times. Please navigators and advisers feel free to separate off the social aspects from the scientific ones in the over large threads on Stem Cells and put those posts here.

BTW, I don't know if everybody noticed the decision the other day but in what came off as a dead of night vote the UN passed the non-binding resolution to ban all cloning research including therapeutic cloning. I will try and get an article on that later if no one beats me to it.

http://www.nytimes.c...aSj/Q2 Lg5UqIKA




Jamie Rector for The New York Times
Embryonic stem cells at the Reeve-Irvine Research Center are prepared for researchers. The cells can form any other kind of cell in the body.
Moving Stem Cells Front and Center
By ANDREW POLLACK
Published: February 23, 2005

IRVINE, Calif. - Hans S. Keirstead might be the Pied Piper of stem cells - and not just because he makes rats walk. He also helped lure Californians to the polls last fall to approve spending $3 billion of the state's money on embryonic stem cell research over the next decade. But he has critics who worry that he may be leading their new field too far, too soon into uncharted territory. 

Dr. Keirstead, an assistant professor at the University of California campus here, has been making paralyzed rats walk again, using a treatment based on human embryonic stem cells. Next year he and his corporate partner, Geron, plan to try treating people who have recent spinal cord injuries, in what would almost certainly be the first human trial of any therapy derived from such cells.

"You've got a patient community out there that is in desperate need," Dr. Keirstead said in an interview. "If the treatment is safe, let's get it out there and try it."

And to those who argue that it is too soon to test his technique on humans, he has an answer. "There will always be people who say slow down, slow down," he said. "I guarantee you none of them have relatives in wheelchairs."

With his gung-ho attitude, the good looks of a surfer and a compelling story to tell, Dr. Keirstead, 37, emerged as one of the leading scientific voices behind the movement that persuaded California voters last November to approve a measure to sidestep federal funding restrictions on stem cell research. His supporters included people with spinal cord injuries, most notably Christopher Reeve, the wheelchair-bound actor who taped a campaign ad citing Dr. Keirstead's research just before he died in October.

But for all of Dr. Keirstead's fans and backers, a number of researchers in California and elsewhere say the scientific validity of his work has not been proved and the technique might not be ready for testing in people. A failure in the first high-profile human test could dash some of the hope spawned by the passage of the California ballot measure.

"A lot of things make rats better," said Jerry Silver, a neuroscientist at Case Western Reserve University, who argued that Dr. Keirstead should test his treatment in dogs or monkeys first. "You can't announce you are going into humans because you've gotten good results in rats."

Mark H. Tuszynski, a professor and director of the center for neural repair at the University of California, San Diego, echoed that view. "I think the jury is still out," he said, "on whether this is a useful approach." Dr. Tuszynski, co-founder of a company trying to use gene therapy to treat neurological diseases, said he would prefer to see "more compelling evidence" from Dr. Keirstead's work before human testing.

The new California stem cell research board that was set up after passage of last fall's ballot measure, Proposition 71, is still organizing itself and figuring out how to begin awarding public grants to scientists. But Dr. Keirstead has been able to speed forward, fueled by money from Geron, a California biotechnology company, which is eager to demonstrate to investors that practical use of stem cells is not a distant dream.

Because embryonic stem cells can form any other kind of cell in the body, scientists envision using them to replace cells and tissues that have been damaged by disease or injury.

The Bush administration has restricted federally funded research to certain colonies of stem cells, pointing out that creating additional such cells involves the destruction of human embryos.

But proponents of the research argue that the early embryos have no feeling or consciousness and that most of them used in research are left over from fertility clinics and are destined to be discarded anyway.

California's ballot measure was propelled by people with diseases and their families and backed by big campaign contributions by some wealthy businessmen.

Robert N. Klein, a Palo Alto real estate developer who has a son with diabetes, helped draft the ballot initiative and put his money behind the vote effort. After passage he was named chairman of the board overseeing distribution of the $3 billion.

Mr. Klein said it was "extremely welcome" that, under Dr. Keirstead, embryonic stem cell therapy was moving toward clinical trials. He said the public needed to know in advance, however, that as with many new therapies, the first trial is not expected to succeed. "It may take several years, or many years, to refine," he said.

Dr. Keirstead's work was a rallying point during the Proposition 71 campaign; he gave 14 speeches to various civic, political and business groups to whom he showed a video of his rat research.

In it, an untreated rat struggled to pull itself along the ground using its forelimbs as its paralyzed hind legs, tail and belly scraped along the ground. A rat treated with Dr. Keirstead's cells was then shown moving its hind legs, though not perfectly, and keeping its tail in the air.

"Stem cells have already cured paralysis in animals," Mr. Reeve, the actor, said in the commercial he filmed, which was broadcast after his death. He urged voters to "stand up for those who can't."

But some spinal cord researchers criticized Dr. Keirstead for having shown his video for three years but not publishing his work with rats in a peer-reviewed journal that would allow experts to truly evaluate it.

Dr. Keirstead said he was in the process of publishing his results with rats, but that he had wanted to do other tests before publishing. He expects to release further results well before starting clinical trials next year. He said, though, that showing the video before publication, even at the risk of annoying fellow scientists, was important to give patients hope.

"I've had people call me up and say, 'I'm about to commit suicide, do you have anything to stop me?' " he said. "People don't realize how close we are."

Indeed, during a two-hour interview in Dr. Keirstead's cramped office here, his phone rang several times with calls from injured people, some volunteering to be guinea pigs in any study he conducts.

John W. McDonald, director of the international spinal cord injury and paralysis center at the Kennedy Krieger Institute in Baltimore, said "to date, not enough has been shown" by Dr. Keirstead and Geron to allow federal regulators to authorize a clinical trial. Even so, he said Dr. Keirstead was being unfairly criticized.

"Scientists aren't too kind to other scientists' receiving too much attention," said Dr. McDonald, who himself received notice for therapy that restored some minor movement and sensation in Mr. Reeve. "I think that's what you're seeing."

Dr. Keirstead's optimism has won him praise from people with spinal cord injuries and their families.

"He cares about patients intensely; it's not just a job for him," said Don C. Reed, a retired schoolteacher and Proposition 71 advocate from Fremont, Calif., whose son, Roman, was paralyzed in a college football accident 10 years ago.

"I held in my hand a rat that had walked again after being paralyzed," Mr. Reed said, "and this with my son sitting there in his wheelchair."

For all their promise, stem cells could pose dangers if not carefully controlled. Scientists do not envision implanting raw stem cells into patients because the cells might turn into undesirable types of tissues. The idea, instead, is to turn embryonic stem cells into the desired type of cell, such as heart cells or liver cells, in the laboratory and then transplant these more specialized cells.

Dr. Keirstead and other scientists in his laboratory figured out how to turn embryonic stem cells into a nearly pure population of brain cells called oligodendrocytes, which form the insulation around neurons. Without this insulation, the neurons cannot easily carry the signals that tell muscles to move or relay sensations to the brain.

They described the work in a paper published by the journal Glia in November. "This is the first report of getting oligodendrocytes in the numbers they did and the purity they did," said Dr. Mahendra Rao, a stem cell researcher at the National Institute on Aging who has also tried to make oligodendrocytes.

But it remains unclear how much of a difference this will make to people with spinal cord injuries. People lose movement and sensation mainly because the nerves themselves - the wires - are cut or damaged. Simply restoring the insulation will not help repair a broken wire.

But Dr. Keirstead said that some neurons remain intact after an injury but lose their insulation, called myelin. So, in theory, restoring the myelin to those neurons could help restore at least some movement or sensation. Such a treatment, he said, would have to be given within days of the injury; otherwise, the formation of scar tissue would probably render the treatment ineffective.

Dr. Keirstead, who was raised in Canada, received his doctorate from the University of British Columbia and won an award for the country's best zoology-related thesis in 1995. He helped start a company in Vancouver, Neuro Therapeutics, to develop spinal cord injury treatments based on that work, which did not involve stem cells. But the company ran out of money. Dr. Keirstead came to Irvine in 2000 to join the Reeve-Irvine Research Center on spinal cord injuries. It was set up by Mr. Reeve and Joan Irvine Smith, a philanthropist and member of the family for whom Irvine is named.

He started his second company, Ability Biomedical, with another University of California, Irvine, faculty member to treat multiple sclerosis. More successful than his first venture, it was sold last summer to Medarex, a publicly traded biotechnology company, for $4.7 million up front and possibly $3.6 million later.

To work with embryonic stem cells, Dr. Keirstead turned to Geron, the Menlo Park, Calif., company that had financed the research leading to the original isolation of human embryonic stem cells at the University of Wisconsin in 1998 and that controls some of the fundamental patent rights in the field.

Thomas B. Okarma, Geron's president, said next year's trial of Dr. Keirstead's approach would mainly check for safety. The oligodendrocytes would be inserted into the spinal columns of patients at the same time they have an operation that is common after spinal cord injury and is aimed at preventing further damage.

Dr. Okarma denied that the trial was premature or risky, but noted that Geron would have to apply to the Food and Drug Administration next year and receive approval before beginning the trial. Asked about the criticism from others, he responded: "There's a lot of jealousy. What can I tell you? This is the hottest thing in medicine."

Geron is providing about $500,000 a year to Dr. Keirstead's lab. As long as that continues, Dr. Keirstead said that he did not need any grants from the Proposition 71 ballot measure he helped pass and that he might not even have the capacity to use the money. "There's only so much I can do," he said.

But then he stopped and thought again, before saying that state money would be welcome. "Research goes as fast as the dollars," he said.

[Matt]

U.N. Calls for Clone Ban

Source

Washington D.C. -- The United Nations has called on countries to ban all forms of human cloning "incompatable with human dignity." The American religious right claims victory, but others say the declaration is the result of political maneuvering influenced by pressure from the United States.

The politicization of science policy in the United States has become a contentious issue in the past several years, with groups like the Union of Concerned Scientists criticizing the Bush administration for favoring political interests over scientific results. Now, that trend seems to be making international inroads.

Nations including Singapore, South Korea, Belgium and the United Kingdom blasted the declaration by the divided U.N. committee, calling it political posturing.

American scientists did their own blasting here on Sunday. Organizers of the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science devoted nine hours of seminars plus a press conference to what they say is increasing influence of political interests on science policy. Politics in America, they say, have inappropriately influenced not only stem cell research and cloning science, but also reports on climate change, endangered species policies, fisheries energy and many others.

"In the scientific community in other countries we are ridiculed," said Kurt Gottfried, chairman of the Union of Concerned Scientists, in an interview. "It has certainly lowered our prestige across the world."

U.S. delegates to the United Nations supported a treaty to ban all cloning starting in 2002. After nearly two years of negotiations, the U.N. shelved attempts to agree on a treaty and instead delegates opposed to cloning pushed for a non-binding declaration as a compromise.

Cloning bills in the United States have languished in Congress for years for the same reasons the United Nations could not agree on a ban: Legislators have been unwilling to separate therapeutic cloning (also known as somatic cell nuclear transfer) from reproductive human cloning, which would produce a baby who is a genetic copy of an adult.

Researchers want to use cloned human embryos to develop disease-specific stem cell lines that could teach them how to interfere with the progress of diseases, or to create cell therapies.

Social conservatives and the anti-abortion lobby have championed a ban on therapeutic cloning because early embryos are destroyed in the process. In September, President Bush told the United nations that a complete cloning ban was one of his top priorities. And in late October, the U.N. postponed a cloning vote until after the United States' Nov. 2 elections.

"Some scientists are working for a way around the objections, but I don t think it's very likely they'll find one," said Donald Kennedy, editor-in-chief of the journal Science. "I think it would be much more appropriate for the federal government to relax the declaration of August 9, 2001," when president Bush said no federal money going forward would go toward stem cell research that destroyed embryos.

The United States is becoming notorious in the eyes of other countries, Gottfried said, as a nation that has allowed ideology to become a premise for science. That perception is sure to have harmful repercussions on the American science community, he said. Scientists are already leaving the country and graduate students are less uninterested in studying in the United States, he said.

When government agencies allow special interests to overshadow science in policy making, the credibility and influence of the agencies themselves are undermined, Gottfried said during a seminar.

"The real danger is that these agencies could be harmed in the long run," he said. "This is an oversight issue and Congress should really be handling it."

[Lazarus Long]

Here is some more news from the Old Guard of the Northeast. I suspect the real message from recent events on Schiavo and now the Pope are that the public is being forced to ask questions that they have strenuously avoided and the challenge to a group like ours is to go forth not with simple promises but to try and help educate and guide the public toward rational sane options and reasonable goals instead of mere fantasy.

We have all the earmarks of a true grassroots revolt beginning on biotech.

http://story.news.ya...ts_stemcells_dc
Massachusetts Stem Cell Bill Gets Veto-Proof Vote

Thu Mar 31, 9:54 PM ET   Science - Reuters
By Kevin McNicholas

BOSTON (Reuters) - A bill that would allow embryonic stem cell research in Massachusetts cleared its second big legislative hurdle on Thursday with enough support to withstand a near-certain veto by the state's governor.

Following impassioned argument on both sides, the state House of Representatives voted 117-37 in favor of legislation that endorses stem cell research, including stem cells obtained from cloned human embryos.

The House approval, coupled with the state Senate's overwhelming support for the bill on Wednesday, means the Democrat-controlled legislature has the two-thirds majority needed to override Republican Gov. Mitt Romney's expected veto of the measure.

Debate over the bill came as Massachusetts -- home to some of the leading academic and private researchers in the field -- tries to stay competitive as other states offer lucrative incentives for the new science.

California voters last year approved a $3 billion initiative to fund stem cell research, while New Jersey's acting governor has said his state will spend about $150 million to build a stem cell research center there.

Sal DiMasi, speaker of the Massachusetts House, said lawmakers had voted in favor of both helping those with debilitating illnesses and allowing the state's stem cell researchers to pursue their work in a moral, ethical manner.

The legislation will now head to a joint House-Senate conference committee before it is submitted to the governor.

Romney, who supports some stem cell research but objects to cloning embryos, launched a media campaign this week aimed at blocking the measure.
{excerpt}

[Lazarus Long]

Here is an interesting twist. Is this an attempt to undermine attempts at further atavist legislation by taking the initiative of *Self Regulating*?

Is any regulation bad regulation or is this a pragmatic approach that will in all likelihood have its own unintended consequences?

Ok I think we as an organization should watch this and perhaps draft a position statement to share with the NAS.

Panel Urges New Rules for Stem-Cell Research
14 minutes ago   Science - Reuters
By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Correspondent

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Research using stem cells from human embryos is going ahead with or without federal support and must be regulated, a panel of experts said on Tuesday.

The National Academy of Sciences panel said universities and private companies doing the work should establish strict ethical and scientific guidelines and reassure the public that there are controls on the sometimes controversial science.

"The premise is not to advocate that the work be done -- that has already been debated with some consensus reached in the scientific community and elsewhere -- but rather to start with the presumption that the work is important for human welfare, that it will be done, and that it should be conducted in a framework that addresses scientific, ethical, medical, and social concerns," the panel said in its report.

"The public increasingly supports this area of research and its potential to advance human health," it added.

"In the absence of federal guidelines broadly governing the generation and research use of human embryonic stem cells, the scientific community and its institutions should step forward to develop and implement its own," the report said.

Supporters of stem-cell research welcomed the report as vindicating their arguments.

"Because of an absence of comprehensive federal oversight stem-cell researchers are operating in a Wild West of science," said Colorado Democratic Rep. Diana DeGette (news, bio, voting record), who has co-sponsored bipartisan legislation to remove federal funding limits on stem-cell research.  Rival bills are on the table in both the House and Senate that would either actively promote embryonic stem cell research or ban it outright. All bills would ban the use of cloning technology to create a living human baby.

Kansas Senator Sam Brownback, a Republican who opposes all embryo research, condemned the Academy's report.

"These so-called 'guidelines' for destructive human embryonic stem cell research try to put a good face on an unethical line of research," said Brownback. He has vowed to fight any bill promoting embryonic stem cell research or cloning.

"They attempt to frame the issue as 'how to conduct ethical research,' but the guidelines entirely miss the point: We should not be destroying young human lives for the benefit of others."

In August 2001, President Bush announced strict limits on federal funding of human embryo research and said work could only be paid for if it used batches, or lines, of stem cells that already existed at that time.

Scientists, including the National Institutes of Health, have complained that these limits will not allow them to do the research that may lead to new, tailored medical therapies and perhaps even treatments for diseases such as juvenile diabetes, Parkinson's disease and cancer.

The issue has divided anti-abortion conservatives. Utah Republican Senator Orrin Hatch has signed on with liberals such as Massachusetts Democrat Edward Kennedy in support of a bill that would promote stem cell research and also so-called therapeutic cloning.

Stem cells are the body's master cells, used to generate new tissue and blood cells. Taken from days-old embryos, when they are still a ball of cells, these stem cells have the ability to become any type of cell or tissue in the body.

[Matt]

Emotive power of US stem cell debate

In the impassioned debate in the US over embryonic stem cell research, both sides are convinced that lives are at stake. Opponents - led by the president himself - make the case that public money should not be used to support what they call the further destruction of human life.

But the issue is splitting Republicans in Congress, putting the president - who has promised to veto any bill widening federal funding for the research - in an unenviable position.

'Lives are gifts'

The deeply emotional nature of the debate was illustrated by the appeals made in the run-up to the House of Representatives debate on the issue on Tuesday. Mr Bush made a public appearance to restate his opposition, surrounded by children who would not have been born but for frozen embryos donated by one couple to another.

"These lives are not raw material to be exploited, but gifts," he said.

Meanwhile in Congress, even prominent pro-life Republicans were voting in favour of a bill to widen federal funding for embryonic stem cell research.

"Who can say that prolonging a life is not pro-life?" said Rep Jo Ann Emerson, who said she had a "perfect" pro-life record and whose mother-in-law had died the night before of Alzheimer's disease.

"I must follow my heart on this and cast a vote in favour," she said.

Jim Langevin, (Dem), who was paralysed aged 16 in a gun accident, came to the microphone in his wheelchair.

"Being pro-life also means fighting for policies that will eliminate pain and suffering," he said.

Scientists' concerns

At the same time, there are fears that if wider research is not made possible, scientists who depend on federal funding will leave for institutions abroad that offer stem cell research programs, and the US will end up lagging on the international stage.

Earlier this month, South Korean scientists announced they had made stem cells tailored to match the individual for the first time - heralded as a breakthrough in stem cell technology.

'Appalling ignorance'

Whether the science can deliver what it promises is also hotly disputed. Religious conservatives say the potential benefits are overstated. Richard Doerflinger, of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, said there had been an "appalling degree of ignorance and confusion" in Congress.

"Some [representatives] even said that embryonic stem cells have a proven ability to cure patients and that adult stem cells do not, whereas exactly the opposite is true," Mr Doerflinger said.

"It is always wrong for government to promote the destruction of innocent human life," he added.

"Society must focus its efforts on promoting medical research that all Americans can live with."

The row over stem cell research comes with Mr Bush under pressure over a number of domestic issues.

Negotiating the emotionally charged debate over stem cell research may require him to invest yet more of the political capital he pledged to spend at the start of his second term.

http://news.bbc.co.u...cas/4580299.stm

[Lazarus Long]

The first votes are in but the results are mixed. There is not a sufficient number to override a veto on the ESC Bill but for ASC they were almost unanimous.

http://story.news.ya...ress_stem_cells

House Votes to Ease Stem Cell Restrictions
By LAURIE KELLMAN, Associated Press Writer
7 minutes ago

WASHINGTON - Ignoring President Bush's veto threat, the House voted Tuesday to lift limits on embryonic stem cell research, a measure supporters said could accelerate cures for diseases but opponents viewed as akin to abortion.

Bush called the bill a mistake and said he would veto it. The House approved it by a 238-194 vote, far short of the two-thirds majority that would be needed to override a veto.

"This bill would take us across a critical ethical line by creating new incentives for the ongoing destruction of emerging human life," the president said Tuesday. "Crossing this line would be a great mistake."

Republican leaders offered an alternative measure to instead fund research using stem cells derived from adults and umbilical cords, but that didn't stop the embryo bill.

Majority Leader Tom DeLay said the embryonic research bill would force taxpayers to finance "the dismemberment of living, distinct human beings."
(excerpt)

[Lazarus Long]

The political process is moving faster than usual but also is in serious behind the scenes negotiations. Because of the arcane pragmatics of politics the only certainty is that nothing is allowed to stand alone on its own merits and every act holds symbolic as well as overt significance.

The united front of the Republican majority is showing growing cracks and it is no small irony that it is Stem Cell politics that is driving the wedge into their battlements, or would it be better to describe it as a wooden stake?

The filibuster from the Christian Right wing is the veiled threat and this is why. IF Specter can get reason to prevail on this issue who knows where such dangerous trends might stop?

http://www.nytimes.c...ics/26stem.html?
Sponsor of Stem Cell Bill Says Senate Could Override a Veto

By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
Published: May 26, 2005

WASHINGTON, May 25 - Senator Arlen Specter, the Pennsylvania Republican and chief sponsor of a bill to expand federal financing for human embryonic stem cell research, issued a stark challenge to President Bush on Wednesday, saying he had enough votes in the Senate to override a presidential veto of the measure.

"I don't like veto threats, and I don't like statements about overriding veto threats," Mr. Specter said, speaking at a news conference where the House backers of the measure presented him the legislation, which passed the House on Tuesday, topped with a red bow.

"But if a veto threat is going to come from the White House, then the response from the Congress is to override the veto, if we can," Mr. Specter added. "Last year we had a letter signed by some 58 senators, and we had about 20 more in the wings. I think if it really comes down to a showdown, we will have enough in the United States Senate to override a veto."

But the House majority leader, Representative Tom DeLay of Texas, said the bill, which garnered a majority that fell 52 votes short of the two-thirds majority required to overturn a veto, would "never become law." And Mr. Bush, appearing at a news conference with the president of Indonesia, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, restated his opposition.

"I believe that the use of federal monies that end up destroying life is not - is not positive, it's not good," Mr. Bush said. "And so, therefore, I'm against the extension of the research, of using more federal dollars on new embryonic stem cell lines."

The back-and-forth came as Mr. Specter and other supporters of embryonic stem cell research made a push for the Senate to take up the legislation. The majority leader, Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee, has not said whether or when he will do so.

And at least one opponent of the measure, Senator Sam Brownback, Republican of Kansas, has indicated that if Dr. Frist puts the bill on the agenda, he may try to block it by filibuster.

"I have conveyed to Senate leadership that we must do everything we can procedurally to stop unethical embryonic stem cell research in the Senate, and I will work to do just that," Mr. Brownback said in a statement released Tuesday night. "We simply should not go down the road of using taxpayer dollars to kill young humans."
{excerpt}

[Lazarus Long]

I consistently post a full article of relevance to the topic issue because I use it to give credit to the author and the source as well as link to the point of origin so that the reader can rapidly go to that location and continue to follow up independently.

Here is a classic example protected as the public domain for news and equivalent to sharing news clippings of interest among like minded individuals.

http://www.nytimes.c...ics/23stem.html?

Stem Cell Bill, Once Seen as a Sure Thing, Is Now Mired in Uncertainty

By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
Published: July 23, 2005

WASHINGTON, July 22 - A measure to expand federal financing for human embryonic stem cell research, passed by the House and once considered a shoo-in for adoption by the Senate, is tangled up in a procedural dispute that will probably delay a vote until fall - and could wind up killing the bill, its chief Republican backer said.

"The bill is in some danger," said Representative Michael N. Castle, Republican of Delaware and the measure's leading sponsor in the House.

Mr. Castle accused the White House, which has threatened to veto the measure, and the Senate majority leader, Bill Frist of Tennessee, of "doing everything in their power to deflect votes away from it or keep it from coming up for a vote at all."

But a spokeswoman for Mr. Frist, Amy Call, said he had "worked tirelessly over the past few weeks" to get an agreement from other senators to bring the House bill up for a vote. Ms. Call said that if Mr. Frist could not broker a deal by the end of next week, when Congress leaves for its August recess, he intended to try again in September.

At the very least, the delay plunges the measure into an uncertain future. Senator Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania and the chief backer of the Senate bill, said that if the bill did not come up for a vote, he would attach it to a measure appropriating money to the National Institutes of Health, a measure whose fate he controls because he is chairman of the subcommittee that governs the institutes' spending.

"I don't like to put it on the appropriations bill," Mr. Specter, seeming exasperated, said in an interview Thursday, "but we've waited long enough."

Mr. Specter's measure, which is identical to the Castle bill, would permit federal financing for research on stem cell colonies, or lines, derived from embryos that are in frozen storage at fertility clinics. Currently, federal financing is limited to studies of those embryonic stem cell lines already in existence on Aug. 9, 2001, when Mr. Bush issued an executive order allowing the government to spend taxpayers' money on the research.

Human embryonic stem cells, which in nature give rise to all the cells and tissues of the body, are considered by scientists to be the building blocks of the new field of regenerative medicine. Advocates for patients say the cells hold hope for treatments and cures for a variety of diseases, including Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and diabetes.

But because human embryos are destroyed by the research, the studies draw intense moral objections from religious conservatives and opponents of abortion, who regard embryos as nascent human beings. In announcing his 2001 policy, Mr. Bush said his intention was to place tight restrictions on the research, limiting federal financing so as to discourage future embryo destruction.

The Specter-Castle bill has considerable Republican support in the Senate. But its opponents would like to spare the president - who has never exercised his veto power - from having to reject a measure that has broad public support. They have proposed a raft of alternatives that, Mr. Castle said, are designed to peel off support from the original bill.

"It is death by 1,000 cuts," Mr. Castle said.

Among the alternatives is a bill that would promote research into unproven methods of obtaining stem cells without destroying human embryos, and another that would allow research on some frozen embryos, but only those in storage at the present time. Even if those bills pass the Senate, Mr. Castle said, they are not likely to pass the House. 

"They have managed to take six or seven concepts and do exactly what they want to do," Mr. Castle said, "confuse the issue and give people who have said all along that they would vote for our bill the ability to say we are voting for this or that."

With so many bills on the table, proponents have been fighting over whether and how to bring the measures for a vote.

Opponents of embryonic stem cell research, including Senator Sam Brownback, Republican of Kansas, who is sponsoring a measure to ban human cloning both for reproduction and research, have insisted that the Senate take up their bills when it considers the Castle bill.

Mr. Specter is not keen on that. "As I have reviewed the bidding and have looked at six possible bills and six possible votes over a full day of debate, I have grave concerns that the issues can be crystallized and understood in that procedure," Mr. Specter said.

Mr. Frist has been juggling these competing demands, said Ms. Call, his spokeswoman.

"The leader is interested in getting a vote on the House bill and on other bills in this realm," she said, "so we can have a full and thoughtful debate."

[kevin]

Link: http://today.reuters...TEMCELLS-DC.XML

---

Senate leader Frist backs stem cell research
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - In a rare break with President Bush and Christian conservatives, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist on Friday endorsed legislation to expand federal funding of embryonic stem cell research.

"The federal government should fund embryonic stem cell research" that uses leftover embryos from fertility clinics, said the Tennessee Republican, a surgeon who may run for president in 2008, in backing legislation already passed by the U.S. House of Representatives that would overturn the limits imposed on the research by Bush in 2001.

Bush has threatened to veto the stem cell legislation on the grounds that it would involve the destruction of human embryos.

Frist said he will support the House bill, even though he wants to clarify in the bill the ethical framework for donating the frozen embryos for research.

"I also strongly believe, as do countless other scientists, clinicians and doctors, that embryonic stem cells uniquely hold specific promise for some therapies and potential cures that adult stem cells just cannot provide," Frist said, explaining why he believes it is time to change Bush's policies.

Embryonic stem cells can be transformed into many other types of cells. They offer the potential for regenerating damaged organs or tissues, with the possibility of treating diseases such as Parkinson's or juvenile diabetes.

The bill passed the House with a strong bipartisan majority and advocates believed it had lots of momentum going into the Senate, despite Bush's veto threat. But it got bogged down in a procedural morass and Frist put off an anticipated July vote until at least September or October.

---

U.S. Senator's support lifts stem cell stocks - July 29, 2005 10:16AM ET
WASHINGTON, July 29 (Reuters) - A key U.S. Senator's support for legislation to expand embryonic stem-cell research and fund more use of adult stem cells sent share of companies involved in the field sharply higher on Friday.

"While human embryonic stem cell research is still at a very early stage, the limitations put in place in 2001 will, over time, slow our ability to bring potential new treatments for certain diseases," Senate Majority Leader Sen. Bill Frist, a Tennessee Republican, said.

"Therefore, I believe the president's policy should be modified," he said, in a rare break of support for U.S. President George W. Bush.

Frist's backing sent a strong signal that new legislation would pass later this year and sent shares of three stem-cell research companies higher in early morning trade on Friday.

Shares of Geron Corp. were up 7.5 percent to $10.98, Aastrom Biosciences Inc. rose 9.9 percent to $3.33, and Stemcells Inc. jumped 19.5 perc ent to $6.25. All three stocks trade on Nasdaq.

The bill has already passed the U.S. House of Representatives with bipartisan support.

But President Bush, who imposed limits on embryonic stem cell research in August 2001, has vowed to veto any legislation.

Stem cell company stocks had rallied ahead of the November 2004 presidential election on hopes that Democratic candidate Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, a supporter of stem-cell research, could win.

Some shares rose nearly 8 percent early on the Nov. 2 election day, but then fell -- some as much as 20 percent -- the next day after Bush won. (Additional reporting by Scott Malone in New York)

[eternaltraveler]

heh, i just posted this in the politics forum [sfty]

[Lazarus Long]

Our loss is Asia's gain. The predictions that investment capital and *brains* would be "drained" from our economy to feed those more willing to engage and embrace cutting edge biotechnology appears to be supported by the results.

This NY Times science article addresses broad aspects of the biotech industry but Stem Cell politics iare consistently the core issue and how it they are now effecting the global economy and the flow of capital.

http://www.nytimes.c...w/21mishra.html

How India Reconciles Hindu Values and Biotech

By PANKAJ MISHRA
Published: August 21, 2005
LONDON — In 2001, President Bush restricted federal financing for stem cell research. The decision, which was shaped at least partly by the Republican Party's evangelical Christian base, and which disappointed many American scientists and businessmen, provoked joy in India. The weekly newsmagazine India Today, read mostly by the country's ambitious middle class, spoke of a "new pot of gold" for Indian science and businesses. "If Indians are smart," the magazine said, American qualms about stem cell research "can open an opportunity to march ahead."

Just four years later, this seems to have occurred. According to Ernst & Young's Global Biotechnology Report in 2004, Indian biotechnology companies are expected to grow tenfold in the next five years, creating more than a million jobs. With more than 10,000 highly trained and cheaply available scientists, the country is one of the leading biotechnology powers along with Korea, Singapore, China, Japan, Sweden, Britain and Israel.

A top Indian corporation, the Reliance Group, owns Reliance Life Sciences, which is trying to devise new treatments for diabetes and Parkinson's and Alzheimer's diseases, and create human skin, blood and replacement organs genetically matched to their intended recipients. Some scientists have even more ambitious ideas. Encouraged by the cloning of a sheep by British scientists in 1996, they plan to do the same with endangered species of Indian lions and cheetahs.

American scientists and businessmen note enviously that religious and moral considerations do not seem to inhibit Indian biotechnologists. But this indifference to ethical issues would have certainly appalled Gandhi, father of the Indian nation. Gandhi accused Western medicine, along with much of modern science and technology, of inflicting violence upon human nature. His vegetarianism and belief in nonviolence were derived from Indian traditions, mainly Hinduism, which is also the faith, though loosely defined, of most Indian scientists and businessmen.

Indeed, most evangelical Christians, who believe that the embryo is a person, may find more support in ancient Hindu texts than in the Bible. Many Hindus see the soul - the true Self (or atman) - as the spiritual and imperishable component of human personality. After death destroys the body, the soul soon finds a new temporal home. Thus, for Hindus as much as for Catholics, life begins at conception.

The ancient system of Indian medicine known as Ayurveda assumes that fetuses are alive and conscious when it prescribes a particular mental and spiritual regimen to pregnant women. This same assumption is implicit in "The Mahabharata," the Hindu epic about a fratricidal war apparently fought in the first millennium B.C. In one of its famous stories, the warrior Arjuna describes to his pregnant wife a seven-stage military strategy. His yet-to-born son Abhimanyu is listening, too. But as Arjuna describes the seventh and last stage, his wife falls asleep, presumably out of boredom. Years later, while fighting his father's cousins, the hundred Kaurava brothers, Abhimanyu uses well the military training he has learned in his mother's womb, until the seventh stage, where he falters and is killed.

But the religions and traditions we know as Hinduism are less monolithic and more diverse than Islam and Christianity; they can yield contradictory arguments. Early in "The Mahabharata," there is a story about how the hundred Kaurava brothers came into being. Their mother had produced a mass of flesh after two years of pregnancy. But then a sage divided the flesh into 100 parts, which were treated with herbs and ghee, and kept in pots for two years - from which the Kaurava brothers emerged.

Indian proponents of stem-cell research often offer this story as an early instance of human cloning through stem cells extracted from human embryos. They do not mention that "The Mahabharata" presents the birth of the hundred Kaurava brothers as an ominous event.

Other Asian scientists have also pressed myth and tradition into the service of modern science and nationalism. In South Korea, where a third of the population is Buddhist, a scientist who cloned human embryonic stem cell lines claimed that he was "recycling" life just as reincarnation does.

But spiritual tradition cannot solve all the ethical issues raised by science's progress through the third world. Ultrasound scans help many women in India to abort female fetuses; a girl child is still considered a burden among Indians. The trade in human organs, especially kidneys, remains a big business, despite growing scrutiny by the police. It is not hard to imagine that, as stem cell research grows in India, and remains unregulated, a small industry devoted to the creation of human embryos would soon develop.

In any case, biotechnology may offer only pseudo-answers to many of India's urgent problems. For one thing, if and when lions and cheetahs emerge from biotechnology labs, the steadily deforested Indian countryside may not have a place for them. Stem cell research is also expensive, and seems glaringly so in a country which does not provide basic health care for most of its people. The advanced treatments promised by biotechnology are likely to benefit the rich, at least for the first few years.

In the meantime, the poor may be asked to offer themselves as guinea pigs. In an article on biotechnology last year, India Today asserted: "India has another gold mine - the world's largest population of 'naïve' sick patients, on whom no medicine has ever been tried. India's distinct communities and large families are ideal subjects for genetic and clinical research."

Scientism has few detractors in India; and the elites find it easy to propose technological rather than political and moral solutions to the problems of poverty, inequality and environmental damage. Obsessed with imitating Western consumer lifestyles, most middle-class Indians are unlikely to have much time for Gandhi's belief that "civilization consists not in the multiplication of wants but in the deliberate and voluntary reduction of wants." They subscribe to a worldly form of Hinduism - one that now proves to be infinitely adjustable to the modern era, endorsing nuclear bombs and biotechnology as well as India's claim to be taken seriously as an emerging economic and scientific superpower.

Pankaj Mishra, an Indian novelist and journalist, is the author, most recently, of "An End to Suffering: The Buddha in the World." He lives in London and India.

[Omnido]

You know Laz, there is precident across the globe for things like this.
Apparently, what the right-wing conservatists attempt to label as taboo based upon their flawed, illogical, and bias religious beliefs, other countries who are not bound by said "regulations" are capitalizing upon rather expediently.

I suspect this trend will continue in many, if not all the countries who have any access or R&D capabilities, and raises some big questions as to whether or not the USA will remain the "superpower". Especially in light of the internet and its enormous information distribution capabilities.