Stemming medical progress

Bush seems to have seriously 'misunderestimated' the potential of stem cell research.

US President George W Bush seems to have seriously ‘misunderestimated’ the potential of stem cell research. That is why he vetoed Congress’s bid to lift funding restrictions on embryonic stem cell research. To recall: stem cells are ‘master cells’ with the potential to develop into virtually every other type of cell in the body. Those harvested from early-stage human embryos hold the most promise, as they have the ability to become almost any kind of adult cell -- from blood and liver cells to heart muscle and brain cells. They could help find cures for conditions such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, diabetes and spinal-cord injuries and provide a constant supply of replacement tissue.

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But it is also an emotionally charged issue for critics like Bush who believe an embryo is ‘a human life’ from the first moment of its existence and experimenting on it is tantamount to murder. Never mind if hundreds of thousands of frozen ‘snowflake’ embryos are created by IVF treatment and stored at fertility clinics across the US. These will now have to be discarded, instead of being made available to medical science. By the same token, wouldn’t this make killers of every couple that produces an unused embryo, and the doctors who help them produce such embryos? Will Bush then also forbid the freezing of embryos and ensure every embryo is implanted, as is done in countries like Germany and Italy?

Unfortunately, American research happens to have the critical mass of scientists and the funding to support them, and hurting it also hurts stem cell research elsewhere in the world. Although Bush threw out the baby along with the bathwater, scientists may be able to retrieve some of the lost ground by focusing on other areas like amniotic and adult stem cells. Recent research has shown that adult stem cells can also be stimulated to produce new cell lines, which means that adult stem cells derived from, say, bone marrow could one day replace embryonic stem cells altogether. Researchers have even successfully removed embryonic stem cells from mice embryos, leaving the embryos intact. If developed, this can resolve the ethical dilemmas involved in stem cell research.