A Lock For A Nobel Prize In Medicine? Thanks To W, It Won't Be A U. S. Winner

The Religious Right salivates at the mention of embryonic and W—the Religious Right's pinup boy—slammed the door on stem cell research in the United States in 2001. Even Nancy Reagan opposes W's science policy because Dutch—Ronald W. Reagan—has fallen into the black hole of Alzheimer's Disease. The best hope for an AD therapy is embryonic stem cell research. W—like the canard about King Canute stilling the sea—attempted to hold back the tide. Research laboratories in the United States are limited to work on 23 (possibly fewer) stem cell lines. Laboratories overseas already have developed nearly 100 stem cell lines. The Nobel Prize that will follow the development of an AD therapy out of this stem cell research will not go to a U. S. scientist. Take that to the bank. Thanks to W and his troglodyte supporters, the United States has become a second-rate nation in stem cell research. Even Nancy Reagan—no progressive by any means—sees the folly in W's science policy. If this is (fair & balanced) heresy, so be it.

[x TNR Online]
Stem Sell
by Michael Crowley

Last month, The Boston Globe published a science article, datelined from far away Brno, Czech Republic, that carried political implications for the Bush administration much closer to home. Surveying research laboratories around the world--including one in tiny Brno--the Globe found that embryonic stem cell research has blazed ahead in foreign countries since George W. Bush cut off federal funding for such efforts in the U.S nearly three years ago. According to the Globe, foreign scientists have developed nearly 100 new embryonic stem cell lines since Bush announced his policy in August 2001. That confirms one warning Bush's critics issued at the time: that embryonic stem cell research would continue rapidly with or without U.S. sanction, and that Bush's policy would make America--which has already been losing its scientific hegemony in other areas--a bystander in a vanguard field.

Fifty-one of those foreign lines are now suitable for research, the Globe found, a number that might double in the next year. All of those lines are off-limits to federally funded U.S. scientists, who are now restricted to an estimated 19 usable lines here in America (and that number may be optimistic, as we'll see). Many of the foreign lines are even off-limits to privately funded U.S. researchers, thanks to legal restrictions in other countries. In other words, stem cell science has virtually ground to a halt in America. Meanwhile nations like Sweden, Finland, South Korea, and Israel have recently developed new lines, and just last month Britain opened the world's first global stem cell bank. Those developments, writes the Globe's Gareth Cook (a friend and former colleague of mine), have scientists worried that "American science is losing its preeminence in a key field of 21st-century research."

There's someone else who should be worried about this: George W. Bush. Thanks to such revelations, along with a new wave of pressure from activists, scientists, and Congress, the long-dormant debate over embryonic stem cells is returning to the front pages. Given that Bush's position on the issue is both increasingly unpopular and based on demonstrably false premises, that's the last thing a struggling White House needs.

It's hard to remember now, but there was a moment when stem-cell policy was the central issue of the Bush presidency. Think back to the summer of 2001--those innocent days of Chandra Levy, Michael Jordan's comeback, and Bush's "working vacation" in Crawford. At the time, Bush was under extreme pressure from social conservatives to reverse a Clinton-era policy of allowing federal funding for research using stem-cell "lines" drawn from human embryos. Scientists argued that such research offered vast potential for life-saving medical advancements. But conservatives called the practice--which requires the destruction of embryos--an "industry of death," a moral abomination combining the worst elements of abortion and Nazi science. That these embryos, usually left over from in vitro fertilization efforts, would be destroyed anyway didn't seem to matter to them.

In an August 9 prime-time address Bush announced a compromise: federal funds could support research on already-existing stem-cell lines, but the government would not fund scientists creating new lines. "This," Bush explained, "allows us to explore the promise and potential of stem-cell research without crossing a fundamental moral line by providing taxpayer funding that would sanction or encourage further destruction of human embryos that have at least the potential for life."

But this so-called compromise was built on a phony foundation. Bush claimed researchers had already created 60 stem cell lines to experiment with, a seemingly ample number. But that came as news to most scientists in the field, and, like so many White House "facts," this one was a fraud. Within weeks, Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson admitted to Congress that only about two dozen lines were suitable for research. The number has since dwindled.

By September a backlash was brewing. A National Academy of Sciences report arguing for more cell lines and more federal funding got page-one treatment in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and USA Today. The debate seemed far from over. Alas, those stories appeared on the morning of September 11, 2001. The debate would have to wait.

Three years later, the debate is finally creeping back. This spring, 206 House members--including 36 Republicans, among them some ultra-conservative pro-lifers--signed a letter to Bush asking him to reconsider the ban. A similar letter now circulating in the Senate has already been signed by staunch Republicans like Ted Stevens, Thad Cochran, and Kay Bailey Hutchison.

Why now? First, it's become clear how few embryonic cell lines are available to U.S. scientists. A recent unpublished analysis by the National Institutes of Health found that at most, 23 usable lines were grandfathered out of Bush's ban--and even several of those lines have shown signs of contamination. "The truth is that in the last couple of years people have just kind of waited to see what happened," says Congresswoman Diana Degette, a Colorado Democrat who co-authored the House letter to Bush. "Now what we've learned is that the lines are much more limited than the White House said--fifteen to nineteen lines, and those are contaminated."

The second factor is the pace of research abroad, and potential for America to lose jobs and investment. Some U.S. researchers, for instance, have already set up overseas labs to evade Bush's policy. "It's been three years and I think it's time to [review the policy]," Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said in a recent press conference. "I'm very interested in answering the question whether or not scientists are really leaving this country in droves because of the limitations on research." And as rivals abroad make advances, frustrated U.S. researchers are pressing Congress hard. An aide to Hutchison, for instance, says the Texas senator was swayed by entreaties from researchers at places like Houston's Baylor College of Medicine--"a major part of the local economic engine," as an aide puts it. (Social conservatives, in turn, imply that members are being bought off by greedy private companies: "The biotech industry is money-hungry enough to do anything they can to get members of Congress to sign onto these letters," says Connie Mackey, legislative director of the Family Research Council.)

Finally there is public opinion. An April poll in battleground states by Peter D. Hart Research Associates found that voters in those states support funding for new cell lines by a 65-17 margin. Among independents the spread was 70-11, and among Catholics it was 70-15. Even evangelicals said they supported research on new lines by a 46-30 margin. (The polling also showed, depressingly, that this is yet another issue on which the least-informed voters support Bush the most.)

Most significant, perhaps, is the role of Nancy Reagan. Until recently Mrs. Reagan, who has seen first-hand the toll of Alzheimer's disease (an affliction embryonic research might help to cure), had expressed her support for federal funding through private letters and intermediaries to Bush and Congress. But at a Los Angeles fundraiser last month she spoke out publicly for the first time. "I am determined to do whatever I can," Reagan said. "I don't see how we can turn our backs on this. We have lost so much time. I just can't bear to lose any more." Coming from the wife of a GOP icon, those words are sure to resonate with the many Congressional Republicans who have confided to advocates that they're reconsidering their support for the president's position. "The Nancy Reagan thing gave people a lot of cover," says Larry Soler of the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation.

That could mean trouble for Bush, who has already had a terrible year on Capitol Hill. Republicans worried about Iraq, the deficit, and Bush's dismal poll numbers have increasingly been defying him on issues like highway spending and tax cuts. Says Degette: "We're learning more and more in this session that the White House doesn't have a lot of control over Congress right now." With Bush's poll numbers sinking, some Republicans are looking to put distance between themselves and the White House before Election Day. Perhaps more of them will come to realize that a rebellion over stem cell policy isn't just good science--it's good politics.

Michael Crowley is a New Republic assistant editor.

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