A bright hope to be realized
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.
advertisement
