A NUMBER of recent breakthroughs in cell research lend urgency to the
decision President Bush must soon make about federal funding for research
involving human embryos. The White House is debating whether to overturn
Clinton-era rules that would begin to allow funding for this research,
which focuses on the powerful and versatile "stem cells" that
are found in just-fertilized human embryos and that can develop into any
of the body's tissues. Recent advances show scientists ever closer to the
elusive goal of inducing those cells to develop into specialized cells
that could reverse the ravages of Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, juvenile
diabetes, spinal cord injuries and other maladies. But the existing ban on
federal funding for research that would apply those advances to humans
could delay the cures for years as well as drive research overseas.
Some experiments -- such as a recent report that mouse embryonic stem
cells developed into "islets" that produce insulin -- are so
promising that it seems unthinkable to keep the field off-limits to the
country's best research minds. But opposition to the funding also remains
ardent, and the issue is being watched closely as a signal of how the
president will balance other policy and ethical considerations with his
desire to please antiabortion forces. A 1998 law bars federal funding for
any research that harms or destroys a human embryo. But the embryos used
in stem-cell research are exclusively those left over from fertility
procedures in private clinics -- embryos that would be destroyed anyway
and that have no chance of developing into human beings.
Guidelines written last year by the National Institutes of Health would
allow funding if the federally funded researchers did not themselves
destroy the embryos and if strict rules were followed to get donors'
consent and to make sure embryos were not created specifically for
research purposes. The rules strike a good balance between competing
ethical concerns. Opposition to them even among abortion opponents is far
from unanimous; Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson is on
record praising the first scientist to derive human embryonic stem cells,
and many pro-life senators voted against the 1998 ban.
Opponents have seized on reports of another promising front in the
research, the possibility that adult tissues may also contain the flexible
stem cells, to argue that the embryo research is not so significant after
all. It's too soon, though, to say which of these promising lines of
inquiry is the right one, and for which diseases; adult stem cells might
accomplish some tasks, while others, such as regenerating cell types lost
in Parkinson's and juvenile diabetes, might need the embryonic variety.
The president should let the research go forward, with the appropriate,
stringent guidelines in place. Steering science away from a potentially
life-restoring line of inquiry is the opposite of pro-life.
