In a creative route-around the Bush administration’s limitations on stem cell research, Harvard biologist Doug Melton has developed 17 new batches of stem cells and is distributing them to any researcher willing to pay the cost of shipping. So says Kristin Philipkoski’s recent Wired News article.
In August 2001, citing the controversy surrounding the research, President Bush limited federally funded embryonic stem cell research to the existing stem cell lines. At the time, Bush claimed there were more than 60 such stem cell lines, but the truth turned out to be that there were ten or fewer.
Side-stepping the political issues and ramifications—and refusing to use federal funds, or even federally funded equipment or supplies—Melton and his research team used private funds to extract stem cells from embryos donated by a Boston fertility clinic.
According to Philipkoski’s Wired News article, privately-funded research is becoming increasingly wide spread among stem cell researchers, mostly as a reaction to problems accessing the stem cell lines through the National Institutes of Health (NIH) registry. Problems with the NIH registry are said to include unavailability, restrictions on research, onerous reporting requirements, and exorbitant expense.
Philipkoski reports that the political waters are also starting to heat up. Reps. Henry Waxman (D-California) and Louise Slaughter (D-New York) wrote letters to Bush on Tuesday of last week criticizing his stem cell research policy and charging Bush and the NIH misled researchers and the citizenry about the number of available stem cell lines. Last Wednesday, more than 130 leaders in stem cell research sent an open letter criticizing Bush for changes he made to the Council on Bioethics. The group is concerned that the credibility of the Council on Bioethics is threatened by the president’s continuing maneuvers to get it to conform to his views.
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