1. When politics meets science

2. Embryonic imbroglio

3. Culture clash: Science vs. politics

4. Nothing but politics?

It all stemmed from stem cells
In a year of ferocious presidential debates and recriminations over the politicization of science, the biggest kahuna was embryonic stem (ES) cells. These do-everything cells form shortly after conception, and are the ultimate source of all body cells. And while the federal government has dragged its feet (more on this shortly) about ES cells, on election day, Californians approved a ballot initiative to establish a $3-billion, 10-year program to investigate them.

It came from outer space? Nope, this is just an embryoid body, a globular cell cluster that researchers cultured from mouse embryonic stem cells. Photo: Niels Geijsen, Massachusetts General Hospital NSF

In 1998, James Thomson of the University of Wisconsin-Madison invented a way to hold ES cells in their primitive state, essentially forever.

Two implications of the innovation were obvious. First, these versatile cells might be able to supply replacement tissues to treat deadly illnesses like Parkinson's and diabetes, and grave injuries like paralysis. That sparked interest among groups concerned with degenerative diseases. "In keeping with its mission to eliminate Alzheimer's disease, the Alzheimer's Association opposes any restriction or limitation on human stem cell research, provided the appropriate scientific reviews, and ethical and oversight guidelines are in place."

But the word "embryonic" aroused fierce opposition: Embryos are destroyed when embryonic stem cells are removed. If you believe life begins at conception, that amounts to murder. People who equate abortion with murder wanted to channel stem-cell research toward adult stem cells, which are partly specialized and can be found, with difficulty, in adults.

While adult stem cells are the material used in the bone-marrow transplants that treat cancer, many scientists have serious doubts that they can match ES cells in terms of flexibility and adaptability.

Political wrangle
It's been an eventful year for the political side of stem-cell research. In June, former Pres. Ronald Reagan died from Alzheimer's disease, and Nancy Reagan went public in favor of ES cell research. As Reagan was dying, 58 senators wrote Bush to support ES cell research, saying, "We would very much like to work with you to modify the current embryonic stem cell policy so that it provides this area of research the greatest opportunity to lead to the treatments and cures for which we are all hoping."

Photo of Nancy Reagan: House of Representatives

The signers included veteran right-to-life senator Orrin Hatch of Utah, who, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer, went through "a difficult, yearlong journey by a man torn between his long-standing opposition to abortion and his deep faith in science. Hatch read Scripture, prayed, talked to religious leaders, scientists, bioethicists. He struggled with himself. Then he sided with science."

Nancy Reagan's poignant plea for stem-cell research echoed through the presidential campaign. Ron Reagan advocated the research at the Democratic Convention. This October, in Madison, site of the scientific advance that placed ES cells on the ethical and medical map, Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, an advocate of ES-cell research, told a large rally, "Stem cells are on the ballot."

Murder, he wrote
But if we do not defend the fragile balls of cells that can, in the right circumstances, develop into a human being, we are allowing murder, contends Gilbert Meilander, a professor of theology at Valparaiso University and a member of the President's Council on Bioethics. His opposition, he says, is "a moral position. It doesn't necessarily depend on some set of religious beliefs, people with different or no religious beliefs could still arrive at the view, on the basis simply of what we know about the embryo, and about the continuity of development that is set in place with the embryo."

He concedes that such a view could be reinforced by religious faith. "There are religious reasons that might incline one more strongly in that direction." If you consider embryos to be helpless forms of human life, consider "the language that Christians often use about God showing special concern for the weak and vulnerable, and the responsibility of human beings to try to do likewise."

But research embryos do not deserve the same moral status as humans, argues another council member.

In a sharp dissent from the majority opinion against cloning for ES cell research, Michael Gazzaniga, professor of neuroscience at Dartmouth College, wrote that what some call "research cloning" is actually the transfer of a cell nucleus to another cell, which grows and supplies the ES cells. Scientists, he wrote, call this process "somatic cell nuclear transfer.... Any cell from an adult can be placed in an egg whose own nucleus has been removed and given a jolt of electricity. This all takes place in a lab dish, and the hope is that this transfer will allow the adult cell to be reprogrammed so that it will form a clump of approximately 150 cells called a blastocyst. That clump of cells will then be harvested for the stem cells the clump contains, and medical science will move forward."

The public can get confused at this point, Gazzaniga continued. "At the core seems to be the idea, asserted by some religious groups and some ethicists, that this moment of transfer of cellular material is an initiation of life, and so is the moment when a moral equivalency is established between a developing group of cells and a human being. They believe this is true for a normally sexually produced embryo and now so too for this new activated cell. This is the point of view that led to the President's view that both cloning-to-produce-children and cloning-for-biomedical-research should be outlawed."

The late Christopher Reeve was a strong supporter of embryonic stem cell research. Here, Reeve gave the keynote address at the Democratic National Convention in 2000. AP photo/J.Scott Applewhite

As Gazzaniga asserts, the equation of blastocysts with human life has real-world implications for scientific research and medicine. "Of course, we are all free to have our views on everything from baseball to embryos. This is a large part of what makes this country great. But moralizers often go much further. Frequently, they want you to conform to their views, an agenda that I find entirely disturbing, and particularly troubling, when cast in the large, as a basis for social and even scientific policy."

Waste, or murder?
But what about embryos that are made from sperm and egg, not nuclear transfer? If they are human life with the same rights as any other human, shouldn't the left-over embryos that are abandoned at in vitro fertilization (IVF) clinics around the country be saved? Yes, and no, says Meilander. "If you ask me, am I opposed to it morally, yes, but that does not mean I have to try to legislatively strike to prohibit every evil I see around me in the world. I have to start somewhere."

To R. Alta Charo, a professor of law and medical ethicist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, that is not "moral clarity" but an "extreme inconsistency." It's not the only inconsistency raised by the IVF industry. What, she asks, about research used to perfect in-vitro fertilization? If ES research "'creates a life to destroy a life,'" she says, "how can infertility clinics around the United States routinely use sperm and eggs to create embryos solely for research purposes in order to improve the safety and effectiveness of IVF services?"

In the area of ES cell research, and most particularly cloning research, "the Bush approach been one of criminalization, an absolute ban." But, she argues, the Bush Administration "has never called for criminalization" of creating IVF embryos for research purposes, and for a simple reason. "I think their decision is driven by polls and political expediency, and not by consistency. It's politically impossible to attack IVF. It might have been possible in 1980 or '85, but it's not possible in 2000 or 2005. We have an entire generation of Americans who have turned to those clinics for help with infertility. We have Republican grandmothers whose as-yet politically uncommitted grandchildren were conceived in IVF clinics."

Actor/activist Michael J. Fox and more than half a million Americans have Parkinson's disease, a debilitating neurological disorder that progressively impairs control of body movement, walking and talking, and often leads to rigid immobility. Fox advocated for more research funding at a congressional committee. Photo: NIH

Different strokes from different folks
Beyond the specifics, the ES debate offers a window into the politics of scientific funding and regulation. The debate about new reproductive technologies was a key focus of President Bill Clinton's National Bioethics Advisory Commission. In September, 2001, Bush allowed that group to expire and replaced it with the President's Council on Bioethics, and named Leon Kass, a professor of "social thought" at the University of Chicago, as head. In its July, 2002, report, the council recommended unanimously against cloning to produce children.

As we've seen, the decision about creating embryos to do research to treat disease was more contested. Ten members voted for a four-year moratorium on funding ES-cell research that would require creation of further embryos, while seven favored more ES research.

When you look at the council's membership, Charo charges, a right-wing agenda emerges. This "is a council that is more deliberately partisan than any I have seen before. It's a council whose membership substantially consists of people who work in an interlocking set of journals, public policy centers and foundations, whose explicit political goals are to advocate for a neo-conservative approach to public policy, and a tighter integration between religious beliefs and public policy decisions."

You might dismiss Charo's gripes as sour grapes from a lawyer and medical ethicist who was not asked to join the new panel, and, as she acknowledges, presidents normally appoint people who see things from their point of view. "I am not suggesting that members of prior national bioethics bodies did not, as individuals, have political views. ... For example, I do not believe we had any registered Republicans on President Clinton's bioethics commission."

But some members were opposed to abortion, she says, and the Clinton group, unlike the Bush group, did not try to create "A politically partisan vision of bioethics ... with a political point of view explicitly stated" (see "Passing on the Right..." in the bibliography).

We asked Meilander if the President's Council on Bioethics is part of a neo-conservative takeover of medical ethics. He laughed, then responded, "Anyone who looks at the membership and the way it has been split on some of the controversial issues under way, would have a hard time, with a straight face, making that charge."

Solomon's choice?
Despite the gravity of the questions facing the council, does it matter much? After all, in summer, 2001, long before the council issued its report, Bush confronted the growing furor over ES cells by trying to split the ethical difference. He announced that the government would fund research using "cell lines" that had already been removed from embryos, but not research that would cause the destruction of more embryos.

The "something-for-everyone" decision pleased almost no one. Opponents of abortion say it could become a slippery slope to further ES research. But stem cell researchers contend that fewer than two dozen of the 78 cell lines Bush claimed would become available have actually become available.

Photo of James Thomson: Jeff Miller/University of Wisconsin-Madison

Those cells are getting old, and do not represent a good genetic variety. And all existing cell lines are unsafe for medical treatment because of possible infection with mouse viruses.

Many stem-cell researchers think adult human beings are being harmed by the concern about balls of highly potent cells. Last August, for example, stem-cell pioneer James Thomson told the NewsHour, "If the same policy goes forward for another four years, it will seriously impact this research, and people will suffer because of it."

What about politics and the rest of science?

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