Why should the federal government sponsor stem cell research?

Embryonic stem cells have the ability to develop into virtually any cell in the body. Scientists are using stem cells to study the growth and differentiation of individual cells into tissues. Understanding these processes could provide insights into the causes of birth defects, genetic abnormalities, and other disease states. Stem cells may eventually be used to produce large amounts of one cell type to test new drugs for effectiveness and chemicals for toxicity, or they may be transplanted into a patient to treat medical conditions such as diabetes and Parkinson's disease.

Despite its promise, only a relatively small amount of federal sponsorship has been used to support embryonic stem cell research. The research is controversial, in the opinion of some, because stem cells are located within the embryo and the process of removing them destroys the embryo. Moreover, some of the research may involve a type of cloning. Many abortion opponents and others opposed to embryonic stem cell research believe that cloning creates a human life, even though it may consist of only one or a few hundred cells, and that the destruction of a cloned embryo to extract stem cells is also ethically unacceptable. Federal sponsorship for embryonic stem cell research is limited by two factors. First, the Dickey amendment, which has been added to the Labor-Health and Human Services-Education appropriations bill each fiscal year, starting with FY1997. It prohibits using federal sponsors for the creation of human embryos for research purposes or for research in which human embryos are destroyed. Second, although the August 2001 Bush Administration stem cell policy for the first time allowed federal sponsors to be used for research on human embryonic stem cells, the Bush policy also limited federal research to only the 22 stem cell lines that were in existence in August 2001.

Scientists are concerned about the quality and longevity of these 22 stem cell lines. For a variety of reasons, many believe that research advancement requires the development of new embryonic stem cell lines, and for certain applications, stem cells derived from cloned embryos may offer the best hope for understanding and treating disease. Cloned embryos are created through a process called somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT). In SCNT, the nucleus of an egg is removed and replaced by the nucleus from a mature body cell, such as a skin cell, obtained from a patient. In 1996, scientists in Scotland used the SCNT procedure to produce Dolly the sheep, the first mammalian clone. When SCNT is used to create another individual, such as Dolly, the process is called reproductive cloning. In contrast, scientists interested in using SCNT to create cloned stem cells allow the cell created via SCNT to develop for a few days before the stem cells are removed for research. Stem cells created via SCNT would be genetically identical to the patient, and thus would avoid any tissue rejection problems that could occur if the cells were transplanted into the ...