Stem cell research money should go where it will do the most good.
Friday, April 13, 2007
ON WEDNESDAY the Senate debated and overwhelmingly passed a measure to allow federal funding of embryonic stem cell research. Virtually identical to legislation that the Republican-controlled 109th Congress passed last year only to meet a presidential veto, the bill would permit federal funding for research on stem cells harvested from embryos left over at fertility clinics -- embryos that would otherwise be discarded.
The measure will almost certainly not become law, even though there is broad national support for the proposal. It failed to get the two-thirds majority in either chamber of Congress that it would need to overcome President Bush's expected veto. That alone was disappointing. But also frustrating was much of the debate in the Senate, which was colored by presumptuous readings of early scientific data and policymaking by anecdote.
Many of those favoring the measure rightly pointed to the scientific consensus on the potential of embryonic stem cell research to lead to medical breakthroughs. They also offered story after story about ill relatives or constituents. These accounts may serve to illustrate the magnitude of the possible benefits of embryonic stem cell research, but they also verge on overselling. The field is still far from producing cures for, say, Parkinson's disease or Type 2 diabetes, and it might never do so.
Worse were the rhetorical manipulations by the bill's opponents. Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.), for example, offered a story of a young man whose doctors successfully treated his sickle cell anemia with stem cells from umbilical cord blood. He then insisted that the federal government should not direct funds to studies not sanctioned under Mr. Bush's current regulations, implying that doing so would steal money from the most promising stem cell research.
On the contrary, this bill would allow knowledgeable officials to send federal cash to the research they determine is most likely to result in the kinds of success stories Mr. Brownback cited. Stem cell research of all kinds has the potential to improve millions of lives, but no one can know exactly how, when or for what ailment. That is why federal funding should be open to supporting as many avenues of stem cell research as a considered look at the morality of the issue allows.
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