We live in an age when medical miracles are occurring every day, many right at home in Arizona. Breakthroughs have treated and cured children and adults who could have died from their diseases just a few years ago. And some of these cures and treatments are the result of stem-cell research.
For example, thanks to the Cord Blood Registry located in Tucson, children and adults are being treated, and often cured, of once terminal diseases such as leukemia, aplastic anemia, cerebral palsy, and sickle-cell anemia. And these are just a handful of the 72 diseases that are either undergoing clinic trials or are already being treated and cured with stem cells obtained from bone marrow and umbilical cord blood.
With respect to stem-cell research, I favor the broadest possible effort to pursue promising medical technologies within appropriate ethical limits. Scientists have derived stem cells from two principle sources: the tissues, fluids, and organs of adults, and cells from human embryos. Human embryonic stem cells have only been obtained through a process that destroys the embryo.
In the past three decades, adult stem-cell research has led to the development and approval of treatments for a number of conditions. Recently, Congress passed legislation to spur additional advances by establishing an infrastructure to facilitate the collection and dissemination of two of the most promising categories of adult stem cells: those derived from bone marrow and those derived from umbilical cord blood.
By contrast, embryonic stem-cell experiments have not yielded any treatments for human patients. Nevertheless, researchers believe there is much potential there, so a great deal of private and public money has been raised to pursue it.
In 2001, the President issued an Executive Order that made available for the first time federal funding for embryonic stem-cell research using embryos already destroyed. In the subsequent six years, the federal government has spent more than $130 million on this type of stem-cell research and has spent more than $2.5 billion on all stem cell-related research.
In 2006, the Senate considered legislation that would have overturned a key element of the current policy: the stipulation that federal taxpayers’ money cannot provide an incentive for the further destruction of human embryos. While this bill was approved, it was later vetoed by the President.
I voted against this legislation because I believe that taxpayers should not have to subsidize the destruction of nascent human life, especially when a number of state governments and large universities have directed significant resources to embryonic stem-cell research. Since there are already billions of dollars available to do embryonic stem-cell research on lines from newly destroyed embryos, increases in federal funding and a change in the federal policy are not necessary. Recently, the House of Representatives passed the Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act of 2007, a bill identical to the one President Bush vetoed last year.
The Senate will be considering its own similar version soon, and I will oppose it if it provides federal funding for research that destroys human life.
There is an alternative bill that is currently being developed by Senators Norm Coleman and Johnny Isakson that I would support. It would expand stem-cell research beyond bone marrow and umbilical cord blood, but would reaffirm a policy that prohibits research that destroys human life.
A recent study conducted by the Wake Forest University School of Medicine promisingly resulted in scientists harvesting stem cells from amniotic fluid, which is the fluid that surrounds a baby before it is born. These amniotic stem cells offer many of the benefits found in embryonic stem cells, and without its ethical complications, demonstrating just how much faster science is moving than politics.
Researchers found many promising developments. Amniotic-fluid stem cells proved successful in producing bone, heart muscles, fat, nerve, and liver tissues. All of this was possible without destroying the nascent life in an embryo.
We call all agree: stem cell research holds promise and has already provided life-saving treatments and cures. And we should continue to support that research within appropriate ethical restrictions.
