SINCE President Bush's speech on American embryonic stem cell policy in August 2001, the issue has mostly not dominated the news. During the last few weeks of 2005, however, stem cell research made its way back into the headlines with the news of researcher Woo Suk Hwang's fraud. Focusing on therapeutic cloning, Hwang was widely regarded as the leading researcher in the field. Now, however, with the articles that made him famous exposed as fabrications, the scientific community ought to rethink its current fixation on embryonic stem cells. While researchers and media have focused most of their attention on the theoretically infinite potential of embryonic stem cells, adult stem cells have shown something far more important: results.
For several years, conventional wisdom has said that the best path for stem cell research lay in embryonic stem cells. While ethically controversial because their removal kills a developing embryo, these cells can theoretically be stimulated to develop into any cell. In articles published over the last two years, Hwang claimed to have cloned human embryos by transplanting DNA into eggs from unrelated women, a process called therapeutic cloning. Equally important, he claimed to have improved the success rate of these transfers.
Had this been true, it would have been a major step toward overcoming some of the most serious obstacles in the field. Hwang's research would have meant that with a relatively small number of eggs, scientists could create stem cell lines tailored for each individual patient. With Hwang's techniques thoroughly discredited, it appears that therapeutic cloning is not the solution to embryonic research's problems.
Around the same time the facts about Hwang's deception became clear, the U.S. Senate took a step in the right direction by creating a national umbilical cord blood bank. Blood from the cords, most of which was previously thrown away, contains adult stem cells that are collected without killing an embryo. In addition to lacking the ethical controversy over embryonic cells, cord blood been used to treat over sixty-five diseases by the New York Blood Center. That's sixty-five diseases more than embryonic cells have treated.
The reason adult stem cells are more effective is that they develop into specific cells slower, but more reliably. On the other hand, as spinal cord research advocate and quadriplegic Jean Swenson points out, embryonic cells are "are praised for the very thing that makes them dangerous and ineffective for human treatments -- rapid, pluripotent growth (that, therefore, is difficult to control)." However, this fact is rarely publicized, and embryonic stem cell supporters continue to promote the unproven approach as the better one.
For example, after President Reagan's death from Alzheimer's disease in June 2004, many used the occasion to press for more federal funds for embryonic research. According to a June 10, 2004 article in The Washington Post, however, "stem cell experts confess that, of all the diseases that may someday be cured by embryonic stem cell treatments, Alzheimer's is among the least likely to benefit." Nevertheless,scientists failed to "aggressively correct" the false hopes stem cell supporters were portray. While not on the same level as Hwang's fabrications, the lack of statements from stem cell scientists was deeply troubling.
Why is so much of the scientific community willing to distort the truth about stem cell research? If there's one lesson from the scandal of Woo Suk Hwang, it is that stem cell researchers are human. Like all occupations, there are those who will use dishonest means to make money, and with stem cells, there is plenty of money to be made.
The federal government spent $25 million on stem cell research in 2004. That same year, despite a huge state budget deficit, Californians approved a proposal to set aside $3 billion for stem cell research. In addition to those funds, the 1980 Bayh-Dole Act allows scientists to patent the results of publicly funded research. Embryonic research, with more safety obstacles than adult, presents more opportunities for patents. By giving the public unrealistic expectations, embryonic researchers gain access to more public funds. And with exclusive rights over those products, researchers can develop and sell them for their own gain.
Speaking on Woo Suk Hwang's fraud, the head of an investigative committee for Seoul National University, where Hwang performed his research, concluded "such an act is nothing other than deception of the scientific community and the public at large." A good start to preventing any such scandals in America would be to end the Bayh-Dole Act's granting of exclusive patents, and to require scientists to disclose their discoveries instead. If public money is used for research, the benefit should go to the public, not just a few scientists. As California State Sen. Deborah Ortiz put it, "The public is not only waiting for cures, but is footing the bill for research ... that may not benefit them."
Stephen Parsley's column appears Fridays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at sparsley@cavalierdaily.com.
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