Stem Cell Politics in New Jersey

Stem Cell Politics in New Jersey

The stem cell debate is taking a front seat in the New Jersey governor’s race. Democratic candidate Jon Corzine recently released an ad showing a former high school wrestler in an wheelchair, saying that Corzine’s opponent, Republican Doug Forrester does not care for “people like me.” A Newsday article from October 25 describes the ad. Reaction has been mixed and somewhat heated. The New Jersey Star-Ledger reported yesterday that Forrester “strongly endorsed the science.” Forrester’s opposition to spending state money on it is, he says, out of a belief that the state cannot afford any more debt.

You can view the ad on the Swing State Project blog.

I’m not going to address the politics of this ad and if it is exploitation, every one will have their own opinion on this. But it’s worth looking at Forrester’s point. Should money that state cannot afford be spent on stem cell research of any sort, whether embryonic or adult or umbilical? What if that money went to house the homeless, or to provide health care for the elderly, or to rebuild schools and hire teachers? These questions are ones that all budget-setters and budget-deciders wrestle with, and there will be no consensus on them. California has approved money for stem cell research and the Institute is having a hard time getting off the ground. So how do we make decisions and prioritize about where public money should go? That’s the discussion that needs to be had.

The federal government has of course contributed to this issue by limiting research on hESC lines. But the federal government can’t really afford anything, either, so it’s not useful to argue along these lines. In the meantime, it appears that a lot of stem cell research is going to continue to be done by private biotech companies.

11/2/05--Update--an article published today on NorthJersey.com indicates that a lot of New Jerseyans are also concerned about where the money is coming from.

A Step Toward Growing Organs

A Step Toward Growing Organs

Researchers have created a chemical compound that instruct human embryonic stem cells to turn into an endoderm, which in embryos develops into several organs, including the pancreas, liver, lungs, thyroid, and thymus. This is clearly a key step toward directing the differentiation of hESCs to particular organs.

A UPI story on the research reports that scientists from CyThera, Inc. in San Diego have published their findings in Nature Biotechnology. (A BBC report on ABC Online [Australian Broacasting Corporation] says erroneously that the study is published in the journal Nature; Nature is the parent company of Nature Biotechnology, but they are not the same journal). According to the UPI story, the researchers used eight different stem cell lines, three of which were not among the federally approved lines. Dr. Robert Lanza, who is one of the scientists who recently developed the PGD method of generating stem cells by removing a single cell from an eight cell blastomere, told UPI that the different stem cell lines reacted differently, and that the research showed the impact of the limits of federal funding on hESC research.

As always with stem cell research, it is interesting to see how the media handles the news. The ABC headline is “Stem cells turned into internal organ cells,” and the UPI headline is “Stem cells turned into organ precursors,” which is much more accurate. The actual article title is “Efficient differentiation of human embryonic stem cells to definitive endoderm.” After having caused stem cells to differentiate into an endoderm, it is still I expect a very complicated process to further direct those cells to differentiate into any particular organ. The need for organ donation (are you a donor?) will not be reduced soon.

And, when technology reaches the point where organs can be grown successfully from stem cells, the technology will still be subject to numerous other issues. Will insurance pay for it? Who will get priority for donated eggs and laboratory space? It is critical for public debate to address these kinds of ethical issues. In the US, health care is much more available to the wealthy than to the poor; will stem cell treatments only be for the most well-off?