Panel Urges Embryo Study Funding

A presidential advisory committee on Monday urged an end to the ban on federally funded research using human embryos, saying such research would enable scientists to more easily study stem cells--the earliest cells from which body organs are developed.

The field shows enormous promise for treating a vast array of conditions, from juvenile diabetes to Parkinson’s disease, and its applications became more than theoretical last fall when two teams of scientists, in privately funded studies, actually isolated such cells for the first time.

But the idea of using cells from embryos also has provoked the wrath of congressional abortion foes, who see the work as the destruction of life.

Last November, President Clinton asked the National Bioethics Advisory Commission to study the ethical issues involving stem cell research. The panel said Monday the work was too important to be slowed by the federal prohibitions.

“In our view, the ban conflicts with several of the ethical goals of medicine and related health disciplines, especially healing, prevention and research,” said the commission, whose members include physicians, lawyers, scientists, biomedical ethicists and others.

But the panel also said that embryos should not be created for research purposes, nor should federal money be used to support efforts to use cloning technology to make human embryos. Rather, the group said, the primary source of such cells should be embryos that result from fertility treatments, embryos that would have been discarded anyway.

Using such embryos for research “determines only how their destruction occurs, not whether it occurs,” the committee said.

Also, the group called for strict oversight and federal monitoring to ensure against abuses, and recommended that such cells not be bought or sold. Furthermore, it called for counseling for individuals or couples who agree to donate embryos for research purposes.

In a statement issued from Auckland, New Zealand, where he is attending the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, Clinton called the issues addressed by the recommendations complex and difficult, and he pledged to “establish the highest ethical standards” for the conduct of stem cell research.

But Clinton stopped short of promising he would take any action himself to overturn the ban, which was included in budget legislation he signed last year.

“The scientific results that have emerged in just the past few months already strengthen the basis for my hope that one day, stem cells will be used to replace cardiac muscle cells for people with heart disease, nerve cells for hundreds of thousands of Parkinson’s patients, or insulin-producing cells for children who suffer from diabetes,” he said.

The report could soften the opposition of some traditional anti-abortion legislators, who may come to view the research as life-affirming--a shift similar to the one that occurred several years ago during the same debate over funding for fetal tissue research.

Federal funding of research using fetal tissue is now permitted but only under strict safeguards. Advocates of government funding of embryo research have argued that federal support of stem cell research will similarly result in stricter oversight, which does not exist in the private sector.

Researchers believe the cells ultimately could be used for transplantation to heal various disorders, and will also help scientists better understand the process of human development, specifically what goes wrong to cause birth defects, cancer and other debilitating ailments.

“I think the research will go forward, given the wide-ranging diversity of the potential beneficiaries--a large population,” said Art Caplan, director of the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Bioethics. “Ethics aside, politically I think it will happen simply because so many people with many different diseases potentially could benefit from it.”