Stem Sellouts

Jesse Reynolds

July 19, 2005

Jesse Reynolds is the director of the project on biotechnology accountability at the Center for Genetics and Society, a nonprofit organization working to encourage responsible uses and effective societal governance of the new human genetic and reproductive technologies.

Recent developments—both technical and political —have once again brought stem cell research to the front pages of newspapers across the country. Sens. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, and Arlen Specter, R-Pa., are the sponsors of a bill in the Senate that would largely undo President Bush’s restrictive federal funding policies. It’s already passed the House, and is scheduled for a Senate vote this month. But now conservatives are working to dilute support for it by introducing several competing bills that would fund stem cell research that does not destroy human embryos.

Progressives are inclined to react to these reports by strengthening their support of stem cell research as an effective wedge issue to split Republicans. But before we move ahead with simplistic calls for more funding and fewer restrictions, we should pay heed to troubles with California’s new stem cell research agency— and to the larger implications of biotech boosterism.

California’s Calamity

Last fall, Californians approved Proposition 71, which established the Institute for Regenerative Medicine to distribute $3 billion in stem cell research grants. Voters were swayed, with the help of a $35 million campaign, with the assurances that it would cure diseases, serve as a pro-science rebuke to the Bush administration’s fundamentalist leanings, and somehow pay for itself. But the program has been mired in controversy from the start and largely unable to proceed, due not only to hubris-fueled mismanagement, but also because the new institute was established by a deeply flawed law.

In just the first six months:

• Conservative opponents of stem cell research seized on loopholes and exceptions written into Proposition 71 and challenged its constitutionality in the courts. The attorney general has advised that no bonds can be issued while these issues are before the courts.
• The institute’s leadership resisted adopting real conflict-of-interest and open meeting provisions, claiming they would undermine the institute’s mission. State Sen. Deborah Ortiz, a strong backer of the Proposition, introduced a reform package, which the institute fought. She’s put it on hold in an effort to achieve a compromise.
• Robert Klein, millionaire real-estate mogul and controversial chairman of the institute’s governing board, was a chief author of the initiative, the chair of the campaign and its top donor. Since the election, he has managed the institute like his own private venture capital firm, including hiring a private lobbyist and transforming the remnants of the campaign operation into a stem cell research advocacy group— operating out of his corporate offices.
   

The Funding Question

In the meantime, the states are falling over themselves to hurry along bills that would fund stem cell research. While this line of scientific inquiry should be supported, it must be done in a broader context of funding priorities, health equity, protection of women and research subjects, ending corporate welfare and responsible oversight.

Stem cell research has potential, but it is not necessarily the most promising line of biomedical research. For example, at an international panel convened by the University of Toronto Centre for Bioethics, stem cells did not make the list of the 10 biotechnologies with the greatest potential for improving human health. Broader research funding programs would be able to adapt to emerging avenues of research.

The types of therapies to be developed by stem cell research are likely to be extremely expensive. At a time when nearly 50 million Americans are uninsured—many of whom go without basic health care— funding medicine for millionaires and establishing constitutional rights to conduct stem cell research seem to be misplaced priorities, at best.

Research cloning, the type of research that advocates say has the greatest potential, requires human eggs instead of embryos. The question of where to get these eggs has been largely absent from the stem cell debates. The only source of eggs is women, and there is evidence that the drugs and hormones used to stimulate women into “hyperovulation” may have serious long term health effects, including death. And excessive “reimbursement” may lead to financial coercion for poor women to provide eggs to pay their bills.

We must also be wary that support for medical research does not devolve into lavish subsidies for corporations. If California’s Proposition 71 had proposed $3 billion in research to support the chemical or even the pharmaceutical industry, progressives would have read the initiative in great detail. More of us would ask, Who makes the decisions? Who gets the money, and any intellectual property? What records and meetings are public? The biotech industry shouldn’t be given a pass exempting it from scrutiny, just because it makes promises to save lives.

Broader Implications

What’s perhaps most disconcerting about unrestrained enthusiasm for stem cell research are the undesirable doors it may open. Stem cells are a key component in developing technologies of human genetic engineering and enhancement. While stem cell research should be supported, we must acknowledge that it is laying the technological and social foundation for our worst nightmares of a society of “genetically enhanced” and “naturals.” In our market-based society, it is easy to see how a new technologically based eugenics could emerge.

This may sound like a slippery slope argument, or alarmist. But the technologies of genetic enhancement are close. According the Genetics and Public Policy Center at Johns Hopkins University, “[R]apid advances in stem cell research and other genetic technologies make the possibility of successful permanent modification of the human genome… much more likely... and as a society, we are running out of time to plan sensible policies.” Already, the genetic testing of embryos during in vitro fertilization is available for an increasing range of genes— including sex. Clinics that allow clients to choose the sex of their next child are advertising in print outlets targeting the affluent and immigrants from India.

What Should Progressives Do?

When faced with a choice between religious zealots and biotech corporate interests, progressives understandably side with the latter. But these are not the only options. One can advocate for removing unreasonable restrictions on embryonic stem cell research without running into the waiting arms of the biotech industry.

Fortunately, there is a reasonable set of policies that will allow the research with the greatest potential to move forward, while preventing the technologies with the worst social implications. Human reproductive cloning and genetic engineering should be banned. Embryonic stem cell research should not only proceed, but be publicly funded as part of a broad research and public health agenda. But the use of cloning technologies and the extraction of eggs from women must be carefully regulated to prevent abuse.

Revoking the Bush administration’s restrictive policies on stem cell research is certainly a step in the right direction. But liberals and progressives must at the same time examine the greater implications of such research and responsibly gauge their support for emerging human biotechnologies.