Cell Research is Essential

By David A. Dexter
SPECIAL TO THE ARIZONA DAILY STAR The U.S. Senate will probably vote later this year on a matter of life and death that hits much closer to home: therapeutic cloning. What the Senate decides could directly affect the quality of life and prospects for recovery for nearly 100 million Americans - people suffering from cancer, Alzheimer's, diabetes, Parkinson's, spinal cord injuries, heart disease, ALS (or Lou Gehrig's disease) and other devastating conditions for which treatments must still be found.

I hope they allow therapeutic cloning to go forward. Because I work with the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, I know dozens of children - some as young as 3 - who are part of that 100 million. Some must have regular injections of insulin. Others use an insulin pump. All have to prick a finger four or five times a day to check blood sugar levels, a regime that will continue for the rest of their lives, unless we find a cure for diabetes. Without a cure, those children will also be at risk for kidney failure, blindness, circulatory failure, the early loss of limbs and shorter life expectancy. That's why I want to see therapeutic cloning, which scientists call somatic cell nuclear transfer, or SCNT, go forward.

The National Academy of Sciences Nobel laureates and other leading medical researchers believe strongly that nuclear transfer could lead to new treatments or cures - not just for diabetes but also for other threatening diseases.

Nuclear transfer has the support of such Republicans and Democrats as Sens. Orrin Hatch and Edward Kennedy, former presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter, as well as former first lady Nancy Reagan. And a recent poll commissioned by the Coalition for the Advancement of Medical Research shows that two-thirds of Americans also want this research to go forward.

Nevertheless, the Senate is considering making this research a crime. The reason is the word "cloning." As scientists know, there are many kinds of cloning. What scares people is reproductive cloning, producing a child with the same genes as its parent.

Like most Americans, I am staunchly opposed to reproductive cloning. The technical possibility of such cloning has prompted a necessary ethical and moral debate in Congress and across this country. But efforts to prevent reproductive cloning should not prevent therapeutic cloning, which is a vital genetic research tool that holds the promise of eliminating many now-incurable diseases.

Therapeutic cloning is a world apart from cloning babies. In therapeutic cloning, the egg cells have no chance of being fertilized, will not be transplanted into a woman's womb and will never become a child. Instead, a clump of dividing egg cells begins dividing after an electrical stimulus and becomes a source of stem cells that can be used to treat life-threatening medical conditions. These stem cells are not derived from the product of human conception or the union of sperm and egg.

Because we can never be certain which research will produce a cure, researchers must continue to pursue many avenues toward cures for diabetes and other diseases. It would be a terrible mistake and a blow to millions of families to close the door on research that is so promising and so widely supported by scientists and patients.

Instead of voting to criminalize therapeutic cloning, our senators must vote for the bill (introduced by Sens. Hatch, Arlen Specter and Dianne Feinstein) that makes reproductive cloning illegal, while allowing cell nuclear transfer to go forward with rigorous ethical and scientific controls.

We have a moral obligation and responsibility to help the children afflicted with juvenile diabetes and other chronic diseases, now, because we can.

* David A. Dexter is president and CEO of Laboratory Sciences of Arizona and Sonora Quest Laboratories. He serves on the board of directors of the Desert Southwest Chapter of the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation.