According to the BBC, “scientists in the UK claim to have developed the first human nerve cells from human stem cells”:http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4155016.stm. They used embryonic cells, the most pliable of the known stem cell types. These are also the very ones which have mired the U.S. in controversy over Federal funding of stem cell research.
What’s very interesting about the BBC article is the chronology of big public announcements of milestones in stem cell research. What I found striking is that adult stem cells have been studied for a very long time – since the late 1960s! However, embryonic stem cells were first isolated and grown by work done here in the U.S. (at UW-Madison!) in 1998. The U.S. seemed to have the R&D edge until August of 2001, when the President announced a Federal ban on embryonic stem cell research. Important here is that this ban did not apply to adult stem cells, but given the chronology of the scientific research into adult stem cells, and the repeated statements of medical researchers, it’s fairly clear that one would have to invest a lot of money in adult stem cells to make them as inherently viable as the embryonic ones derived from blastocysts.
What’s interesting about 2001 is that, with the ban imposed and no more publicly funded research into embryonic stem cells, it was inevitable that the U.S. would automatically cede expertise and innovation on these cells to other scientifically developed nations. The key discoveries in recent years are increasingly coming from Europe and Asia, which makes perfect sense when you look at their growing support for basic research.
Now, one could make an argument that once we settle the ethical issues about embryonic stem cell research the U.S. will have the most ethically and morally advanced research into stem cells. However, having the moral high ground doesn’t make your research better than that of another agencies. Ironically, this administration was quick to terminate debate and diplomacy and invade Iraq on what turned out to be horrible evidence and thus poor grounds, leading to the inevitable deaths of hundreds of volunteers and thousands of Iraqis. In contrast, this administration has been able to prolong debate between all possible communities about the ethics of taking a human embryo, otherwise destined for storage and possible implanation, and using its basic cellular imprints to try to develop cures for a variety of terrible diseases and injuries. Hmm.
If the scientific debate about the value of stem cells had been allowed to proceed in an open and publicly funded framework, no doubt the U.S. would still be a leader in the understanding of stem cell behavior, embryonic or adult. We’ve seen this research crippled by the lack of Federal action, while other nations have made advances. What concerns me is that a great deal of other research, unburdened by ethical concern, is also highly underfunded. There is a growing trend – stem cells being one example that happens to have ethical overtones – of U.S. leadership in science failing.
