Senate to debate stem cells

The U.S. Senate will debate and vote on stem cell legislation this month, Senator Arlen Specter (R-Penn.) said today at a hearing of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and Related Agencies. Specter, who co-sponsored S 2015 with Senator Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), said the vote will be a measure of the Senate's support for medical research. S 2015, the Stem Cell Research Act of 2000, would give NIH legal authority to conduct, support, or fund research on human embryos for the purpose of generating stem cells. Under the bill, human embryonic stem cells may be derived and used in research from donated embryos that otherwise would be discarded by in vitro fertilization clinics (see BioCentury, Feb. 7). In allowing the derivation of embryonic stem cells to be funded by NIH, the bill goes a step further than the NIH's final guidelines for research using stem cells derived from human embryos, which were published recently (see BioCentury, Aug. 28). Those guidelines state that NIH funds may be used for research using stem cells derived from human embryos created for fertility treatment that are in excess of clinical need. However, the NIH guidelines would not allow government funds to be used to actually derive those stem cells from human embryos.

"The NIH guidelines aren't enough. NIH needs to be able to support derivation" of stem cells, Specter told BioCentury. Harkin also emphasized the importance of federal involvement in stem cell research. The potential benefits of stem cells "could be delayed or denied without a healthy partnership between the private sector and the federal government," Harkin said. He added that to date there has been no federal monitoring or ethical oversight of private sector stem cell research. "The new guidelines have established high ethical and procedural standards that I think we can expect both federally funded and private sector researchers to follow," Harkin said. ...