AAMC Reporter: February 2006

Sean Tipton, president, Coalition for the Advancement of Medical Research

Stem Cell Research: Past, Present, and Future

Sean Tipton was recently elected as the new president of the Coalition for the Advancement of Medical Research (CAMR), a non-profit group based in Washington, D.C. CAMR comprises nationally recognized health policy organizations (including the AAMC), universities, scientific societies, foundations, and individuals with life-threatening illnesses and disorders. The coalition advocates for the advancement of breakthrough research and technologies in regenerative medicine — including stem cell research and somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) — in order to cure diseases and alleviate suffering.

Prior to becoming president of CAMR, Tipton was the organization's vice president of communications and a founding member of its board, which he has served on for the past five years. In addition, Tipton has held several leadership roles with other advocacy coalitions over the last decade and a half, including the Ad Hoc Group for Medical Research and the Friends of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. He remains the director of public affairs for the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, an Alabama-based non-profit and multidisciplinary organization advocating the advancement of reproductive medicine.

What is the current status of human embryonic stem cell and somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) research?

Both kinds of research are perfectly legal. However, you can't use National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding on SCNT research, and you can only conduct human embryonic stem cell research with NIH funds under very tight restrictions set out by the president in 2001. But there was a bill passed last May in the House of Representatives — the Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act of 2005 — that would lift most of those restrictions. We expect the Senate to take this up early this year.

Even in the face of the president's restrictions, however, there's a lot of good work being done. Scientists in this field tell me they remain very optimistic for the prospects for stem cell research.

How has the Bush administration's policy affected this research?

What the president has done is say that NIH-funded scientists can only work on stem cell lines that were created prior to August of 2001. Unfortunately, this action has forced them to work with older and inferior materials, and additionally there aren't nearly as many of these stem cell lines still in existence as we would have hoped. So these tangible restrictions are bad enough, but there has also been a very strong chilling effect as a result of these restrictions on stem cell research. I am afraid some graduate students, postdocs, and young scientists are reluctant to get into this area now for fear of financial or political repercussions.

What are the prospects for Congress to change and/or overturn the president's policy?

We are very pleased with the vote in the House to overturn the partial ban on stem cell research, and we fully expect that if we can get a clean vote in the Senate, we can pass it there as well. We're actually knocking on the door of securing enough votes to make the passage "veto proof." We thought the House would be the more difficult half of Congress in terms of getting this legislation passed, and we've already done that.

Will we continue to see legislative activity on this issue at the state level this year? Are any trends emerging at this level?

We think 2006 will be a very busy year for stem cell policy in the statehouses. As we have seen previously, we expect these actions to be all over the map, both geographically and ideologically. We've already seen a pro-stem cell proposal from the Republican governor of Maryland (Robert Ehrlich), and there are ballot initiatives in process on this issue in both Kansas and Missouri.
 
What impact will South Korean scientist Hwang Woo-Suk's fabrication of stem cell research findings have on scientific progress and on the public policy debate in this area?

I think that as disappointed as we were over these revelations, the stem cell research community should take heart in the fact that the scientific process worked. His findings were exposed as fraudulent within six months of their being published. Compare that to the scandals that have taken place in other fields, such as the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal. This was discovered very quickly. Certainly, it is a setback, though, because many scientists have now wasted time investigating the veracity of Hwang's papers and even building on his techniques. Of course, that's not the way these scientists would have otherwise spent their time.

In terms of the public policy impact, so far it has not been extensive. Opponents of stem cell research are predictably using it to impugn the whole field. But interestingly enough, they bear some responsibility for this, because the federal stem cell ban in this country has forced this work overseas and into the private sector where it is more difficult to keep an eye on it. The best way to oversee this research is to fund it publicly and let the National Institutes of Health work on it, where there is already strong oversight of research.

What can medical school faculty do to participate in the legislative process on this issue?

They have several important roles to play. There's an educational role to play, because this is such a complicated scientific issue, and the public as well as policymakers need assistance to understand it. 

One primary role for scientists in the field of stem cell research is to do their work. Get to it! The faculty who are not in the field of stem cell research also have a role to play by encouraging their institutions to pursue stem cell research even in the face of controversy. Also, it is important to remember that you don't give up your rights as a citizen when you become a scientist or join a certain group or institution. Scientists have every right to express their opinion and their political beliefs, just as anyone else does.

— By Scott Harris

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