Excerpts from BIO 2003

[Murray Charters <mcharters@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

BIO 2003
A reporter's notebook on the biotech industry's annual get-together
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Lunch With the Prez (6/24)
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"Also revealing was his oblique reference to the thorny issue of human 
embryonic stem cells and research cloning. "As
men and women of science you have accepted a moral calling to improve lives and 
to save lives," he said. "That calling
also requires a deep respect for the value of every life. Because even the most 
noble ends do not justify any means."
Translation: Bush believes that embryos consisting of a hundred cells or so are 
babies, so researchers can't use cells
taken from them to cure people of illnesses such as diabetes and Alzheimer's. "
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Policy Day (6/25)
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"Stem Cells and Cloning Update

This panel, ably chaired by BIO's own in-house bioethicist Michael Werner, 
looked at where we stand today on the issue
of using human embryonic stem cells. The first presenter was Michael 
Manganiello, a vice president from the national
pro-stem cell research umbrella group, the Coalition for the Advancement of 
Medical Research (CAMR). "The work you do
is at risk of being closed down by the Human Cloning Prohibition Act of 2003," 
he passionately warned the assembled BIO
members. Werner noted that President Bush, in his first ever speech to the 
nation in August 2001, limited federally
funded research to only 64 stem cell lines. It turns out that only 11 are in 
fact available, and that's not enough.

CEO Thomas Okarma of Geron Corp., which paid for the research that developed 
human embryonic stem cells, spoke next.
Geron is working on seven different advanced cell types derived from embryonic 
stem cells, including islet cells for
producing insulin for curing diabetes, neuronal cells for repairing damaged 
spinal cords, dopaminergic cells for
replacing brain cells lost to Parkinson's disease, and cardiomyocytes for 
replacing tissues damaged by heart attacks.

Okarma showed us a video of a mouse whose spinal cord had been damaged, but 
which could walk because it had been
repaired using human neurons derived from embryonic stem cells. Okarma favors 
research in both adult and embryonic stem
cells, but argues that only embryonic stem cells offer the possibility of 
large-scale clinical use. Why? Because,
unlike adult stem cells, embryonic stem cells can be multiplied without limit. 
Okarma outlined how a line of embryonic
stem cells might be used to treat thousands of people?first, patients would be 
chimerized (share cells from two
different genetic sources) by transplanting bone marrow stem cells into them. 
This procedure could induce immunological
tolerance so that when the neuronal stem cells are transplanted from the same 
genetic line of stem cells, the patients'
bodies would not reject them. Such patients would not have to use 
immuno-suppressant drugs like other transplant
patients must. Okarma boldly predicted that clinical trials for transplanting 
human embryonic stem cells in patients
would begin with    inthenexttwoyears.

Because embryonic stem cell research is under threat here in the United States, 
Geron has established a lab in the
United Kingdom, where stem cell research is welcomed. Okarma did complain, 
however, that Geron didn't feel very
welcome, because Britain's Human Embryology and Fertilisation Authority took 18 
months to approve the company's
research proposals. In the meantime, Geron has used private funds to already 
begin deriving new embryonic stem cell
lines at Stanford University.

Lawrence Goldstein, a researcher from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, 
noted that a lot of the political pressure
to ban stem cells comes from the fear that the cloning techniques used to 
produce them would also be used to produce a
cloned baby. Goldstein complained that bioethicists love to talk about banning 
the precursors to any activity they
think might be harmful. However, this is silly. "I could use a hammer to wage 
war on my fellow citizens, but we don't
ban hammers," he noted. "A wise society penalizes the acts it wants to 
prohibit." If we went around banning the
precursors to all types of undesirable activities, we would never get anything 
done. His conclusion was we should ban
reproductive cloning while permitting cloning to produce therapeutic stem 
cells. "
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