Draft Stem Cell Guidelines Threaten Research 206
Death Metal suggests we peruse a piece up at Wired on how the Obama administration's draft guidelines for stem cell research could invalidate hundreds of cell lines. "Under the Obama administration's proposed rules for funding embryonic stem cell research, hundreds of existing cell lines could be ineligible, even those that qualified under President Bush. The guidelines were written by the National Institutes of Health and are currently in draft form and expected to be finalized in July. But in their current state, they restrict funding to stem cell lines produced according to new rules that are only now being established. Few existing cell lines will meet those requirements. 'The so-called Presidential lines aren't suitable for actual medical application,' said Patrick Taylor, deputy counsel at Children's Hospital Boston, who criticized the NIH guidelines in a paper published Thursday in Cell Stem Cell. 'But we're talking about many, many more lines. The new lines were created with extensive ethical oversight. They're at stake here.'"
Why does federal funding equate to research? (Score:3, Interesting)
Or more to the point, does it, really work that way?
Taylor noted that removing federal support for ESC lines supported by Bush wouldnâ(TM)t only affect use of the cells, but all the work done to characterize line-specific behaviors and tendencies. âoeWhen you take a cell line and say weâ(TM)re not going to use it any more, youâ(TM)re talking about a tremendous body of information,â he said.
So if Uncle Sam isn't willing to pay the bills any more, the whole lot goes into the trash?
Why, then, are there more than 21 lines in existence now? And how is it possible that there are as many as 700 lines that are over 10 years old?
No, it seems to me that they will just have to get their money from somewhere else. And if their research is as appealing as they claim it should be, there should be other sources of funding.
This is more about Chicken Little than anything actually important to humanity...
Re:And... (Score:4, Interesting)
It's the same old business as usual.
That's not true. The people in charge now are less interested in telling us who we can sleep with and more interested in telling us what kinds of foods we can eat. Yeah, the Government is still trying to micromanage our lives like an obsessed baby sitter, but hey, it's still change you can believe in ;)
Re:Why does federal funding equate to research? (Score:3, Interesting)
Allow me to explain.
The world is pretty big, so pharmaceutical and other research companies like to shop around before doing anything.
So outside of the fact that some areas have more local expertise than others, public money is key to attracting research. (The US also has a natural advantage with its market size and anything goes marketing regulations)
Let's just say that Bush's finance strategy didn't really hurt the global stem cell research effort, it just hurt the stem cell research community inside the US.
Re:its called (Score:3, Interesting)
Man, the best way to get around things is to call something a "draft". That way, no one's head it ever on the chopping block about it, since it's "only" a draft. You can easily change it, because it's "just" a draft. Yet you can still hold people to it because it's "the latest draft of what will be the policy". I see & hear about it a _lot_ at work. Some "policies" that are being enforced have been in "draft" form for a decade... Granted, it's IT, but these things cross-contaminate.
Re:Silly question (Score:3, Interesting)
Pushing embryonic stem cells is more about justifying abortion than actual stem cell treatments. Adult stem cells have shown the best treatment options while embryonic stem cells would have the same issues as organ transplants. Cord blood would likely be as effective as embryonic but does not help the abortion stance. Pharmaceuticals benefits as well in making drugs to prevent rejection from treatments made with embryonic sources.
It is more about politics and money at the cost of ethics and good science.
Re:so much for getting government "out of" science (Score:3, Interesting)
No. The scientists have to get their funding from somewhere; and the government throws a lot of money around. The other options for funding are worse: You can get it from corporations, who will only fund research if they see a way to make a profit from it in the next three to five years; or you can get from universities, but I understand that the political games in academia are far more vicious than they are in government.
Re:compromise vs progress (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:And... (Score:4, Interesting)
I think what P was suggesting is that you can have absolute freedom to harm yourself, or socialized medicine. Choose one. Me, I'd choose the second, but by failing to choose you have effectively given up your right to criticize either.
I've never wanted socialized medicine, because I fail to see how having a Government ration my health care and stick it's nose into my business is any improvement over having a private company do the same. At least the private company doesn't have well armed goons to enforce it's edicts and I can choose to do business with whichever one I'd like.
Re:At Least These Concerns Were Based On Ethics (Score:3, Interesting)
Now, I don't disagree that that would be an upsetting situation, but I have a question.
Would it be upsetting because it was your DNA and you wanted it to get thrown away, or because it was used to create this offspring with needs and attached responsibilities and long lasting and expensive legal obligations that you didn't have a say in? Because really, would you be so upset if they used it to condition their hair instead?
You can discard something that you don't need in a lot of different ways. And some of those ways have consequences. Throwing sperm out implies that it should not be used for anything. According to the consent form, donating it to a sperm bank means anyone who wants it can have it to make a baby. Using sperm from the garbage to make a baby is wrong. But I think that this case is more like adding a line to the consent form that says "If checked, only hot chicks, no ugly girls can have my sperm" but expecting that all previous babies born to ugly girls should be abandoned immediately. The sperm donor may or may not have been cool with ugly girls, but to be safe, let's assume not, and lets just stop supporting all of these babies, since the person who donated their sperm might not have realized that by anyone, we meant ugly girls too.
Also, in my analogy, there might be a lot of orphanages, but only two will accept babies born to ugly girls, and they're run by really mean nuns named Pfizer and Merck. This scenario would suck a lot.
You get my point though, right? Garbage babies are wrong, stem cells still cool.
Feeder mEFs? (Score:1, Interesting)
I work in an embryonic stem cell lab. Most, if not all, of these human embryonic stem cell (hESC) lines require irradiated mouse embryonic fibroblast cells, or mEFs ("feeders"), in culture for the hESCs to maintain self-renewal and pluripotency. Feeder-free hESC systems are really difficult to work with, and few had any success with them. Since these hESCs were cultured with xenologous cells, they aren't clinically compliant to begin with. What the heck is Taylor talking about??
Re:And... (Score:2, Interesting)
Problem - Embryonic Stem Cell Research (ESRC) is far less productive than Adult Stem Cell Research (ASCR), so investors who actually want to see some profit aren't putting their money into ESRC. Would you?
Re:At Least These Concerns Were Based On Ethics (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:At Least These Concerns Were Based On Ethics (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't think we HAVE to answer the question of whether an embryo is a person or not. At the end of the day, there are some regulations that dictate what can and can't be done with that embryo, be it a person or not. You can implant it in a uterus and make a baby, or throw it on the sidewalk, or donate it to science.
You can argue that Bush felt it was morally wrong to use embryos to develop cell lines. I personally think that Bush doesn't really care what you do with embryos, so long as you vote for him, and he pushed for something that would convince people to vote for him. And that is not a decision based on whether making stem cells is right or wrong. It's just self-preservation.
If he really felt that embryonic stem cells were evil, he wouldn't have funded them at all. And if he really wanted to make the 'right' choice, he would have done what he swore to do, and uphold the will of the people, who seem to want stem cell research to happen.
Re:And... (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually American has become a generic term to describe USians. When speaking to my friends from Canada I'll slip in a "We're all Americans here" and wait for the indignant "I am NOT an American". Of course half the time they don't get it so I have to explain it to them.