[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E107-E108]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

STEM CELL RESEARCH ENHANCEMENT ACT OF 2007

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speech of

HON. WALLY HERGER

of california

in the house of representatives

Thursday, January 11, 2007

Mr. HERGER. Mr. Speaker, while I support promoting ethical stem cell
research to advance the progress of medicine and cure diseases, I rise
in opposition to H.R. 3, the ``Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act.''
In 2004, my State of California approved a $3 billion bond measure to
fund embryonic stem cell research. The referendum was sold to voters as
an investment in cures for debilitating diseases, like spinal cord
injuries and Alzheimer's. Yet a December 3, 2006, article in the Los
Angeles Times, entitled ``Reality Check for Stem Cell Optimism,'' notes
that these promises were vastly overstated. In fact, the research
institution's draft plan now says it is ``unlikely'' that any stem cell
therapies will be developed for clinical use during the project's 10-
year lifespan.
As my good friend the gentleman from Florida, Dr. Weldon, has
explained, the latest science demonstrates the enormous potential of
non-embryonic stem cells. I urge my colleagues to vote against a bill
that authorizes further spending of taxpayer dollars on speculative
research about which many Americans have deep moral concerns.

[From the Los Angeles Times, Dec. 3, 2006]

Reality Check for Stem Cell Optimism

(By Mary Engel)

The meeting was almost over when Roman Reed steered his
wheelchair to the microphone.
On the table before him sat a l49-page book of budget
charts and timetables, the first concrete outline of what
California's voter-approved stem cell institute plans to
accomplish in its 10-year lifespan.
``I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart,'' Reed
said to the institute's staff and 29-member oversight board
in October. ``I promised my son that one day I would be able
to walk, stand next to him and go hold my wife's hand. And
seeing this road map to cures, I know that this will come
true.''
The room at Los Angeles' Luxe Hotel thundered with applause
for the Fremont resident, who broke his neck while playing
college football in 1994.
Despite the enthusiasm of Reed and his audience, the book
offered no promise of a cure for his paralysis.
Two years after California voters authorized $3 billion in
bonds to fund stem cell research, the institute created to
oversee the enterprise has just begun what experts see as a
long and slow scientific journey. Even with the $150-million
state loan approved recently to kick-start work stalled by
legal challenges, there are no breakthroughs in sight. Gone
are the allusions to healing such afflictions as spinal cord
injuries and Parkinson's and Alzheimer's diseases that
dominated the 2004 campaign for Proposition 71. In fact,
scientists say, there is no guarantee of cures--certainly not
any time soon--from the measure that was optimistically
titled the California Stem Cell Research and Cures Act.
Set for final approval at UC Irvine this week, the draft
plan is clear: ``It is unlikely that [the California
Institute of Regenerative Medicine] will be able to fully
develop stem cell therapy for routine clinical use during the
10 years of the plan.''
Instead, the top goal is to establish, in principle, that a
therapy developed from human embryonic stem cells can
``restore function for at least one disease. ``
That would be only the first step toward persuading
pharmaceutical or biotech companies to fund expanded clinical
trials, a process that takes years and millions of dollars.
Fewer than 20% of potential therapies that enter trials make
it to market.
In addition, the institute hopes to have treatments for two
to four more diseases in development within the decade.
``We picked a goal that we thought was realistic, that,
with some luck, would be achieved,'' institute President Zach
Hall said. ``The field will go on beyond 10 years. We want to
have a whole pipeline of things that are in movement.''
Jesse Reynolds of the Oakland-based Center for Genetics and
Society, a watchdog group that supports stem cell research
but advocates better public accountability, called the goals
``refreshingly honest.''
``The Prop. 71 campaign went beyond the line of responsible
political rhetoric,'' he said. ``If there are therapies,
they're decades out.''
One TV ad, for instance, showed an unidentified young
mother beside a child strapped in a wheelchair and breathing
through a tube.
``I will vote `yes' on Prop. 71, definitely,'' the woman
said. ``I believe that it's something that can cure spinal
cord injuries.''
State Senate Health Committee Chairwoman Deborah Ortiz (D-
Sacramento), another research backer, was philosophical about
the campaign's optimism.
``A campaign requires a message to be driven home,'' she
said. ``You can't raise those hopes and then say, `Oh by the
way, it may take us 10 or 15 years.' That's just the nature
of campaigns.''
California's attempt to cure diseases by referendum is
unique. But touting dramatic cures in exchange for research
dollars has become ``the American way'' of doing medical
research, said Robert Blendon, professor of health policy and
management at the Harvard School of Public Health.
The Nixon-era ``war on cancer'' suggested that a country
that could put a man on the moon--in less than a decade--
could surely find a cure within the same time frame. Now,
Blendon said, ``You can't just talk about investing in
research without the equivalent of the trip to the moon.''
Such campaigns appeal to an American public that expresses
great faith in science but shows little understanding of the
plodding nature of most scientific research. Blendon doesn't
see downplaying the time frame as dishonest as long as the
research truly holds potential.
Proposition 71 came about in response to President Bush's
August 2001 mandate restricting federal funding to only a
handful of human embryonic stem cell lines, prompted by moral
concerns about destruction of embryos during such research.
When the measure passed in November 2004, jubilant supporters
had predicted that $350 million a year from bond sales would
start flowing to scientists by May 2005.
The first reality check came in the form of lawsuits by
taxpayer and antiabortion groups.
Today, the bonds remain tied up in litigation, though stem
cell institute officials are confident that an appellate
court will uphold a favorable ruling from a Superior Court
judge. To tide over the institute, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger
in July promised a $150-million state loan. A state finance
committee formally approved the loan Nov. 20, and the
institute is gearing up to award its first research grants in
January.
Even if researchers hit the ground running, the field is
young and progress is likely to be slow. Scientists at the
University of Wisconsin derived the first human embryonic
stem cells just eight years ago, using donated embryos left
over from in vitro fertilization clinics.
Dana Cody, executive director of Life Legal Defense
Foundation, which represents two of the groups that sued,
said the plan's modest ambitions are a sign that the
initiative's promise was overblown.
``I just don't understand the fascination with embryonic
stem cell research other than that it's something supported
by Hollywood,'' said Cody, whose organization supports
research using adult stem cells. ``Even proponents say it's
going to be years before any breakthroughs are made, if at
all.''
Those who support the research--especially those whose
lives could depend on it--see the institute's plan through a
lens of hope.
The science ``is coming along fast, in my opinion,'' said
John Ames, whose son David was diagnosed with amyotrophic
lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig's disease, four years ago.
``I'm not trying to contradict the position of the strategic
plan, but we have hope. We're going to win.''
The life expectancy of someone diagnosed with the
devastatingly progressive neuromuscular disease is three to
five years.
``The thing that drives these individuals and their
families is hope,'' said Christopher Thomas Scott, executive
director of the Stanford Program on Stem Cells in Society.
``Without that hope, it's very difficult to get yourself
going.''
Joan Samuelson prefers to call it determination. The Napa
Valley attorney founded the Parkinson's Action Network 18
years ago, two years after being diagnosed with early onset
Parkinson's disease. She now sits on the institute's
oversight board.
``I care deeply about how urgently we pursue the mission of
Prop. 71,'' she said. ``I wake up every day with a disorder
that gets worse with the passage of time.''
To Samuelson, the campaign was about potential. The
institute's plan is about day-to-day implementation. They may
sound different, she said, but they are steps toward the same
goal.
``I read the realism, if you will, as a statement of the
fact that this isn't going to be easy,'' she said. ``Nothing
great is easy.''
What makes embryonic stem cells unique--and so full of
potential--is their ability to become any type of cell in the
body.
Some researchers envision someday transplanting such cells
into patients whose own cells have been damaged by injury or
disease, with the hope that the transplanted cells develop
into new spinal cord or pancreas cells. But scientists don't
yet understand the cues that trigger an undifferentiated
embryonic stem cell to become, say, an insulin-secreting
pancreas cell.

[[Page E108]]

The plan more accurately reflects what most scientists
studying human embryonic stem cells are actually doing, at
least in this early stage of the research: not so much curing
a disease as studying it.
Scientists, for instance, can introduce the gene for Lou
Gehrig's or Parkinson's into a human embryonic stem cell and
unravel some of the mysteries of how such diseases develop.
They can use such cells to quickly test thousands of drugs.
``What's happening even now is that human embryonic stem
cells and their derivatives are being used for models for
developing therapies,'' said Dr. Arnold Kriegstein, who runs
the stem cell research program at UC San Francisco. ``It
allows us for the first time in a petri dish to have a human
disease, not an animal disease. It brings us so much closer
to coming up with a therapy that really will work.''
Who knows? advocates say. Treatments--even cures--sometimes
crop up unexpectedly.
Jeff Sheehy, who represents HIV and AIDS patients on the
institute's citizen oversight board, tells the story of his
friend Jeff Getty, who died in October of complications from
AIDS. In 1995, Getty volunteered for a controversial bone
marrow transplant from a baboon.
The transplant didn't take, but Getty, who had been near
death, experienced a then-amazing remission that lasted more
than 10 years. It turned out that the drugs used to prepare
him for the transplant anticipated the antiretroviral
cocktail that, a year later, would turn AIDS from a death
sentence to an often manageable, chronic disease.
Similarly, Sheehy asked, if scientists fail to successfully
transplant embryonic stem cells but along the way discover
drugs or other treatments that work, wouldn't the research be
considered a success?
``My thing is just not to get obsessed with what was
presented in the campaign,'' Sheehy said. ``Science is a very
complex business. It's full of failure. It's full of
opportunity. And failure often equals opportunity.''

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