WASHINGTON (ABP) — Despite the sudden national attention directed to stem-cell research following the death of former President Ronald Reagan, researchers say Alzheimer's disease may not be a candidate for stem-cell treatment.
“I think the chance of doing repairs to Alzheimer's brains by putting in stem cells is small,” stem-cell researcher Michael Shelanski told the Washington Post. The research has shown more potential in treating Parkinson's disease, type-1 diabetes and spinal-cord injuries.
“I personally think we're going to get other therapies for Alzheimer's a lot sooner,” said Shelanski, co-director of the Taub Institute for Research on Alzheimer's Disease and the Aging Brain at the Columbia University Medical Center in New York.
Despite such findings, an increasing number of people are beginning to push President George Bush to ease the restrictions placed on stem-cell research.
Nancy Reagan, whose husband died after a decade-long battle with Alzheimer's, has been an outspoken advocate of stem-cell research for the treatment of the disease. “I just don't see how we can turn our backs on this,” she said a month before her husband's death at a fundraising event to promote the research. “… We have lost so much time already. I just really can't bear to lose any more.”
In a June 4 letter, 58 U.S. senators, including 14 Republicans, urged Bush to reconsider his 2001 decision limiting research to existing stem cells.
“Scientists have told us that since the policy went into effect more than two years ago, we have learned that the embryonic stem-cell lines eligible for federal funding will not be suitable to effectively promote this research,” the letter reads. “We therefore feel it is essential to relax the restrictions in the current policy for this research to be fully explored.”
Attached to the letter was a summary of proposed legislation “to ban human reproductive cloning and allow nuclear-transplantation research to continue.” The legislation calls for a possible 10-year sentence and a minimum $1 million penalty for any person who attempts to clone a human being.
Other restrictions include mandating that the eggs used remain unfertilized, prohibiting the sale of eggs, enforcing strict ethical standards, and restrict researching on any egg that has begun cell division.
In a Wednesday interview from Sea Island, Ga., first lady Laura Bush told NBC News she is not does not favor lifting restrictions on stem-cell research despite Nancy Reagan's call to do so.
“We're all advocates for a cure for Alzheimer's,” said Laura Bush, whose father died from the disease. “But also we need to balance the interest in science with moral and ethical issues that have to do with embryonic stem-cell use. There [is] also adult stem-cell research that could be done, and there's a lot of research going on.”
President Bush made the decision in 2001 to restrict scientists from creating embryos for research purposes.
“I have concluded that we should allow federal funds to be used for research on existing stem-cell lines, where the life and death decision has already been made,” he said at the time. “…This allows us to explore the promise and potential of stem-cell research without crossing a fundamental moral line, by providing taxpayer funding that would sanction or encourage further destruction of human embryos that have at least the potential for life.”
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— Sandi Villarreal is an intern with Associated Baptist Press.