[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 7 (Friday, January 12, 2007)]
[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

                                 ______
                                 

                               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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