The Chronicle of Higher Education
Washington, D.C. — Academic research lay at the heart of a bill that President Bush chose to make the first he has vetoed during his five years in office: Last week Mr. Bush turned down a measure to relax his policy that limits federal financing for research on human embryonic stem cells.
The U.S. Senate had passed the bill last week, by a vote of 63 to 37, following approval last year by the House of Representatives. But on the day of the veto, in an override attempt, the House failed to obtain a necessary two-thirds majority, effectively killing the bill for this Congressional session.
In announcing his decision, the president stuck to his previous statements that the use of federal funds to create new sources of stem cells was immoral because human embryos were destroyed in the process.
“This bill would support the taking of innocent human life in the hope of finding medical benefits for others,” he said. “It crosses a moral boundary that our decent society needs to respect, so I vetoed it.”
Researchers have called the study of stem cells one of the most promising new fields in medicine; and scientists, who hope to use the cells to develop new therapies, were disappointed by the decision.
“It will delay medical research but won’t affect the fate of a single human embryo,” said Sean J. Morrison, an assistant professor of cell and developmental biology at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor.
He was referring to the fact that the bill vetoed by Mr. Bush, HR 810, would have allowed federal financing for the derivation of new lines of stem cells using some of the 400,000 surplus embryos left over from in vitro fertilization procedures. If not used for research, those embryos are usually discarded or left unused.
Mr. Morrison added, “I think it was a victory that it got passed overwhelmingly in both houses.”
Nineteen Republican senators had joined 43 Democrats and one Independent in voting last week to loosen Mr. Bush’s policy, announced in August 2001, which provides federal funds for studies of human embryonic stem cells only to researchers using lines that existed at that time. Mr. Bush has said his policy allows valuable research to move forward. Twenty-two such lines are available.
Many academic scientists have pressed for years for broader federal financing, saying the available lines have major flaws. For example, they were developed in contact with mouse cells and so would be problematic to implant in humans.
The Senate’s Republican leadership had packaged HR 810 with two noncontroversial companions related to stem-cell research, both of which passed unanimously by perfect 100-0 votes. Those were widely seen as an attempt by Republicans to soften the political blow of the president’s expected veto of HR 810, which was supported by some prominent conservatives, including Nancy Reagan, who oppose abortion.
The first companion bill, S 2754, would support research to develop new methods to derive such cells without destroying embryos. The other, S 3504, would ban the creation of human fetuses or embryos solely for the purpose of obtaining tissue for research purposes.
After the Senate votes last week, a procedural vote in the House of Representatives to consider S 2754 failed; most of the opponents were Democrats. The House passed the second bill, and Mr. Bush signed it last week.
Scientists Testified
Last week’s contentious debate in the Senate featured disagreements over the rights of the surplus embryos and the relative promise of research with embryonic stem cells, among other points.
One of the leading opponents of HR 810, Sen. Sam Brownback, a Kansas Republican, drew parallels between embryonic-stem-cell research and what he described as ill-fated fetal-tissue trials of the past decade. In both areas, he said, scientists made promises they could not or cannot fulfill.
“We funded fetal-tissue research for a long period of time,” he said. “We even tried it in humans to disastrous results.”
Another opponent, Sen. Tom Coburn, Republican of Oklahoma, argued that the federal government should focus its funds on research involving stem cells derived from adults, research he said had already led to successful medical treatments.
But supporters of HR 810 said the number of “successes” with adult stem cells was actually much smaller than claimed, and that hundreds of scientists, including dozens of Nobel Prize winners, had testified to the enormous potential benefits of embryonic stem cells.
Patents Challenged
In related news, two public-interest organizations last week mounted a legal challenge to patents on a technique for deriving human embryonic stem cells, claiming that the three patents, owned by a University of Wisconsin affiliate, are “overreaching” and should be revoked.
The affiliate, the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, is the major source of human embryonic stem cells used by academic researchers.
The two organizations contend that the patents were wrongly issued and that “their existence is causing significant public harm,” because, the groups contend, WARF‘s licensing requirements inhibit research. The organizations are the Public Patent Foundation, in New York City, and the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights, in Santa Monica, Calif.
The two groups have asked the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to re-examine and revoke the patents issued to James A. Thomson, a professor at Wisconsin, in 1998, 2001, and 2006. They say that the patents never should have been granted because previous work by other scientists made the derivation of human embryonic stem cells obvious, and therefore unpatentable.
WARF officials, in a written statement, said the patents were valid and “do not inhibit research.” WARF said it had provided licenses and cells to 324 research groups. It now charges academic researchers $500 for a license. It charges substantially higher licensing fees and royalties to commercial entities.
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Goldie Blumenstyk contributed to this article.
