Going down an unsuccessful morally offensive path

Embryonic Stem Cells Still Haven’t Performed Miracles

How much government money is being shoveled at this research?

Subsidies: A firm that received tax dollars to pursue embryonic stem cell research abandons what was touted as the most promising avenue of research for medical miracles. Then there's that "conscience thing."

When Geron Corp. announced in January 2010 that the first clinical trial using its embryonic stem cells to treat an actual human patient was under way, its stock shot up 6.4%.

Geron got the first Food and Drug Administration license to use embryonic stem cells to treat people in a clinical trial, in this case patients with a spinal cord injury.

Last week Geron announced that it was ending the trial, which had treated a total of five patients, and pulling out of the embryonic stem cell business as the prospects for financial and scientific success dimmed.

Funds and talent would now be focused on the company's two cancer drugs. Geron would eliminate 66 jobs, 40% of its workforce.

"This company would not walk away from this trial in the absence of an unexpected complication or safety concern, if there was any evidence that it was working," said Dr. Daniel Salomon, associate professor in the department of molecular and experimental medicine at the Scripps Research Institute in San Diego.

Geron insists the science was sound, just that the finances weren't there. Yet the fact remains that embryonic stem cell research has not exactly been underfunded, publicly or privately, yet has produced little in the way of actual therapies for real patients.

In May, the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) granted Geron $25 million for the trial. Geron says it has repaid the $6.4 million of the loan it has spent, but that's the tip of a much larger iceberg.

CIRM was created by California's Proposition 71 (2004), which authorized it to issue $3 billion in grants, funded by bonds, over 10 years for embryonic stem cell and other biomedical research. The campaign for Proposition 71 held out the promise of quick miracle cures for everything from spinal disorders to Parkinson's.

One campaign ad showed actor Christopher Reeve, aka Superman, asking California voters to "stand up for those who can't."

Now, some seven years later, there have been some impressive labs built, research papers published, and respected scientists hired at exorbitant salaries, but no miracle cures or even marketable therapies likely for years, if not decades, to come.

The promised financial payback for the financially strapped citizens of California is also far off.

Michael Fumento, director of the Independent Journalism Project, writing in Forbes, notes that adult stem cell research has lapped the field.

Adult stem cells, he wrote, "have now treated scores of illnesses including many cancers, autoimmune disease, cardiovascular disease immunodeficiency disorders, neural degenerative diseases, anemias and other blood conditions" and "have been used in over 2,000 human clinical trials."

Not only have adult stem cells provided real therapies and treatments for patients, when derived from a patient's own adult cells, they avoid the major problem of rejection by the body they are transplanted into.

And they avoid the moral baggage of being derived from human embryos, particularly those created and destroyed for this purpose. They avoid the opposition of those, such as Catholics, who former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi say "have this conscience thing."

A Japanese researcher, Kyoto University Professor Shinya Yamanaka, in 2007 discovered how to tinker with human skin cells so they behave like embryonic stem cells. The National Institutes of Health has said this type of stem cell offers the prospect of having an endless and renewable source of replacement cells and tissues to treat diseases like Parkinson's and Alzheimer's, spinal cord injury, stroke, burns, heart disease, diabetes, osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis, to name a few.

Proposition 71 was driven by ideology and not science.

Were it otherwise, the money should have flowed to those pursuing, and producing, actual treatments and actual therapies for actual human beings.