I was diagnosed with Type 1 (juvenile) diabetes almost 26 years ago. Every day since then, I’ve needed to carefully monitor my diet and exercise, p**** my fingers six times a day to test my blood sugar levels, and inject myself with insulin four times a day, simply to stay alive.
Because insulin is not a cure for diabetes, I go to bed each night with the fear of developing kidney disease, going blind, losing a limb, having a stroke, or even worse, losing my life, since diabetes on average shortens one’s life expectancy by 15 years. I recently had eye surgery after doctors told me I would be blind in a year without it. It was a decision I did not want to make, but one I knew was necessary.
In that regard, it is not unlike the decision this country faces regarding stem cell research.
I was very hopeful when the scientific community reported that research on embryonic stem cells holds tremendous promise. The nation’s leading medical researchers say it could yield new treatments and cures, not just for diabetes but many devastating conditions, including Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, heart disease and spinal cord injuries.
Most scientists believe stem cells could benefit up to 100 million Americans, because research indicates that they can be made to evolve into mature cells of many different types — including the insulin-producing beta cells that are destroyed by diabetes. Medical research has already shown that transplanting beta cells from cadavers can help free people from diabetes, but there is a drastic shortage of transplantable tissue. Stem cells might someday provide that crucial tissue.
Or by repairing other types of cells, stem cells could restore memory to someone with Alzheimer’s or help someone with a spinal cord injury walk again. This, I promise, is not illogical.
Yet despite its promise, stem cell research has been caught up in political and ideological controversy.
I was so pleased when President Bush decided in 2001 to continue federal funding for this research, despite some political opposition.
Some organizations and politicians have ethical concerns about using the most promising form of stem cells: those derived from excess fertilized eggs stored in freezers in in-vitro fertility clinics. There are 400,000 of these fertilized eggs now in storage. Almost all of them will be destroyed — in spite of the value of life they would bring to so many — unless couples can donate them for research.
I agree with Mary Tyler Moore, international chairman of the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, who said recently, “Allowing couples to donate unused fertilized eggs is much like the life-giving choice a mother whose child has died tragically in an automobile accident makes when donating his organs to save another mother’s child.”
In August 2001, the president tried to find a compromise, allowing federal funding but limiting it to embryonic stem cells that were derived by Aug. 9, 2001. Two and a half years of scientific investigation, however, have shown that that policy is far too restrictive to be of benefit.
In 2001 it appeared that 78 stem cell lines would be available for research. But many of those lines have died or failed to grow in the lab as expected, and a new analysis by the National Institutes of Health shows only about 15 are available. Many of them may not be suitable for research on human beings.
The JDRF and other private groups are stepping in to try to fill the gap by funding stem cell research without government aid. But the researchers say it is not enough.
Surely, the lives of living human beings — adults and children whose only misfortune is to have been stricken with an insidious disease — are worth as much as stem cells that will never have an opportunity to grow and develop.
There are other major problems, too. Current restrictions make it hard to recruit new researchers to study embryonic stem cells. More and more of the most important research is being done overseas.
These problems have led to bipartisan calls for changing current Bush administration policy. More than 200 members of the House of Representatives — ranging from conservative Republicans, Sens. Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island and Orrin Hatch of Utah, to liberal Democrats, Sens. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts and Dianne Feinstein of California — petitioned the White House to loosen restrictions on medical research on human embryonic stem cells.
I strongly agree. The current stem cell policy is delaying and impeding progress. It’s time to give stem cell researchers the tools they need to find cures.
We must urge President Bush to do what is logically, ethically and morally correct: Give an entire community of scientists all the tools they need to carry on, unfettered, the stem-cell research that will save the lives of so many.
Jan Nassivera is president of the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation South Florida Chapter.
By Jan Nassivera
