By Kim Coghill

Washington Editor

WASHINGTON - The scientific community is quietly beginning to put pressure on the Bush administration to reverse its position opposing federal funding for embryonic stem cell research.

In the latest move, a group of 80 Nobel laureates signed a letter to President George Bush urging him not to block the federal grants for research on cells, collected from unused human embryos slated for disposal at fertility clinics.

The letter, faxed Thursday, arrived in the president's hands just weeks before the National Institutes of Health's March 15 deadline for scientists to apply for first-time grants for embryonic stem cell research.

Back in September, the NIH finalized guidelines that permit funding of research. The rules prohibit derivation of human pluripotent stem cells, but allow funding for research that uses the cells after they have been collected. (See BioWorld Today, Aug. 24, 2000.)

And about the time that the Clinton team was signing off on the guidelines, then-presidential candidate George Bush, under pressure from anti-abortion groups, said he opposed using federal money for research on fetal tissue or on human embryo cells.

Since he took office, Bush has not made any moves toward blocking the money, but the mere threat has biotechnology insiders scrambling to help the administration understand the importance of the research.

The letter was written and circulated by Michael West and Robert Lanza, two scientists at Worcester, Mass.-based Advanced Cell Technology Inc. (ACT).

West, president and CEO of ACT, said he has not heard anyone in the scientific community oppose embryonic stem cell research. "For the White House to override the scientific community and say research should not be done in this area to me is horrifying because it means potentially setting back research and potentially risking the lives of human beings," West told BioWorld Today. "There's a place for political football and there's a time I understand in politics where you need to return favors and that sort of thing. When human lives are at stake and it is something as serious a cure for diabetes - this is political football - to me it is very serious."

Michael Werner, director of federal government relations and bioethics counsel for the Washington-based Biotechnology Industry Organization, issued a statement supporting West's letter, saying that the guidelines developed by the NIH represent a delicate balance of the health, scientific and ethical issues implicated by the technology. "The guidelines include complete separation between those who conduct research and those who donate stem cells, strict informed consent rules and creation of a federal oversight committee to ensure compliance," he said.

Signed by the likes of James Watson, who won a Nobel Prize in 1962 for co-discovering the structure of DNA, West's letter says, "While we recognize the legitimate ethical issues raised by this research, it is important to understand that the cells being used in this research were destined to be discarded in any case. Under these circumstances, it would be tragic to waste this opportunity to pursue the work that could potentially alleviate human suffering."

West said for the past 35 years, many common human vaccines, including those for measles, rubella, hepatitis A, rabies and poliovirus, have been produced in cells derived from a human fetus to the benefit of tens of millions of Americans.

"This is a very serious precedent to say that the origin of the cells would prevent funding," he said. "To say we are not going to fund embryonic stem cell research because they came from a human embryo I think implies we have to pull all those vaccines off the shelves because the research involved fetuses. This is just absurd."

An NIH spokesman refused to release the number of grant applications the government has received for embryonic stem cell research, nor would he estimate how much money will be released for such research.

However, he did say $20.5 million was spent in fiscal year 2000 on fetal tissue research and an estimated $21.1 million will be spent this year.

But the money is not really the important issue, argued West. Indeed, he said, "the world is a darker place when academic researchers are not able to write grants and work in this area. It's not just in terms of total dollars spent, but also the brain share. If the world's great minds in academia can't have access to the technology through funding, it will be devastating."

During a recent press conference to announce acceptance of a $58 million anonymous gift for Baltimore-based Johns Hopkins Institute for Cell Engineering, John Gearhart, the Johns Hopkins professor who discovered stem cells in human fetuses, said if federal funding dries up, "we will continue to rely on patient-based proof, private donors. But this amount of money is extremely limited. And so, therefore, the number of investigators will be limited as well. So I think it would be devastating in the short term and the longer term, of course, if this work is pulled back, or funding is pulled back on this area of research." n