Senate President: Let's Wait and See for Now on Stem Cell Funding
By Jim O’Sullivan for the State House News Service
       Top Massachusetts Democrats today pushed for passage of Congressional legislation that would legalize certain stem cell research methods and, still confident from overriding Tuesday’s gubernatorial veto of a similar bill here, showed a preference for federal funding of the biomedical practices, rather than state support.
       Sen. Edward M. Kennedy said the U.S. Senate should follow the Bay State’s lead in embracing stem cell research, which scientists and medical experts say could lead to significant advances into curing degenerative and debilitating diseases. Kennedy said American scientists already trail South Korean advances because of the government’s unwillingness to offer the capital necessary to conduct the research.
       Joining the state’s senior senator for a roundtable discussion at a Cambridge biomedical company, Senate President Robert Travaglini and House Speaker Salvatore DiMasi praised the senator for tackling the matter at the national level, where some conservatives feel it violates ethical boundaries by creating and then destroying life.
       Travaglini signaled that he would hold back on pushing state fiscal support of stem cell research pending the outcome of federal legislative negotiations. He hopes to see regulations lifted so that the National Institutes of Health, the biomedical field’s traditional leading funding
source, to begin bankrolling research. The East Boston Democrat said the state might revisit whether or not to provide the funding “in the fall,”
based on the federal government’s handling of the issue.
       “That is at some future point in time after we have a chance to see the effectiveness of this first phase of the campaign,” pointing to the legalization of the research as the initial step,” he said. “I think he inclines to agree with the researchers that the federal government is the appropriate source of funding,” said Travaglini spokeswoman Ann Dufresne, who said the Legislature is “not actively considering” any bills that would award public money to researchers. “You’ve got to wait and see what will happen now that the research is legal,” Dufresne said in a telephone interview. “You’ve got to wait and see if this frees up private funding.”
       Kennedy expressed confidence that the measure approved last week by the House and now on Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist’s desk – which allows federal money to support experiments using fertility clinics’ leftover
embryos – would garner the necessary votes.
       “I think it’ll pass overwhelmingly,” Kennedy said. Kennedy said that stem cell legislation could highlight a Senate year that so far has been dominated by internal parliamentary debates about filibustering. Other than bankruptcy reform and a supplemental troop-support bill, he said, “The rest of it has been a pretty empty performance [in dealing] with real people’s problem, real people’s needs.” He said, “I don’t think there’s anything that’s more important that we’re going to do.”
       David Page, interim director of the Whitehead Institute, said science could be poised on the threshold of a period of discovery similar to the windfall of breakthroughs that occurred after 1953, when James Watson and Francis Crick discovered the double helix structure of DNA – a finding that led to significant insights into the human genetic code.
       “In some sense, we’re at the very beginning of what might be a half-century or more of the coming-of-age of stem cell study,” Page said.
Travaglini said national Democrats should follow the same strategy advocates of the practice used in Massachusetts, educating policy-makers
and the public about the potential benefits of the research, and the distinct difference he said existed between its bioethical implications and
actual human cloning.
       DiMasi called the passage of the stem cell bill “one of the most important votes” in Massachusetts history. In a cramped second-floor conference room at the Whitehead Institute in Kendall Square, advocates with immediate and personal vested interests joined the politicians and scientists. Toby Yarmolinsky, whose body trembles due to Parkinson’s disease, described how the degenerative neurological disease makes tasks like getting out of bed and using the phone more difficult.
       “I’m someone who believes that finding a cure is better than just looking for treatments,” Yarmolinsky said.
       Type II diabetes forces 15-year-old Adam Roose, a freshman at
Lincoln-Sudbury High School, to get out of bed every two hours sometimes, he said, to eat and check his blood sugar level. It leaves him tired the next day during school and sports practice, he said.
       “After the sports, it’s a really huge problem, because I go low all night
long,” he said, adding that he checks his blood sugar level between 10 and 15 times per day.
Experts say embryonic stem cell research offers them glimpses into some
diseases that adult stem cells do not offer. The regulatory hindrances on
their efforts, they say, do not outright prevent the practice, but slow it
down.
       On Wednesday night, said Dr. George Daley, a Harvard Medical School
professor and Children’s Hospital pediatrician, he treated three children
for sickle cell anemia. Loosened strictures and increased funding, he said,
could have prevented the children from enduring the effects of the illness.“It’s that kind of disease – which is an extremely painful disease, it’s a debilitating disease – that we have been studying for 50 years and need a fresh approach,” Daley said.
       Thomas Finneran, president of the Massachusetts Biotechnology Council and former Speaker of the House, also attended the session, but sat in shirtsleeves off to the side along a wall. Under federal investigation for possibly perjuring himself during testimony about a House redistricting
plan, Finneran left the meeting before Kennedy, Travaglini, and DiMasi
addressed reporters. Joshed about his casual attire during the session, he
joked, “Senator, I’m in perfect uniform. No ties. We’re into research.”