The Politics of Stem Cells

I thought the president made a serious error on Wednesday when he vetoed legislation that would open up the federal spigots for embryonic stem cell research. Despite eroding support in his own party and careful restrictions written into the bill to deal with ethical concerns, the president proved once again that he is either the most inflexibly ideological president in American history or a political panderer of the worst sort.

This is the most promising medical technology to come along in a generation. It's a long shot, but so it all medical research that is looking for cures that are truly innovative. U.S. firms and researchers that want to compete are being held back for the most arbitrary of political reasons: the desire to cater to a narrow, religious constituency. The Tom Toles cartoon in today's Washington Post said it all: it showed a garbage can outside a fertility clinic with a disembodied voice from inside the can saying, "Well, I for one would like to fill out a stem cell donor card."

Beyond the obvious scientific, medical and economic competitiveness reasons for pursuing this research, there are political benefits, too. It is beginning to look like the president and his party will pay a political price for his embrace of the narrow views of the religious right. In today's Wall Street Journal (subscription required), reporter Jackie Calmes visited the Republican heartland (DuPage County just west of Chicago; I know it well, my daughter, son-in-law and grandchildren live there) and discovered that, lo and behold, most people, especially those who know sickness in their families (hey, isn't that everyone?) backed the stem cell research bill.

"Embryos count, people don't," George Strejcek, 62, said. He and wife Elizabeth, 58, described themselves as former Republicans. "Goldwater I could tolerate," he said. "But with these Republicans, they forget we live in a democracy, not a theocracy."

So there you have it: bad politics; bad science; bad medicine; and, lest we forget, bad for the drug industry, which could use a few promising leads for its drug development pipelines. To find out what their political supporters were saying about this travesty, I visited Drugwonks,, a pro-industry website, run out of the conservative Manhattan Institute. It is part of what its founders, Robert Goldberg and Peter Pitts, call the Center for Medicine in the Public Interest. Well, if there is any new endeavor that would further medicine in the public interest more than expanded stem cell research, I'm not aware of it.

Alas, I found not a word on their site about passage of the bill. I found not a word on the president's veto. They had plenty of time the past two days to attack FDA safety expert and whistleblower David Graham, who was prominently quoted in a New York Times story earlier this week about the problems with Ketek, a relatively new antibiotic from Sanofi-Aventis. (That's an interesting issue I will address at another time.) They also had time today to attack Sen. Byron Dorgan for calling for Medicare to negotiate lower prices for drugs. They also had time to attack the very idea of Medicare adopting formularies, which virtually every private insurance plan uses, but the Republican Congress, in its desire to please its funders in the drug industry, denied the government as a matter of law.

Embryonic stem cell technology holds out the promise of personalized regenerative medicine -- the use of one's own DNA to grow regenerative cells that will exactly match and thus avoid rejection problems. Personalized medicine is something the "Drugwonks" have written about repeatedly on their website. Even their patrons in the drug industry are supportive of this line of research.

Yet, as I said, not a word this week. What's up guys? Are we only web-wonky about drugs when it doesn't cross the White House line?

Posted by gooznews at July 21, 2006 07:58 PM