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CNN Live At Daybreak

A Look at Stem Cell Research in the U.S.

Aired September 05, 2001 - 07:10   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CAROL LIN, CNN ANCHOR: All right, let's get right to our coverage of the stem cell research issue. Last month, President Bush said he would agree to federally fund 64 embryonic stem cell lines.

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GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Embryonic stem cell research offers both great promise and great peril. So I have decided we must proceed with great care. As a result of private research, more than 60 genetically diverse stem cell lines already exist. They were created from embryos that have already been destroyed and they have the ability to regenerate themselves indefinitely, creating ongoing opportunities for research.

I have concluded that we should allow federal funds to be used for research on these existing stem cell lines, where the life and death decision has already been made.

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LIN: So let's be clear, medical researchers hope to turn those embryonic stem cells into any tissue or cell in the body. For example, researchers in Wisconsin announced this week they made blood cells out of stem cells. Each stem cell line is really billions of cells replicated from the same embryo. The 64 embryonic stem cell lines we mentioned are at 10 labs around the world. Twenty lines are in four U.S. labs, two labs in California, one in Wisconsin and one in Georgia. So let's go to that Georgia lab, 65 miles east of Atlanta in Athens, Georgia.

CNN medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen has had unprecedented access to this lab -- Elizabeth, what exactly are we going to see here all day?

ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, what you're going to see in this canister right next to me, ta-da, these are human embryonic stem cells. Only 10 labs in the entire world have them and we're at one of them, a company called BresaGen in Athens, Georgia.

This is a cryo preservation tank. That's the C.P. you see there. These are thousands of human embryonic stem cells on dry ice. I would love to take them out and show them to you, but they might thaw and that would be bad. They'd probably be very upset with me. So, but there are thousands in there, trust me, and you might be wondering, what is the big deal over stem cells? Why is everyone so excited about them?

All they are really is blank cells. But if you culture them correctly, if you grow them correctly, they can turn out to be, as you mentioned, practically any cell or tissue in the human body, or at least that's the hope.

So, for example, you have a blood disorder. Wisconsin researchers already showed you can take these and you can make them into blood cells. Now, it would still be at least five or 10 years away before you could go to your doctor and order up some stem cells to help you with your blood disorder. But the National Institutes of Health has said that stem cells could potentially revolutionize the practice of medicine.

But before we get to that revolution, there are several hurdles that need to be overcome. These stem cells right here and in the other nine labs need to get to researchers all over the world so that they can start trying to culture them to make them into these specific sort of so-called spare body parts. And that's going to take some doing. Some people aren't completely sure that all of these people, all of these stem cells are ready for prime time, that they're in good enough condition. There are also lots of legal hurdles to overcome.

So let's hear from a professor at Johns Hopkins who can tell us about some of the hurdles that he thinks still need to be overcome.

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DR. DOUGLAS KERR, JOHN HOPKINS UNIVERSITY: I think the reality will show that of those 64 lines, very, very few of them will be appropriately investigated, for one reason or another. Some on the basis of their biological properties in that they are not appropriate for further analysis, some of the basis of technology, transfer agreements and patent rights and things like that.

And so I think that you whittle down a number of 64 down to a number clearly less than 10 and I think that will probably be the case. And if that's the case, it is pretty close to not doing research at all.

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COHEN: Now, these are the kind of concerns we're going to be hearing at a Senate hearing today and if you keep watching in the next hour, we're going to have the CEO of this company, BresaGen, who's going to talk to us about some of these concerns and how we can advance stem cell research -- Carol.

LIN: All right, thanks so much, Elizabeth -- Vince.

VINCE CELLINI, CNN ANCHOR: Well, we've heard from one doctor questioning whether these 64 lines are enough. And then there's the legislative side of the stem cell issue. Well, right now we want to go to Washington to talk more about that.

Joining us from there, Karen Tumulty, national political correspondent for "Time" magazine. Good morning, Karen.

KAREN TUMULTY, "TIME" MAGAZINE: Good morning.

CELLINI: You co-wrote a piece in the September 10 issue of "Time" and in that you talked about the Bush administration's discussion on stem cell and called it fuzzy science. Why?

TUMULTY: Well, it was a play, of course, on the phrase that the president himself had used last year in the presidential campaign when he was talking so often about fuzzy math.

Here's the situation. When George Bush gave his very well received television speech last month on stem cells, the big news was his announcement that there were more than 60 stem cell lines available to researchers. It was a big surprise because most scientists didn't think that there were more than maybe 12 or 20.

Last week, NIH and the Health and Human Services Department released the list of those 64 lines and it turns out that what the White House was calling stem cell lines were, in many, if not most cases, the very early stages of development.

CELLINI: Well, the White House, I'm sure, is going to say that their original count is going to be viable. We have the Senate hearing. Karen, what do you expect the Bush administration will say to kind of drive home their point and what kind of opposition will they be met with?

TUMULTY: Well, they are going to probably argue what Tommy Thompson, the Health and Human Services secretary, has argued before, that these stem cell lines are robust and viable for research. Again, the scientists who produced these lines say that that is not the case, that, again, they are very much in the early stages and development and that many of them will probably never develop into, you know, into fully blown stem cell lines that can, in fact, duplicate themselves into all sorts of tissue for research.

CELLINI: Well, everyone's very anxious about this and very excited. In fact, a Harvard biologist is now talking about securing private embryos, private funding to do research. But is that a good idea or can that lead to later rebel research, kind of cowboy research and maybe mixed signals about this?

TUMULTY: Well, one problem you have with research that's done privately is you don't have the sort of, the restrictions, both the scientific and the ethical restrictions that a lot of people would like to see on this research. But the fact is that because it is limited, because the types of research that federal funding is going to go are limited, it is, most scientists will say, an invitation for people to go outside the federal funding system.

CELLINI: But shouldn't we kind of just exercise a little bit of caution? After all, not one human has been helped by stem cell research. This is only in the animal testing stage at this point.

TUMULTY: Well, that's right, and there are still all sorts of questions about these cells beyond the question of whether there are, in fact, 64 and whether 64 is enough. There are all sorts of questions about whether the stem cell lines that are out there are tied up in patents and international laws. There are questions over the fact that a lot of them in the early stages were exposed to things like mouse cells and bovine serum. And those have raised, also, some questions as to whether, you know, in the course of doing this scientific research, we might also be transmitting types of viruses and other sorts of technical problems in producing these.

So it's very much in an early, early stage of research, a stage that has a lot of promise for fighting diseases like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's and juvenile diabetes. But we are very, a long way...

CELLINI: Right.

TUMULTY: ... years from actually seeing this benefit people.

CELLINI: See that come to fruition, see us get to that point.

Karen Tumulty, thank you very much this morning for sharing some information with us.

TUMULTY: Thank you.

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