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American Morning

President Bush Approves Funding of Limited Embryonic Stem Cell Research

Aired August 10, 2001 - 10:33   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.
LEON HARRIS, CNN ANCHOR: President Bush has agreed to allow federal funds for limited stem cell research. Under his plan, tax dollars can only be used for existing stem cell lines, meaning no new embryos could be destroyed. The compromise decision is getting some mixed reviews. Some in the scientific community say it doesn't go far enough while many religious conservatives contend that even limited research is morally wrong.

DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: For many, this issue is personal, not political. Some believe that stem cell research could lead to breakthroughs in the treatment of life-threatening illnesses.

Joining us with more on that, our medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen.

Elizabeth, first I want to get to a number. The number that President Bush used last night, 60, saying there are 60 lines of stem cells already existing. Where is that number and what does that number?

ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: You know, I just spoke a few days ago to a researcher at the National Institutes of Health, and I said: How many stem cell lines are there out there? Aren't there something like 12? And he said no, probably at least 20. Somewhere between 50 and 100. We're counting them as we speak. And this is pretty recently. So I think that it's difficult to count these things. They're all over the world. They're in private companies. So it's not as if there's some Internet site you can go to and say, OK, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. It's sort of a hunt.

And I think the real answer, at least what this person at NIH told me, is we don't really know how many are out there. We think we suspect that there's this many, but we don't really know.

Now, Dr. John Gearhart, who was the first person to ever make stem cell lines, along with another researcher at the University of Wisconsin, he said that his concern is that since probably about half of these are outside the U.S., how do we know under what conditions they were procured? And I've heard that over and over again: that this is a very young science.

The first stem cells were made by Thompson and Gearhart in the fall of '98, so it hasn't even been three years, and so people are still sort of experimenting with how to do it. Another potential problem is that, well, let's say there are 60 now. Over time, that DNA can mutate. And what Bush has said, if you want federal funding, you can't go back and make any new ones. So what happens when these sort of expire?

KAGAN: Also wondering, just from a practical sense -- you know, we're talking about the ethics of it, the "esotericness" of it, but when will it be a practical medicine? When will it be something that when I go to a doctor, you go to a doctor, we'll be having a treatment or medicine that comes directly from stem cell research? How far away are we from that?

COHEN: You know, no one's named a time, because no one would be that stupid, because you can't just tell. However, I think it is safe to say that we are talking years and years. I mean, anything that is still basically in the rodent stage just takes a very long time to get to human beings.

And what some researchers are saying now we could have done this faster if the president had allowed us to use federal funding to go back and create new embryos and get more than 60, and they say that this slows things up. But in any event, we're talking about years.

KAGAN: Elizabeth Cohen, thanks for the clarification. Appreciate it.

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