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American Morning

Heated Debate Underway in Senate Over Embryonic Stem Cell Research Funding

Aired September 05, 2001 - 12:12   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: A heated debate is under way in the Senate today over President Bush's policy today on human embryonic stem cell research. It's the first public hearing on the president's decision to allow funding for research on 64 existing stem cell lines. Four of those lines are being stored at a lab in Athens, Georgia, and our medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen has been given unprecedented access to that lab. She is standing by there live right now.

Hi, Elizabeth?

ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Leon.

Leon, there are only 10 labs in the entire world that have human embryonic stem cells, and I'm in one of them here in Athens, Georgia. It's unprecedented access to these cells.

You can see them actually in this canister right here. This is a canister filled with liquid nitrogen and the stem cells are in them. We can take a look at the stem cells. They allowed us to actually get them out of the canister earlier this morning. You can see them being taken out. He's wearing gloves. It's not a fashion statement. It's because it's so cold, and the actual cells are stored in sort of basically what are kind of sticks inside here. You see them taking it out. The smoke that you see is from the liquid nitrogen. These are very, very precious, when they brought them into the lab, they brought just one canister in a car, and brought other canisters in other cars, in case there was an accident of some kind.

And here there they. These are the actual stem cells. Stem cells have stirred up so much interest, because they have the potential, the NIH says, to revolutionize medicine, to treat all kinds of disease, such as Alzheimer's, such as Parkinson's, such as diabetes.

But at a Senate hearing there was a lot of talk about possible glitch with stem cells. Most stem cells were made -- virtually all stem cells were made using mouse cells. So again, these are human embryonic stem cells taken from human embryos but mouse cells were used in the process of growing the cells, and so there's a concern, would you really want to be injecting a medicine when they make medicine out of these cells that contains mouse cell.

What we're going to listen in on is an exchange that happened earlier today between Senator Ted Kennedy and secretary of Health and Human Services Tommy Thompson about this particular mouse concern.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. TED KENNEDY (D), MASSACHUSETTS: Since all of the current cells now derive nutrition from mice cell, all of them now. All of them now, correct?

TOMMY THOMPSON, SECRETARY OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES: That is correct.

KENNEDY: And I'll get to the question about that issue. Let me finish. There may very well be the ability to derive products of stem cells without using the mice. And under the August 9th, that kind of possibility would not be possible, as I understand it?

THOMPSON: All I can do to answer that is there one of the scientists did tell us they think they have developed a system using pre-August 9th embryo derivations without mouse cells?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COHEN: So again, this is one of the issues that needs to be worked out with stem cells.

Are these cells suitable for medical treatment since mouse cells were used to make them grow, or will they have to make all new stem cells -- Leon.

HARRIS: Thanks, Elizabeth, we'll get back to you later on.

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