If a federal lawsuit filed against the US government is unsuccessful, the world wide effort research effort to find medical therapies based on embryonic stem cells will be badly damaged, say stem cell researchers in the UK.
Seven leading scientists teamed up with Superman actor Christopher Reeve to file the suit, accusing the Bush administration of illegally withholding funding for stem cell research.
鈥淎 lot of leading stem cell biologists are in the US,鈥� says Maeve Campbell from the MRC Centre for Brain Repair at the University of Cambridge. 鈥淟osing them from research would be a big loss.鈥�
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In August 2000, under President Clinton鈥檚 administration, the US National Institutes of Health passed guidelines to allow the federal funding of research using embryonic stem cells, with certain restrictions. The cells would have come from unwanted embryos left over after IVF treatments.
But President Bush, who opposes research on embryos and aborted foetuses, halted all funding and ordered a review of the guidelines as one of his first acts of office. The review process was to include the creation of a review board, but the board has so far never met.
The plaintiffs, including James Thompson of the Wisconsin Regional Primate Research Center and John Gearhart of Johns Hopkins University filed their lawsuit in Washington DC earlier in May. They are accusing Bush officials of skipping over the administrative procedures necessary to halt the research, made legal under the NIH guidelines.
The lawsuit also claims that by withholding funding, the Bush administration is 鈥減reventing or delaying the advent of a cure for paralysis, Parkinson鈥檚 Disease, diabetes and other debilitating conditions.鈥�
鈥淚t certainly would delay a cure,鈥� says Campbell. 鈥淚t won鈥檛 stop the rest of the world working on it 鈥� other researchers outside the US may be able to do the same thing. But it may take longer. If you are going to come up with a cure, the whole world should be pulling together.鈥�
Peter Andrews, at the University of Sheffield, says that Bush鈥檚 current policy is likely to benefit non-US researchers. 鈥淥n a purely selfish note, it鈥檚 good for us, because there鈥檚 more work available for us to do.鈥�
But he agrees that the US research effort is invaluable for finding medical treatments quickly. 鈥淎 major part of the world鈥檚 scientific community is based in the US. Putting a spanner in the works is bound to have a deleterious effect.鈥�