Stem cell manipulation

LAST YEAR, the Legislature passed a law over a veto by Governor Mitt Romney to create a broad legal framework for embryonic stem cell research. The goal was to ensure that scientists at Harvard and other privately funded institutions could pursue experiments that would not be permitted under the restrictions that the Bush administration has placed on research using federal support. Legislators understood that biotechnology offers promise to millions of disease victims and will be an important part of the state's economic future.

On Tuesday, though, the state's Public Health Council approved stem cell regulations that could put scientists at risk. To make sure couples would not feel pressured to create embryos for reasons unrelated to fertility procedures, the law prohibits couples from creating fertilized embryos for the sole purpose of ``donating" them to research. But the Public Health Council regulation goes beyond this to prohibit the scientists themselves from creating embryos in the lab for the purpose of ``using" them for research.

The chairman of the council, public health commissioner Paul Cote, says the regulation merely clarifies what the Legislature intended. But legislators last year specifically rejected a Romney amendment that would have banned creation of embryos ``with the sole intent of using the embryo for research." Supporters of the research accuse the governor of trying to legislate through regulation. Worried that the administration would do precisely this, lawmakers included wording in the bill telling the Department of Public Health not to implement any regulation that would have the ``effect of inhibiting, delaying, or otherwise obstructing research" proposed in the bill.

In May, officials from Harvard and other research institutions sent a letter to the Department of Public Health outlining their concerns about the restrictive language in the regulation. While no one in Boston now is apparently creating embryos in a lab as would be forbidden by the regulation, scientists want this as an option, especially if problems emerge with other embryo-creation technologies.

Representative Peter Koutoujian of Waltham worries about the ``chilling effect" that the regulation would have on scientists. Any experiments, he said, must first pass muster with institutional review boards. ``We don't have mad scientists here," he said. But we do have scientists who will go elsewhere if the political and legal environment does not support their work . The Legislature should act quickly to insist that stem cell regulations stay within the bounds of the law.