Spotlight shines on obscure science
Once a relatively obscure area of biology, stem cell research took center stage in state politics yesterday with a debate on the Senate floor that had lawmakers turning over terms such as blastocyst and somatic cell nuclear transfer.
There were moments of exaggeration, as the two sides vied for moral high ground, but also a display of technical knowledge that many people might not have expected. It gave the proceedings, carried out under the flags and pomp of the Senate chamber, something of the air of a graduation ceremony.
''We have learned more about cellular biology than we all thought possible," said Senator Cynthia Creem, a Newton Democrat who cosponsored the legislation that would give the state's endorsement to embryonic stem cell research.
Proponents of the research often speak of the capacity to cure diseases.
''We have the opportunity to not just treat disease as has been done throughout medical history, but to cure diseases that affect today an estimated 80 to 100 million people in this country alone," Senator Jack Hart, a Boston Democrat, said in an impassioned plea for the bill.
But most scientists involved in the research are much more cautious, because it is famously difficult to predict whether any particular scientific advance will bring new approaches to medicine and impossible to know how many people might be helped.
Opponents of the bill, meanwhile, have focused on the legislation's support for embryonic stem cell research that clones human cells. A Globe poll indicated that many in the state support embryonic stem cell research, but that the state is evenly divided over the use of cloned human cells for the research.
In the debate yesterday, Senate minority leader Brian P. Lees, Republican of Longmeadow, offered an amendment that would have removed state support for cloning, and he argued that it would be better to drop the contentious provision because ''this part is such a minuscule part of the overall research going on in the industry anyway."
The procedure, known as somatic cell nuclear transfer, has only once been done successfully, by a team in South Korea. But scientists say that it will allow them to study diseases in ways that are not possible any other way. Governor Mitt Romney opposes that type of stem cell research, leading Creem to complain that the governor was contemplating sending scientists to jail.
The scene that played out yesterday was set in motion nearly four years ago, when President Bush declared that the federal government would not provide funding for scientists who wanted to create new batches of human embryonic stem cells. Embryonic stem cells have the potential to grow into any cell in the body, making them an important tool for research and, perhaps some day, for medicine. But critics object to the research because it cannot be done without destroying a human embryo, which some believe is a human being.
The Bush policy has set off an intense debate over the policy and has also effectively removed the federal government from its usual role of setting standards for cutting-edge research. It has thus fallen to state legislatures to wrestle with the difficult ethical and scientific issues that the research raises and to formulate guidelines.
Over the last few weeks, stem cell research has become the subject of heated lobbying and aggressive television and radio ads that are the stuff of political campaigns, not scientific discovery. But many participants on all sides of the dispute said that what the debate has at times lacked in subtlety, it has made up for in teaching so many people about a vital area of scientific research.
''Can you imagine, television ads over this?" said Dr. David A. Shaywitz, a stem cell scientist who works on diabetes at Harvard University and Massachusetts General Hospital. ''It is terrific that the debate is even happening, really a beautiful thing."
Globe correspondent Janette Neuwahl contributed to this report. Gareth Cook can be reached at cook@globe.com.
