It’s natural, I suppose, to be leery of science, especially science we don’t understand. Remember those B movies from the ’50s about mutant insects the size of houses? Invariably, the giant ants and spiders were the progeny of laboratory experiments gone horribly wrong, monsters with a fierce disposition and an appetite for humans. And the Hollywood ideal of the scientist/villain who produced these monsters was soon familiar—a brilliant and well-intentioned researcher who can’t see the dangers of his hubris (or, apparently, the value of a sturdy cage). He spent most of his time complaining about the good-guy sheriff trying to save the world and cowering in the corner when the insect came back to give him his just deserts.
Back then, the big fear was radiation run amok, fallout, you might say, from the horrific realization wrought by Hiroshima and Nagasaki a few years earlier. Laboratories were suddenly scary places where all manner of evil might be birthed.
Today, we are debating stem cells, and frankly, some of the news accounts about them have a certain B-movie quality. When Stanford announced last December that it was launching an institute dedicated to cancer biology and stem-cell research, the Associated Press released a story—picked up by newspapers across the country—that suggested Stanford was entering the business of cloning humans. When some people hear the word cloning, their reaction is a bit like that of the villagers menaced by the giant ants—the scientists are out of control! Stop them!
The story was wrong, and the AP issued a revised article to set things straight. Unfortunately, the damage was done. Stanford scientists and senior administrators spent the next couple of months trying to explain the realities of the institute and the complexities of stem-cell therapies.
As you will learn in our story, "Cell Division," Stanford has no plans to clone people. Indeed, the leader of the institute and one of the world’s foremost authorities on stem cells, Irv Weissman, MD ’65, categorically rejects reproductive cloning as “dangerous and likely to fail.” And he chaired the National Academy of Sciences panel that called for a congressional ban on the practice.
We have done our best to sort out not only the science, but also the ethical questions and political maneuvering surrounding the debate on stem cells. If many of us are guarded when confronted with scientific discoveries that might alter human life, we are particularly cautious when those discoveries manipulate life itself. We instinctively draw back, skeptical. Wait a minute—what’s going on here? Answering that question will be critical to the success of Stanford’s institute and to the larger scientific community as it attempts to foster responsible, pathbreaking research involving stem cells.
Even at Stanford, reasonable people disagree about the desirability and promise of stem-cell research. At the same time, some attempts to curb this research appear to be more about politics than ethics. Like those Hollywood writers who imagined a 50-foot ant with a bad attitude, some policy-makers are preoccupied with the grisly potential of rogue scientists, and an aggressive regulatory stance plays well with a skittish public.
Nobody should dismiss the legitimate and profound concerns raised by stem-cell research. Weissman and his colleagues certainly do not. But politicians, in their zeal to constrain and punish bad science, may wind up punishing good science, too.
The stakes are high. Draconian legislation could cut the legs from under the United States’s leadership in what may be medicine’s next great leap forward. Weissman is on record as saying stem-cell research could produce a revolution on the order of recombinant DNA, whose byproducts have saved hundreds of thousands of lives. Already, some leading U.S. researchers have fled to Great Britain to pursue their work.
And for the patients whose lives might be saved, these are not abstract discussions. If stem-cell therapies work, they would prefer knowing sooner rather than later.
You can reach Kevin at jkcool@stanford.edu.
