From: anb1@ns1.cc.lehigh.edu (ANDREW N. BRIMER)
Newsgroups: talk.religion.misc
Subject: Response to The Fetal Tissue Ban
Date: 22 Dec 92 02:22:49 GMT
Organization: Lehigh University

In article <92354.122446SECBH@CUNYVM.BITNET>, SECBH@CUNYVM.BITNET writes:
>Although an expert panel has recommended using fetal tissue for
>research, the government has banned federal funding of research
>involving transplantation to humans of tissue from aborted fetuses since
>1988.  This ban was forced on federally funded researchers despite
>rigid protocols which forbade payment for fetus tissue to donors
>or the use of solicited donor tissue.
>
>This policy was put in place by President George Bush
>and his advisors who were wooing Right Wing Christian forces.
>
>This political action to appease Right Wing extremists may have
>closed seriously hampered research into what may be a promising
>treatment for AIDS, a disease which has infected hundreds of thousands
>of Americans and millions of others around the world.
>Meanwhile the November 26, 1992 New England Journal of
>Medicine reported important progress in using fetal
>tissue in treatment of Parkinson's disease, in a series of three
>articles and accompanying editorials.
>
>Technically, the fetal-tissue ban only prevents Federal
>funding of research on transplanting fetal tissue into humans
> --  not other work with the tissue, such as laboratory studies.
>But the real impact has been greater than the wording of the
>policy would suggest, because the ban cast a stigma of Federal
>disfavor over the whole area of fetal- tissue research, causing
>scientists to avoid promising studies they would otherwise have
>conducted.  The ban is still in place, and researchers interested
>in doing fetal-tissue studies are reluctant to discuss
>the issue, apparently because they do not want to become
>involved in the politics surrounding it.
>
>Science is highly politicized because it is heavily dependent on
>Federal funding, permissions, and other decisions.
>
>The interest in pursuing the use of  fetal tissue in the treatment of
>AID stems largely from a paper on thymic transplantation published
>in 1987 by researchers at the Yale University School of Medicine.
>
>The paper reported on tissue that came from young children who had to
>have part of their thymus removed during a heart operation.
>The use of fetal thymic tissue would have provided a more abundant
>source of tissue needed for additional research.
>
>It was transplanted into 15 volunteers with late-stage AIDS.
>The transplanted tissue survived,  for several months at least,
>in eight of them.  A total of nine patients exhibited clinical
>improvement two months after the operation.
>
>In one case, cytomegalovirus retinitis cleared up spontaneously, tuber-
>culosis control improved in two cases, "but the clearance of resistant
>Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia in case 12 and a cessation of the
>previously intractable diarrhea in case 13 may be more significant," the
>researchers said.  T-8 cells (different from T-helper cells, which may
>be important in controlling HIV) showed substantial increases in all
>eight of the patients in whom the transplant was successful, more than
>doubling in every case, and often increasing several fold.
>
>The Clinton administration is expected to take a humanitarian
>view of the issue and to lift the ban so that federally funded
>researchers may use fetal tissue transplants in research into treatments
>for persons with Parkinsons disease, AIDS, etc.
>
>Jack Carroll
>
 The research is all good and well.  I am a scientist who is working in the
 area of cancer research.  I do believe that we need cures for the diseases
 that affect us today, but can we really justify the means by which we might
 be able to solve the problem?  I don't think that Christians ought to
 rationalize away the truth that we know and live by.

 -Andy
--