Our three associations, joined by the 112 college and university presidents and chancellors listed below, are writing to urge you to permit the current National Institutes of Health guidelines governing human pluripotent stem cell research to remain in effect. Along with patient groups, scientists, and research institutions, we believe that the discovery of human pluripotent stem cells is one of the most promising biomedical developments in years, and that stem cell research holds exceptional promise for developing cures or treatments for many dread diseases, including Alzheimer's, diabetes, Parkinson's, spinal cord injury, cancer, and heart disease. We believe that the stringent guidelines that NIH developed last year provide the appropriate federal oversight and standards that will allow this research to flourish in an ethically rigorous manner. Some opponents of this research argue that adult stem cells provide sufficient research opportunities, and that research on pluripotent stem cells need not proceed.
Current evidence suggests that adult stem cells have markedly restricted differentiation potential.
Therefore, for disorders that prove not to be treatable with adult stem cells, impeding human pluripotent stem cell research risks unnecessary delay for millions of patients who may die or endure needless suffering while the effectiveness of adult stem cells is evaluated. As the Nobelists go on to say, The therapeutic promise of pluripotent stem cells is based on more than two decades of research in mice and other animal models. This research confirms that pluripotent stem cells are capable of generating all of the cell types of the body. These findings suggest that therapies using these cells may one day provide important new strategies for the treatment for a host of currently untreatable disorders. The promise of this research is real but we would not urge federal support for it without first exploring all of the ethical issues and being satisfied that adequate safeguards are in place.