Gard, GOP still don't get stem cell issue

While Republicans in Congress are figuring it out, and even Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist is joining to support expanded stem cell research, Wisconsin's legislative Republicans continue to dance to the tune of the anti-abortion, anti-sex, and anti-science loonies.

But Assembly Speaker John Gard & Co. either fear those fringe groups for some reason, or believe them to be their political base. (Scary, huh?)

The controversy over a bag of needles delivered to Gard ended last week with an apology from the governor's office. But an AP story on the apology quoted Gard's spokesman thusly: "Sending a bag of biowaste doesn't change the fact that you can still do stem cell research in Wisconsin. What we're against is cloning."

Either Gard's people don't get it or they are blowing smoke.

The bill Gard's Assembly passed in this session would have outlawed stem cell research going forward. Yes, they banned human cloning which everyone agrees with, but they also banned therapeutic cloning, which is where the research is headed.

We're not talking about cloning people. We're talking about cloning cells for research.

Jamie Thomson, the UW researcher who is a pioneer in embryonic stem cell research and made a breakthrough discovery, was upset enough about the "cloning" bill that he wrote a letter to the legislature, first reported here a month ago. He warned:

"(O)ur state's economy will be left behind ...Restrictive legislation in the area of stem cell research will create a perception that this state is generally hostile to science. Technology companies will locate in other states, and top faculty candidates will go to other universities."

The current attempts at legislation here are known nationally, and the response in the scientific community outside this state ranges from bewilderment to contempt."

Here are some of the statements in a Journal Sentinel story when the bill was being considered:

Alta Charo, a bioethics professor at the University of Wisconsin Law School in Madison, said the bill goes too far. Therapeutic cloning is important in studying illnesses with genetic components that researchers don't fully understand, such as Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease and heart disease, she said.

Charo said she was troubled by banning wide areas of study at a time when researchers do not know where their work will lead.

"Scientific research is unpredictable," she said. "That's its nature. It's serendipitous. . . . You can't even predict what you're denying yourself."

John C. Rogers, a founding member of the Coalition for the Advancement of Medical Research, agreed. The group, whose members include UW-Madison and Harvard University, advocates for stem cell research and therapeutic cloning.

"There's so much that the scientists don't know about disease," he said. "If you could take and replicate the disease - Parkinson's or juvenile diabetes - they'll have an exponentially better idea about how to treat the disease."

Putting limits on allowable practices would make it more difficult to attract researchers and grants to Wisconsin, he added.

Waclaw Szybalski, professor emeritus of oncology at UW-Madison, said the proposed ban would halt important research.

"I can't imagine how stupid you could get . . . It's like you want to stop vaccination, you want to stop surgery, you want to stop all medical practice," he said.

He said lawmakers are overly cautious on the matter.

"They say, 'Let's wait, let's worry, let's think,' " he said. "Every year they delay, another 50,000 people die."

Calling it cloning is a way to try to play on people's fears and science fiction stories about humans being cloned for body parts. Democrats tried to separate the issues when the bill was in the Assembly, to give the wingnuts a chance to show they weren't really against stem cell research but still vote to ban human cloning. The Republicans rejected that offer and passed their own restrictive bill, with huge fines and long prison terms for any Wisconsin researcher who crosses the line. Fortunately, Gov. Jim Doyle won't let that become law.

UPDATE: Great Minds Think Alike Department: Tom Still, a reasonable Republcan, agrees in his column on WisOpinion.