Curt Freed directs the neurotransplantation program for Parkinson’s disease at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center. He wants to put dopamine cells in the brains of patients to ease their suffering. He never thought of himself as an accessory to murder.
He still doesn’t.
Presidential press secretary Tony Snow claims that George W. Bush had to veto increased federal funding for embryonic stem-cell research because the president is “against murder.”
Snow’s was a very cheap shot in the fight over embryonic stem-cell research. The president’s spokesman sounded like who he was before he came to the White House – a fill-in for Rush Limbaugh.
Men and women like Freed, who use embryonic stem cells in their medicine, don’t kill. They heal.
Snow smeared plenty of good people with his idiotic comment. But his boss injured a lot more with his veto. Folks like Doug McCulloch. McCulloch lives in Denver. He suffers from a degenerative nerve disease whose cure could lie in embryonic stem-cell research. McCulloch felt personally hurt by the president’s veto. Congressman Bob Beauprez’s vote to uphold the veto in an override attempt infuriated McCulloch, too. Beauprez may now kiss goodbye McCulloch’s vote in Beauprez’s bid for governor of Colorado.
McCulloch doesn’t condone murder. Like Freed, he condones science that might change the lives of hundreds of thousands of kids with diabetes or people with seizures or spinal cord injuries.
Doing the bidding of a small cabal of anti-science, anti-abortion zealots in an election year, the president gave a figurative finger to millions of sick people.
Snow’s mention of murder was “extremely inflammatory and untrue,” Freed said. “I was astounded by the comment.”
Disgusted might be a better description. The president vetoed a bill that would have paid for creating embryonic stem cells from frozen embryos being thrown away by fertility clinics. The discarded embryos’ donors had to approve.
“Tens of thousands of frozen embryos are thrown away every year,” said Freed, who currently has no stems cells suitable for human transplant. “It has nothing to do with murder.”
It has to do with wasting a precious resource. If converting frozen embryos to embryonic stem cells is murder, what is throwing them in the trash?
Perhaps the president should push a bill outlawing in vitro fertilization. Then, he could go after birth control pills.
Freed needs embryonic stem cells to make dopamine cells suitable for the brains of Parkinson’s patients. He has no other source. The same applies to insulin cells needed to treat diabetes, he said.
“Embryonic stem cells can become any kind of cell in the body,” Freed said. “Very early after an egg is fertilized, the cells in the embryo are all the same.”
Getting to them before they differentiate is critical. New embryonic stem-cell lines are necessary for human transplantation, Freed said. The lines that existed when Bush froze federal funding in 2001 are mostly contaminated with mouse cells. Those that aren’t have mutated enough that they shouldn’t be put in humans, Freed added.
With his veto, the president defied the will of 70 percent of the American people and nearly 60 percent of Congress. He encumbered the country’s standing as the world’s leader in biomedical research.
“We have the case of a University of Colorado scientist who left in 2002 to go to Johns Hopkins University,” said Freed. “Johns Hopkins set up a stem-cell lab in Singapore that he now runs.”
Meanwhile, anti-science ignoramuses in the White House talk about murder.
“From 1988 to 2000, we transplanted dopamine cells from therapeutic abortions,” Freed said.
The doctor and his team never encouraged women to end pregnancies. Instead, they used a byproduct of a legal medical procedure that was headed for the trash. They used it for a much higher calling.
That higher calling is what George W. Bush prevented with his veto of federal funding for embryonic stem cells.
And he didn’t stop a single murder in the process.
Jim Spencer’s column appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday. He can be reached at 303-820-1771 or jspencer@denverpost.com.
