October
15, 2004
Christopher Reeve's Cause Wasn't Just Stem Cells, but Research
By Mort
Kondracke
Christopher Reeve's shocking death at age 52
is cause for deep mourning over the loss of a remarkable human
being and for rededication to the cause he fought for: medical
research across the board.
Reeve, as the whole world knows, was the victim
of a horrific spinal cord injury. But he did not limit his activism
to finding a cure for his own affliction. He was an advocate for
every disease victim - and everyone who could be cured of a disease
in the future.
In the midst of this presidential campaign, his
death is legitimately focusing attention on his backing of embryonic
stem-cell research, but it's getting lost that he also was a stout
advocate of general increases in medical research funding.
Reeve spoke at the Democratic National Convention
in 1996 not about stem cells - which were only theoretical science
then - but about the revolutionary potential of 21st century bio-research.
Whenever Reeve traveled in the years immediately
after his 1995 spinal injury, he risked his life. A sudden change
in elevation or temperature could set off possibly fatal adverse
reactions.
Yet he traveled repeatedly to Washington and elsewhere
to urge expansion of medical research. I got to know him as an
advocate for Parkinson's disease research and for doubling the
budget of the National Institutes of Health. He was a Democrat,
but in the late 1990s the greatest impediment to significant NIH
increases was the Clinton administration.
Bill Clinton wasn't opposed to medical research
- he added funds for politically important diseases like AIDS
and breast cancer and lifted the first President George Bush's
ban on fetal tissue research - but it was not a priority.
Once Clinton personally promised Reeve an increase
in funding for spinal cord research, but the money never came
through. Reeve seethed in private, but said nothing publicly.
It was a bipartisan group in Congress - including
Sens. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) and Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) - who pushed
through a plan to double the NIH budget from $13.5 billion in1998
to $27 billion in 2003, calling for an average annual increase
of 15 percent.
Clinton accepted the plan - and took credit for
it - and the current President Bush promised during the 2000 campaign
to complete it. And, he did. NIH's budget is now $28 billion.
However, the Bush administration, besides limiting
stem-cell research, is now also advocating severe reductions in
medical research funding.
From annual 15 percent increases, Bush is recommending
2.7 percent increases - including significant and necessary new
outlays to counter bio-terrorism - which represent a cut after
inflation. Next year, according to widespread reports, the administration
will call for only a 2 percent increase.
In Congress, the House has approved the administration's
2.7 percent request. At Specter's urging, the Senate Appropriations
Committee has voted for a 3.9 percent increase.
Medical researchers say that the abrupt reductions
in the growth of federal funding will severely inhibit their ability
to expand labs, mount innovative projects or encourage young investigators.
Democratic candidate John Kerry has promised to
significantly increase NIH funding as well as to undo Bush's limits
on federal support for embryonic stem-cell research. It's no wonder
that Reeve backed him before he died.
There's no question that Democrats have hyped
the immediate prospects for stem-cell research. Kerry's running
mate, Sen. John Edwards (N.C.), said after Reeve's death that
"when John Kerry is president, people like Christopher Reeve
are going to get up out of their wheelchair and walk again."
That's nonsense.
Embryonic stem-cell research is still in its infancy
and it will be decades before it actually fulfills its potential
to cure people with diseases like Reeve's or Michael J. Fox's
Parkinson's or Mary Tyler Moore's juvenile diabetes.
But the potential exists, the research is under
way and it ought not be inhibited by ideology. Bush opposes aggressive
embryonic stem-cell research because he opposes the destruction
of 5-day-old embryos to harvest their stem cells - even when those
"surplus" embryos are destined to be discarded at in
vitro fertilization clinics.
The Bush campaign falsely states on its Web site
that Bush "did not in any way limit or restrict" the
research when in fact he declared that federal funds could not
be used to conduct research on any stem cells harvested after
Aug. 9, 2001.
Opponents of stem-cell research also have hyped
the prospects for so-called "adult stem cells," derived
not from embryos, but a patient's own fat, skin or blood cells.
Some dramatic progress has been made with cord
blood stem cells obtained from the umbilical cords of newborns,
but claims that - for instance - spinal injuries have been cured
in Portugal through adult cells obtained from eye cells have not
been validated by scientific review.
The director of Reeve's spinal injury foundation,
Michael Manginello, told me: "You know Chris. If there had
been any credibility to these claims, he'd have been on the next
plane. But the overwhelming consensus of scientists is that it's
not documented, not repeatable - in fact, is scary."
The Bush administration is devoting $24 million
this year to embryonic stem-cell research and $184 million to
adult. That is letting ideology outweigh science. Both kinds of
research deserve full funding.
And so does medical research in general. Since
1980, largely because of research, the average U.S. life expectancy
has increased by four years and disability rates for people over
65 had declined by 25 percent.
Polls show that voters overwhelmingly prefer Kerry's
stance on stem cells to Bush's. They also favor increases in research
funding. If not to honor Reeve, then to do the public's will,
Congress should do as it did in the 1990s - increase research
funding and let the president take credit for it.
