WASHINGTON, Sept. 25 (UPI) -- The Bush administration's policy on embryonic stem cell research has stymied efforts to develop treatments for diseases from the cells because researchers can only get access to a handful of the cell lines approved by the administration, scientists told a Senate committee Wednesday.
Senator Arlen Specter, R-Pa., ranking minority member of the committee and a long-time supporter of embryonic stem cell research, said he was frustrated by the effect the administration's policy is having and indicated he would push the Senate to pass legislation easing restrictions and enabling the research.
Specter said 76 senators -- nine more than needed to override a presidential veto -- had indicated their willingness to support embryonic stem cell research.
"The time has come to legislate in the field," he said. "The president may veto it but we can override a veto."
Embryonic stem cells can give rise to any type of cell in the body and thus have the potential to cure diseases ranging from Parkinson's to diabetes. But some oppose the research, because it requires the destruction of human embryos to obtain the stem cells.
The president's policy, introduced last year, permitted federal funding to be used for embryonic stem cell research. However, the regulation limits the number of cell lines to 78 that the administration has approved. Those 78 lines were derived from surplus embryos left over from in vitro fertilization procedures.
At the hearing, scientists testified they have been unable to gain access to most of the approved lines because the companies or countries in control of them are either unwilling to share their cells or have imposed restrictions on the use of the cells that hamper research.
Gerald Schatten, a biologist at the University of Pittsburgh, said he has only been able to obtain two of the cell lines. Curt Civin, a stem cell researcher at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, said he has been waiting for a year to receive his first stem cell line.
The administration's policy is "hindering invaluable research, undermining the wisest expenditures and delaying the day when we'll know whether stem cells can be used to treat diseases," Schatten said.
Elias Zirhouni, director of the National Institutes of Health who was appointed by President George W. Bush in March, was pressured by Specter into conceding that only a few cell lines were available. The agency is doing everything it can to make more lines available, said Zirhouni, who noted he supports continued embryonic stem cell research.
The NIH is responsible for maintaining a registry of the cell lines. Recently, the agency doled out more than $4 million in grants to four companies that control 17 of the lines. The money was intended to spur them to make their cells available, he said.
Roger Pedersen, an American embryonic stem cell researcher who emigrated to the United Kingdom because he feared U.S. policy would stifle research, said the number of available cell lines is irrelevant. This is because none of the lines is suitable for transplantation into humans.
To develop effective therapies from these cells, it will be necessary to generate new embryonic stem cell lines, he said, something prohibited under Bush's policy.
Even if the Senate approves legislation easing the limitations on embryonic stem cell research, the Republican-controlled House is unlikely to follow suit. The House last year passed legislation that would ban therapeutic cloning -- a technique that strives to produce embryonic stem cells for the purpose of treating disease.
Another approach to allowing embryonic stem cell research to go forward is passing legislation at the state level. California recently became the first state to pass a law permitting state funding to be used for embryonic stem cell research and therapeutic cloning, whether the cell lines were approved by the Bush administration or not.
California state senator Deborah Ortiz, who introduced the bill, said at the hearing the action "makes the Bush policy ... irrelevant in the state of California."
States can only provide limited amounts of funding compared with the billions of dollars the federal government can allocate and ultimately, Civin said, the vast amounts of funding needed to realize the full disease-treating potential of stem cells would have to come from the federal government.
The White House did not return phone calls from UPI by presstime.
