PERSPECTIVE ON MEDICINE : We Who Face This Nightmare See Fetal Research in a Different Light : There is no logic and much agony in banning use of aborted tissue for research on Parkinson’s and other diseases.
A fight begins on Capitol Hill this week over an issue that, to some, simply offers the latest chance to restage America’s familiar moral dialogue over abortion. But to me--and to several million other Americans--it involves a matter of personal survival.
After decades of research, teams in Sweden and Denver have announced the first successful transplants of fetal brain tissue to victims of Parkinson’s disease, a degenerative neurological disorder. The implanted cells are thriving in the ailing part of the afflicted person’s brain and producing a crucial neurochemical that the stricken brain cells had stopped supplying.
Researchers caution that this is not yet a reliable therapy, much less a cure. But for those of us facing the nightmare of advanced Parkinsonism--a lethal blend of rigidity, tremor and motor dysfunction, eventually robbing the ability to walk, eat, talk, even move--this development is a dream come true.
And more good news will follow: Fetal tissue transplants appear to be reversing diabetes symptoms, and may be a possible therapy for many other chronic degenerative conditions. In the United States, though, this work is a political hostage of abortion politics. Last November, the Bush Administration extended a Reagan-era moratorium on federal financing of fetal tissue research because ituses the remains of elective abortions. Since researchers on medical frontiers depend heavily on government assistance, major breakthroughs that scientists expected are blocked by lack of funds. The Denver project subsists on a bequest from a philanthropist and on the fees it charges those volunteering as transplant candidates.
Some members of Congress are seeking to lift the ban legislatively, through the Research Freedom Act, sponsored by Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Los Angeles). The bill, which would free such funding from political intervention, faces its first vote this month. And when it does, a congressional “pro-life” force is expected to attempt to reduce the discussion to the anti-abortion rhetoric that was used to justify the presidential moratorium.
President Bush’s staff described his decision as a “matter of heart and of mind.” For me, it is a matter of life.
Under the current system of regulation, American women have more than 1 million legal abortions each year. Since opinion polls show support for the continued availability of that right, we can expect that abortion will continue to be legal in some states (if not all) and many abortions will be performed in future years. Yet the President refuses to allow fetal tissue, which otherwise is destroyed, to save lives. Where is the logic in that?
As for the “heart” behind the ban: I just hope members of Congress take time, before voting, to have their hearts touched by those of us in need of a scientific miracle.
If they sit down with my parents or my husband, for example, they will know the chill my loved ones feel as they think about my future. There are drugs on the market that temporarily reduce the symptoms of Parkinson’s, and a new drug may even retard it--but they are only a medical finger in the dike. Eventually Parkinson’s surges forward, leaving advancing dysfunction and death in its wake.
For me, that--never mind my career, or my new marriage or my dreams of having children--is the future. The millions of other Americans afflicted with Parkinson’s, diabetes and the other diseases have their own stories of unrealized dreams; of watching their bodies fail them, and being unable to do anything to stop it.
Maybe the President feels morally entitled to close his heart to us. Since abortion is wrong, he reasons, no benefit should result, even if it would save a life. But punishing me for another’s moral choice--a choice that will be made anyway--doesn’t even out the equation. It just harms more people.
The Swedes don’t mix the issues. They regulate abortions, and then allow the remains to be used to help people.
And consider the French: They have just announced successful use of fetal tissue transplants to living fetuses still in the womb that treated those tiny new lives for inherited diseases before their birth.
Shouldn’t we encourage such miracles? How can it be “pro-life” to stop them? Those are questions my family and I have for the members of Congress. And there is one more.
Someday, the work of the Swedes, the French and underfunded U.S. researchers will reach and help Americans. At the current pace of research, that “someday” may be far away. In the meantime, the disease will continue its quiet violence. So I wonder, will this plodding rescue effort reach me in time?
