Bush Decision Draws Critics on Both Sides

President Bush’s proposed compromise on stem cell research drew sharp criticism from prominent scientists Thursday who said that providing funds only for work on a small number of existing stem cell groups may seriously hinder research.

At the same time, Bush’s willingness to allow any federal funding for stem cell research drew a stinging rebuke from the nation’s Roman Catholic bishops, whom the president has assiduously courted. But criticism from another important religious constituency, the 15.9-million-member Southern Baptist Convention, was muted.

In his nationally televised speech, Bush said he would allow the federal government to pay for research using lines of stem cells that already have been created. That way the government would not be involved in the destruction of additional embryos, Bush suggested. Research would be able to continue using roughly 60 cell lines that already exist, he said.

But scientists immediately questioned that claim.

“I was in part surprised by his comments tonight,” said Dr. Douglas Melton, chairman of cellular and molecular biology at Harvard University and a leading stem cell expert. “I do not know of 60 existing cell lines. I haven’t counted them up, but I believe that there’s closer to 10” that have been described in published literature.

“I think it’s very unfortunate,” said David Baltimore, president of Caltech. “What he’s done is exactly what I was worried about, which is to assume that the existing lines have all the power that we need.”

A cell line is a set of cells derived from one or a few originals. They are grown in nutrients that allow them to live and divide--often seemingly indefinitely--in the laboratory. Because the cells in any given line all have the same ancestors, they are genetically close to identical.

The stem cell lines Bush was referring to were originally derived from very young human embryos at a time when the cells had made few or no commitments to become one type of tissue or another. Given the right chemical signals, they can, in theory, be transformed into many different types of cells.

Researchers hope that, by harnessing the ability of stem cells to transform themselves, therapies can be developed for a variety of diseases and injuries.

Even if 60 stem cell lines really do exist, the limits Bush has proposed pose many potential problems, researchers said.

One is that many of the cell lines are owned by private companies, which may not be willing to share.

“We are taking the risk as a nation and a society that private entities will now develop therapies that would have developed publicly,” said Dr. Arthur Lander, chairman of the department of developmental and cell biology at UC Irvine.

Dr. Henry Klassen, a senior researcher in stem cells at Children’s Hospital of Orange County, concurred that Bush’s decision would hurt the public sector--such as universities, where the most serious stem cell research occurs--by making it defer to the private sector.

“What he’s saying, is that the companies which developed these strains can now pursue federal funding to continue their research, but what will happen in the universities? They will be getting their embryonic stem cells on faith from somebody else,” Klassen said.

“What he’s saying is that you can use federal funds to buy a used car from the private dealers that exist, but you can’t build your own car,” Klassen said.

Moreover, noted Baltimore, it is not at all clear that the existing cell lines have the ability to become all the tissues that scientists might want them to become. Some might turn out not to be usable at all.

It is also possible that some of the existing cell lines may have lost their potency or accumulated genetic mistakes, scientists said.

Among leaders of religious groups, Bishop Joseph A. Fiorenza, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, called Bush’s decision “morally unacceptable.”

“We hope and pray that President Bush will return to a principled stand against treating some human lives as nothing more than objects to be manipulated and destroyed for research purposes,” Fiorenza said.

But criticism from William D. Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, was subdued.

Land, who was in frequent contact with senior White House officials leading up to Bush’s address, said the decision would “de-energize” the president’s support among anti-abortion Christians, but he suggested that any political damage would not be irreparable.

“This decision, while it deeply disappoints me, does not grieve me because he does not agree to provide federal funding for the destruction of any more embryos,” Land said.

Ron Stoddart, executive director of the Fullerton-based Nightlight Christian Adoptions, which offers embryos for adoption and actively opposes abortion, expressed a similar view. “This whole debate was less about federal funding than it was about our government drawing the line and saying no to the destruction of innocent life.”

Patients and family members who believe they may benefit from stem cell research offered several different perspectives.

“It does everything the scientific community needs and I think a little bit more because it’s certainly raised the level of visibility for the research and the diseases and the injuries, such as spinal cord injury, that can be helped,” said Kent Waldrep, who was paralyzed 27 years ago during a college football game. Waldrep now runs a paralysis foundation bearing his name.

But Ron Stephens, whose 1-year-old son died of juvenile diabetes in 1994, was disappointed.

“I don’t know that the compromise is going to take us as far as we need to go,” said Stephens, who has another child with diabetes. “That leaves you short.”

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Times staff writers Larry Stammer and David Haldane contributed to this story.