More MadWire from the 2008 Stem Cell Summit in Madison, Wisc., birthplace of embryonic stem cells.
Do not doubt that regenerative medicine is going to revolutionize health care. There was talk in Madison about a fledgling industry at the “tipping point.” To be sure, the stakeholders gathered here validated the depth and breadth of innovation and opportunity, here and abroad. The scientists, the real superstars of stem cells, painted a clear picture of hope. The financial and legal sectors, including government, states and big pharma and even the international reinsurance industry, knows where this is going and they are not about to miss the action. The advocates for the people in need of treatments, they put the heart in the equation and came away feeling the inevitability of progress. It adds up.
The field of stem cell therapeutics has indeed tipped.
New ways to treat disease and trauma will emerge; clinical trials using human embryonic stem cells will occur next year. New models for health care delivery will be worked out, including the development of global banks of stem cells. A pledge will be made to keep social justice in the mix – not only the rich will benefit from new medicine’s bold promise.
Enough on the grandstand.
Highlight for today, wherein Tommy Thompson takes credit for keeping federal money in stem cell research. You remember Tommy, former governor of Wisconsin, former secretary of Health and Human Services for the Bush administration, former candidate for the GOP presidential ticket. He gave a keynote address at the Summit and told a story he said had never been told before.
In August 2001, Bush called Thompson over to the White House for lunch. The president’s man Carl Rove joined them. Bush, in between bites of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, asked Rove and Thompson to debate embryonic stem cell research. Rove opposed them; Thompson had already been on record in support. “I want to learn about them,” Bush said.
They went back and forth for an hour and a half. Thompson didn’t get specific about Rove’s point of view so let just guess it was righteously fundamental and faith-based. Thompson, with a booming oratorical style that makes the current GOP candidate sound like Don Knotts, intoned thusly:
“Mr. President, you can double the budget of the NIH, or you can give more money to cancer. But do not allow research in embryonic stem cells to end. You will always be remembered as the person who stopped stem cell research. Every American has got someone afflicted by cancer or Parkinson’s disease, or Alzheimer’s. Everyone suffering has some hope in embryonic stem cells. You have got to find a way to allow this research to continue.”
Says Thompson, “I am absolutely certain that if that lunch had not taken place, research in the 78 stem cell lines [ed. note: he means the embryonic stem cell populations that were already in place, even though the actual number that were any good for research was just 21] would not have taken place.” In other words, if Rove had made the call, there would have been an absolute ban on embryonic stem cell research instead of the severely limited amount the president did allow.
Mad
