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Hardly a week goes by that people don't ask me, "Have you ever talked with Christopher Reeve? I saw him the other day on television and … " People are curious about where I stand regarding the paralyzed actor's hope for a cure through what he calls therapeutic cloning. After all, I'm disabled. Don't I want a cure? I would love to walk. But 35 years of quadriplegia since a diving accident in 1967 has honed my perspective. I look at the broader implications of medical research as a double-edged sword.

The Christopher Reeve Research Foundation aggressively promotes research using stem cells derived from human embryos that are clones or frozen discards from fertility clinics. But I want people to know that not all Americans with disabilities believe in using human embryos.

I have served on the National Council on Disability for two different administrations. I've led a national consortium of 80 disability organizations in my role as president of the Christian Council on Persons with Disabilities. I've interacted with thousands of disabled individuals who strongly believe that life is sacred even in this brave new world of biotech research, where humans and their genes may be cloned, copied, and altered. In the course of my ministry, I'm asked many probing questions about cloning and stem-cell research. Here are some of my responses, which contrast strongly with the views of Christopher Reeve.

You reject using embryonic stem cells for research, and champion the use of adult stem cells. Why?

Most Americans, out of a mixed sense of sympathy and awe, look at people in wheelchairs and think: Who would want to deny them a cure? No one better understands the desire for a cure than I do, as a quadriplegic who has lived in a wheelchair for decades. But even Christopher Reeve's chances for a cure are more realistic using adult stem-cell therapies.

For every study he may cite, I can point to scores of success stories using adult stem-cell therapies: At the Washington Medical Center in Seattle, physicians successfully treated 26 rapidly deteriorating multiple sclerosis patients with each patient's own bone marrow stem cells. Of the 26, 6 improved and 20 stabilized.

Here's another example. A Los Angeles neurosurgeon harvested stem cells from the brain of a Parkinson's patient. The doctor cultured the cells and a small percentage of those cells matured into dopamine-secreting neurons. He injected six million cultured cells back into his patient's brain. One year later, the patient's symptoms were down by 83 percent. It's a phenomenal success story, but few in the news media picked up on this breakthrough.

But in the long run, isn't embryonic stem-cell research more promising?

The question should not be which is more promising. Instead, what is right and good for our future? Researchers still make conflicting discoveries. Stanford University Medical Center said that stem cells taken from adult bone marrow do not have the ability to evolve as do those from human embryos. But the Stem Cell Institute at the University of Minnesota found another variety of bone-marrow stem cells that may develop into almost any type of cellular tissue in the body. This finding means a physician could use a patient's own cells in therapy, to lower the dangers of immune rejection or tumors. This practice promises to be more cost-effective, safer, and more ethical.

So why do we mostly hear about research that uses cloned embryonic stem cells?

The need to find innovative therapies that have a potential for profit fuels the biotech research engine. Cutting-edge therapies attract scarce research dollars. That means tough ethical questions take a back seat. The result is a flurry of reports about embryos holding the key to future cures. In reality, no researcher has tested a therapy using stem cells from a human embryo in a human patient. It's just too risky. Even testing in animals has been fraught with problems. Yes, we've all seen the video of the paralyzed mouse that moved its hind legs after stem-cell therapy. But that mouse developed tumors. Embryonic cells grow, grow, and grow. Their genetic blueprint requires it.

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March 2003, Vol. 47, No. 3