Stardate 20010824.0820 (On Screen): Fearless Leader declared recently
that he had made his final answer on the issue of federal funding for stem cell research. With, as he said, some sixty cell lines already in existence (a number subject to considerable dispute), research would be funded to continue with those lines and no research would be funded to work with any new cell lines. He may be forced to reconsider that decision. It turns out that the current state of the art for creating and maintaining stem cells requires that they stay in close proximity with "feeder" mouse cells which in some unknown way keep the human stem cells healthy. It also means there's a chance that they have been infected with mouse viruses. As a result, under FDA regulations it will be extremely difficult to gain approval for human use of anything developed from those stem cells. The answer would be to figure out a way to use human cells as "feeder cells" instead of mouse cells, but doing that would require creating new lines of stem cells which under Bush's rules couldn't be done with federal funding. This is Catch 22 of the worst kind.
(discuss)
