Jersey would become first state to finance research
BY ROBERT SCHWANEBERG AND KASI ADDISON
Star-Ledger Staff
Sunday, February 22, 2004
In a bid to make New Jersey a center for medical breakthroughs, Gov. James E. McGreevey will propose spending $6.5 million for the creation of a stem-cell research institute when he unveils his budget Tuesday.
If the proposal survives legislative review, it will make New Jersey the first state to use taxpayer money for a line of research that is both highly promising and intensely controversial.
The New Brunswick-based institute, to be managed jointly by Rutgers University and the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, would be financed at the outset with a $6.5 million state grant and $3.5 million in private money, a McGreevey administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said yesterday.
The plan is projected to cost $ 50 million in both public and private funds over five years, with half of that money earmarked for construction costs. The remainder would pay for research and the recruitment of top scientists.
"This will demonstrate that New Jersey is open and welcome for both researchers and companies to work in groundbreaking medical treatment," the administration official said.
Earlier this year, McGreevey signed legislation making New Jersey the second state, after California, to officially encourage embryonic stem-cell research. But the measure came under sharp debate, passing the Assembly by a single vote.
Moreover, it was directly at odds with the position taken by many other states and by the Bush administration, which has severely restricted federal funding for such research.
Yet the potential of stem-cell research is so great, advocates say, that it should not be suppressed.
"The idea that we can replace dead, dying and deranged cells means we are on the threshold of a whole new approach to regenerative and rehabilitative medicine, and it affects a multitude of diseases," said Ira Black, the co-author of the proposal to create the institute.
Black, director of the stem-cell research center UMDNJ-Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in New Brunswick, said the New Jersey research center would represent "a dawning of a new day in medicine."
The research, which involves the removal of stem cells from human embryos, holds the key to developing cures for Parkinson's disease, diabetes, cancer, Alzheimer's disease, spinal cord injuries and a host of other maladies, Black and other researchers say.
But because the research can involve destroying a human embryo -- and in some cases, a cloned human embryo -- it has been denounced as unethical by the state's Catholic bishops and by anti-abortion groups.
President Bush's regulation limits federal funding to research on only those stem cells that already had been extracted from embryos before the measure was enacted in August 2001. The regulation still permits federal funding of adult stem-cell research.
Opponents of the governor's plan, first reported in the New York Times, point to a recent announcement by South Korean researchers that they have successfully created a cloned human embryo before destroying it and harvesting its stem cells.
Marie Tasy, director for New Jersey Right to Life, vowed to "work very hard to get the funding for embryonic stem-cell research removed from the state budget."
"Most people find it morally objectionable to have their tax dollars used to create human life for the sole purpose of destruction," Tasy said. "I would hope the people in New Jersey would oppose this."
Assemblyman Neil Cohen (D-Union), who led the fight for the stem-cell research bill in the lower house, yesterday hailed McGreevey's commitment of state funding as "visionary."
"It will send a message around the world that New Jersey is committed to stem-cell research," Cohen said.
He dismissed claims that the bill would allow researchers to clone a human embryo, implant it into a woman, and abort it to harvest its organs shortly before birth, saying anyone who implanted a cloned embryo would face criminal prosecution.
The New Jersey stem-cell research law officially encourages the same technique the Korean researchers used, which is sometimes called "therapeutic cloning." However, it makes it a crime to create a human baby using cloning. In between the creation of a cloned embryo and the birth of a living human clone, the law leaves a huge gray area.
Sensitive to the controversy likely to be ignited by the governor's proposal, researchers affiliated with the project stressed yesterday they have no interest in cloning people.
"We want to make it crystal clear that no one wants to create new human beings," Black said.
The aim, insisted Kenneth Breslauer, dean of Rutgers' Life Sciences Department and a colleague of Black on the project, is simply to better treat ailments that kill or maim millions of people.
"We are talking about basic research for a serious biomedical advantage," Breslauer said. "We are talking about curing diseases."
Black said that if people had a greater understanding of the research's potential, support for it would be far more widespread.
And he cautioned that failure to pursue stem-cell research could drive breakthroughs -- and some of the best scientists -- to other countries.
"If the U.S. doesn't assume this role, the scientific advancements will go elsewhere, and so will the talent," Black said. "Doing nothing is devastating to this country's interests."
Staff writers Mark Mueller and Joe Donohue contributed to this report
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