Wisconsin legislators attempt to ban all fetal cell research

Lawmakers in Wisconsin have proposed an overzealous method to banning stem cells—banning, instead, the use of any cells derived from human fetal tissue ever in history—even if that tissue was donated to medical science by women who had legal abortions 40 years ago. This is possibly the dumbest case of not-thinking-through-the-implications that I've ever heard.

You can read more about why fetal cells were so important to medical science, including vaccines, in a Letter to the Editor written by Stephen A. Duncan, a biologist at the Medical College of Wisconsin.

The three types of cells cultured from those fetal tissues – known to scientists as HEK293, WI-38 and MRC-5 – have revolutionized the prevention and treatment of human disease. They are used to create the vaccines we inoculate our children with to prevent rubella, mumps, measles, chicken pox, polio, rabies and hepatitis. Before these vaccines, just one rubella epidemic killed 2,100 newborns, caused 30,000 birth defects and triggered miscarriages in 6,250 women. Polio infected 57,000 and killed 3,000 every year. HEK293 cells have been used to synthesize human proteins such as insulin and blood-clotting factors. They allow researchers to coax adult human stem cells into becoming nerve, heart, liver and pancreatic cells. Most recently, HEK293 cells have been used to produce gene-delivery viruses that could help generate the cells that many believe hold the cures to Parkinson's, Lou Gehrig's and Huntington's disease – diseases for which there are no cures and very little offered in the way of treatment. There is also great hope to develop treatments for diseases that affect millions of people, such as cardiovascular disease and diabetes. Without these cells and their derivatives, our understanding of and our ability to treat human disease would be at best rudimentary. It is clear that the commercial and therapeutic benefit of these cells is incalculable and is estimated to be in the billions of dollars with millions of lives saved.

And the Wisconsin Technology Council provides a nice summary of the research that would be threatened by this bill, including studies critical to expanding our (currently extremely limited) understanding of why miscarriage and stillbirth happen and what can be done help women carry a healthy pregnancy to term.

Clearly, 2011 Assembly Bill 214 is a vast over-reach that does nothing to reduce abortion rates and, instead, is likely to cost human lives. Whatever your position on abortion, you ought to be against a bill this broad reaching and damaging.

If you live in Wisconsin, please use this form to find your state legislators and alert them to the threat this bill poses. If you don't live in Wisconsin, please consider writing to the authors of Assembly Bill 214 and sharing your story of how your family has benefited from the existence and availability of these vaccines.

Thanks, Bill Jackson!