Innovation, influence and business in America's medical cities.

Sen. Steve Buehrer

COLUMBUS, Ohio — Some stem-cell advocates mistakenly assumed that the end of a federal funding ban on embryonic stem-cell research would end debate among lawmakers who worry about the moral and ethical problems around the issue.

But the debate about the progenitor cells sometimes harvested from embryos linger in some states. Ohio researchers and health-care organizations, for example, hope to quash before it’s introduced state legislation that would regulate stem cells.

Lawmakers in Michigan recently started debating new legislation to restrict a voter-approved constitutional amendment that expanded the use of stem cells.

Advertisement

“They couldn’t stop it at the ballot box, so they’re trying to stop it by throwing a regulatory barrier at the research,” Joe Schwarz, who led a group that worked to pass the constitutional amendment, told the Detroit News.

Ohio Sen. Steve Buehrer, who proposed bans on cloning and stem cells last year, said: “I think a number of Ohioans are very concerned their tax dollars get used to destroy life.”

“We need to come together and find a middle ground,” Buehrer said. “If not, this will be an antagonistic issue.”Institutions including Case Western Reserve University and Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center have met with Buehrer to try to convince him to reword his previous stem-cell bills or, preferably, not to introduce such bills this year. The senator and his aides said he’ll introduce a new stem-cell bill after Ohio settles on a new two-year budget.

This year’s legislation will be modeled after last year’s stem-cell bill, which sought to outlaw human cloning and keep anyone from receiving human embryos produced by human cloning from other states. The bill included a punishment of two years in jail and a $250,000 fine for violations. It did not come to a vote last year, and a research ban inserted into other legislation was vetoed by Gov. Ted Strickland.

These legislative negotiations have gripped many of the state’s stem-cell researchers who carry on discussions via e-mail groups and respective political associations. It’s all happening even as Ohio funds new stem cell projects.

Last week, the state’s Third Frontier program provided a $5 million grant to The Center for Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine, which includes money for a pluripotent stem-cell facility — a first for the state that would use pluripotent cells to create any kind of fetal or other cell type. It would operate out of the Cleveland Clinic and Case Western Reserve University.

Previous bills would have essentially killed such a project, researchers say. While the facility would be able to create cells, the legislation would make it illegal to bring in stem cell lines from other states.

Earlier proposals are too broad and threaten to abolish some of the cutting-edge — and economically beneficial — research on which states are trying to capitalize, said Debra Grega, executive director of the The Center for Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine. She wants a law that differentiates “reproductive cloning” that creates a person — which no one favors — and “therapeutic cloning” of cells and organs to benefit research.

“There’s federal guidelines and regulations that are perfectly adequate,” Grega said, adding that even the specter of new regulation would have a “chilling effect” on stem-cell innovations in Ohio.

“We don’t need to put any more hurdles in the path to continue to expand the scientific infrastructure and business infrastructure” around stem cells, Grega said.

Buehrer said therapeutic cloning remains unacceptable to him and most of the state. “Those who are on the proponent side of this legislation would not make that distinction that researchers want to make,” he said.

Buehrer said if stem-cell advocates can’t compromise, he’ll re-introduce last year’s legislation as-is.

Similar debates are already underway in Michigan. Lawmakers are now considering a half-dozen laws that would regulate stem cells in the wake of Proposition 2, a constitutional amendment voters approved in November that lets researchers create embryonic stem cells and use embryos from fertility clinics that are “not suitable” to be transplanted.

The Michigan bills include a ban on transporting cloned embryos into the state and a tight definition of “not suitable” for embryos that “make successful implantation and gestation of the human embryo less than 50 percent likely.”