UW-Madison's WiCell Institute and Harvard University both announced this week they plan to make new human embryonic stem cell lines available to researchers, even though United States policies prohibit federal funding for any studies that use them.
Stem cells are undeveloped cells that scientists can grow into any other type of cell, and they could be vital in developing new medical treatments.
Harvard has already produced 17 new lines and will offer cells to researchers for the cost of postage. UW-Madison researchers are waiting until they have developed new, better media in which to store cells before producing them, according to Carl Gulbrandsen, managing director of the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation.
\There are errors that creep in as the cells replicate day after day,"" UW-Madison law and medical ethics Professor Robin Alta Charo said.
New storage techniques could decrease errors, she said, but existing lines are getting old and may need replacement for effective research to be done.
Once a colony of stem cells is established, the cells replicate and researchers can harvest them. But to make a new line requires extracting the cells from a human embryo.
""It makes some people feel repugnant,"" said UW-Madison pediatrics Professor Norman Frost, who chaired the 1998 committee that unanimously decided stem-cell research was ethical.
President Bush limited funding for stem-cell research in 2001 to projects involving established lines, including the five lines the WiCell institute already provides.
That means a $1.7 million federal grant WiCell received last year will not pay for its new lines.
Even with private sources of funding, legislation in both state and federal legislatures could restrict or ban certain types of stem-cell research. But passage is unlikely in the near future, Charo said, especially before the presidential election.
Even then, she said, the debate is mostly over producing embryos specifically for research by cloning them in a laboratory.
When scientists use extra embryos from infertility clinics that would be destroyed anyway, she said, ""there's very little controversy, except in groups that oppose abortion rights generally. In that sector it has never been acceptable.""
In other states regulations have driven stem-cell researchers away from universities, according to Fost.
""A lot of this research is now being done in other countries,"" Fost said. In South Korea, for example, researchers reported cloning a human embryo Feb. 13, and then called for a global ban on human cloning.
