Alabama (Stem Cell)

ALABAMA IS ONE of 26 U.S. states with no legislation pertinent to stem cell research or cloning. Artur Davis, a congressman from Alabama’s 7th district with plans to run for governor or senator in 2010, has a legislative record primarily focused on social and health issues. Though he has largely voted with the Democratic Party during his time in the House, some of the rare exceptions are bills related to abortion and cloning, when he takes the conservative position. He was the lead Democratic sponsor in 2005 of the Stem Cell Therapeutic and Research Act, a bill establishing a national cord blood bank, expanding the federal bone marrow stem cell program, and notably, establishing a data program to encourage doctors and patients to explore treatment options for their ailments. Davis’s cosponsor was Chris Smith, a New Jersey Republican.

A popular position among Alabama moderates is that human embryonic stem cell research should be opposed, and other stem cell research should be augmented. These moderates contend that non-embryonic stem cells have not been sufficiently explored and that there is yet no reason to believe that embryonic stem cells offer significantly more treatment possibilities than nonembryonic ones do. Because human embryonic stem cell-derived treatments are still available thanks to private and state funding, increasing awareness of non-embryonic stem cell-derived treatments is important to this group. There is perhaps a poetic contrast in the recommendation of umbilical cord stem cell blood over embryonic stem cells. That said, in January 2007, Davis voted with the Democratic Party to expand the number of embryonic stem cell lines available for federal funded research.

Republican Jeff Sessions, the junior senator from Alabama, is considered one of the most conservative senators on the Hill. He has consistently voted against abortion, cloning, and human embryonic stem cell research. He voted in favor of the HOPE Stem Cell Research Act of 2007 to promote the derivation of pluripotent stem cell lines from naturally dead embryos (embryos that died of some cause not related to the research). He has repeatedly spoken out, in public and on the Senate floor, against embryonic stem cell research and has criticized its proponents for referring to limits on embryonic stem cell research as bans on stem cell research, when adult stem cells are still available. Senior Senator Richard Shelby, also a Republican, has not been as vocal as his colleague but has voted similarly on the pertinent issues.

The case of Carron Morrow was widely reported. A 58-year-old mother of two from Alabama, Morrow suffered a heart attack in 2006 while preparing for an outdoor party. In the aftermath of the attack, her heart was functioning at less than half the normal level, and she had difficulty walking without assistance. She was placed on a heart transplant list and, while waiting, agreed to join an adult stem cell therapeutic study at the Texas Heart Institute in Houston. On her birthday, October 16, 2006, surgeons removed bone marrow cells from her hip and, after cultivation, injected them into her heart. She recovered fully in less than a year, and her case has been used to underscore the efficacy of nonembryonic stem cells; Morrow herself declares that she’s proof that adult stem cells “work far better.”

THE TUSKEGEE STUDY

A spectre often raised in Alabama in discussions of medical ethics is that of the Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male, which was conducted from 1932 to 1972. The study was conducted in Tuskegee, Alabama, on poor and mostly illiterate black men—generally sharecroppers— who, after being diagnosed with syphilis, were not informed of their diagnosis but simply told they had “bad blood” and offered meals, burial insurance, and trips to the clinic where the study was conducted. The study group was formed by the U.S. Public Health Service and blatantly disregarded any need for informed consent on the part of its participants. Rather, when consent was given, it was given in response to deceptive questions: patients might consent to a spinal tap when told it was a free treatment, for instance, with the implication being that it would be part of their cure. In fact, the doctors had no intention of curing them, though for the bulk of the period of the study they could have done so (penicillin had been adopted as an effective treatment in 1947, 15 years into the 40-year study). The men were simply observed until they died, and in the meantime, 40 of their wives became infected with the disease and 19 of their children were born with congenital syphilis. Famously, Dr. John Heller, the head of the study at the time when it came to public attention, defended its ethical incursions by arguing that the men in the study were not sick patients but “clinical material.”

Alabama is one of 26 U.S. states with no legislation related to stem cell research or cloning.

Alabama is one of 26 U.S. states with no legislation related to stem cell research or cloning.

The story was brought to public attention when San Francisco Public Health Service employee Peter Buxtun complained about it to his superiors in 1966, but when nothing happened—in fact, the Centers for Disease Control affirmed that the study needed to continue until it was “complete” (at which point the subjects would be autopsied)—he went to the press. In 1972 a Congressional hearing determined that the study was medically unjustified and terminated it immediately. Lawsuits inevitably followed, along with medical and research legislation to rewrite the regulations governing interaction with human subjects in any scientific study.

The Tuskegee Study is often conjured up in Alabama’s discussions of abortion, fetal tissue, cloning, and embryonic stem cell research. All of these things, in the conservative view, require the involvement of nonconsenting life—potential life, unborn life, or former life—treated as “clinical material.” Although this is especially pertinent when cloning is the topic at hand because of the fears that clones would be treated as nonhuman and subjected to the sort of abuse the Tuskegee Study participants were, Senator Sessions and others also bring it up frequently in reference to the treatment of embryos in stem cell research.

Interestingly, in a 2002 poll conducted by Research America, 63 percent of Alabamans believed therapeutic cloning should be allowed (31 percent opposed it), but only 13 percent thought cloning should be legal if conducted for reproductive reasons (84 percent opposed it).

Next post:

Previous post: