Bush Stem Cell Policy Allowed Koreans to Lead, Scientist Says

President George W. Bush's stem cell research policy allowed South Korean scientists to pull ahead of a U.S. biotech firm working in the same area, a company executive wrote in a letter today in the journal Nature.

Robert Lanza, medical director of Advanced Cell Technology, Inc., based in Worcester, Massachusetts, wrote that the U.S. policy impeded his company's efforts to create embryonic stem cells that are a genetic match to tissue from an adult. In May, a laboratory at Seoul National University in South Korean run by Hwang Woo-Suk announced it was the first to create embryonic stem cells cloned from human tissue.

The Bush policy prohibits the use of federal money to study embryonic stem cell created after August, 2001. Lanza said the funding restrictions allowed the Koreans to take the lead in the field and to propose the creation of a World Stem Cell Hub in Seoul. The hub is to provide cloned stem cells for researchers around the world.

``Why did the South Koreans win this race despite our early lead?'' Lanza asked in the letter. ``President Bush's restrictive policy on funding stem cell research was a major factor.''

Lanza's company put DNA from patients' cells into egg cells months before Hwang accomplished the same feat, Lanza wrote. In 2001, Bush cut off federal funding for research on any new lines of embryonic stem cells as a way of discouraging destruction of embryos. As a result, Advanced Cell had difficulty getting funding, Lanza said.

More Stem Cell