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Funding fetal tissue research

In 1992, Senator John McCain agonized over the choice of maintaining his unblemished antiabortion voting record or doing a favor for a friend. He followed friendship, and the consequence is that McCain's votes to allow research on fetal-tissue and fetal-tissue transplants have come under fire in his presidential campaign.

South Carolina Citizens for Life aired radio ads before the primary urging voters to oppose McCain because, the ads said, the Arizona Republican had "flip-flopped" on a promise to maintain the ban on federal funds for research "that uses the body parts of aborted babies."

There's no disputing that McCain was inconsistent on the fetal-tissue issue, and that the candidate who rails against special interests gave favor to a lobbyist who championed fetal-tissue therapies. The lobbyist was Anne Udall.

"I can still remember John sitting in his office, not only listening to me on fetal tissue but also talking about what my dad meant to him," Anne Udall said. "It was very powerful. And he said, 'If it is the right thing to do, I will do it.' "

Her brother, Representative Mark Udall, a Colorado Democrat, says the bond between his father, a liberal Democrat, and McCain, a Republican, transcended party lines and geography. "I think it was very personal for McCain, a former prisoner of war, to see my father just wasted by this terrible disease [Parkinson's] and, over eight years in a VA hospital, becoming half the man he was."

McCain said "the spectacle" of Udall's illness had caused his change of heart. "I'm not supporting abortion to provide" fetal tissue, McCain said in a television interview. "But the fact is, I've been convinced that it is a promising way to find a cure for a terrible, terrible disease."

In a January 1992 letter to the director of Arizona Right to Life, McCain said the group could count on his being "steadfast" against abortion. "I have no intention of supporting the use of fetal tissue" from abortions, McCain wrote.

Three months later, McCain voted in favor of a Senate bill authorizing funds for the National Institutes of Health that included a provision to lift the federal-research moratorium that presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush had imposed on fetal-tissue transplants.

"I have lost sleep struggling with this," McCain wrote to a constituent in May 1992. "My abhorrence for the practice of abortion is unquestionable. Yet my abhorrence" for Parkinson's and juvenile diabetes "and the suffering they cause is just as strong."

Joan Samuelson, who has Parkinson's disease, trooped from office to office on Capitol Hill with Anne Udall in early 1992 and persuaded some Republicans, including senators Bob Dole of Kansas and Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, to defy the antiabortion lobby and cast a vote in favor of fetal-tissue research.

"I see my dad in McCain - not in their ideologies, which are very different - but in the way McCain seems willing to stand up for what he believes and take on tough issues, like campaign-finance reform," said Anne Udall, who is a school administrator in Charlotte, N.C.

McCain was the chief sponsor of a bill, enacted in 1997 and bearing Udall's name, that provides $100 million a year for fetal tissue research. He also opposed an amendment that would have banned research on fetal-tissue transplants.

In laboratories, fetal-tissue transplantation has not proved as practical or promising as once promoted, and many researchers now call the political debate moot. "No one feels it provides any long-term solutions," said Dr. J. William Langston, president of the Parkinson Institute in Sunnyvale, Calif. "The science is taking us in a very different direction."

One of those directions is research on transplanting human embryonic cells, or stem cells. Because harvesting stem cells usually requires destruction of embryos left over from in vitro fertilization procedures, antiabortion groups oppose it vigorously. Earlier this month, McCain joined 19 other senators in asking the National Institutes of Health to withdraw its new proposals to fund federal embryonic-cell research.

Cyndi Mosteller of Charleston, S.C., a McCain adviser on family issues, said the senator's positions are consistent: He would support nonembryo stem-cell research, just as he supports fetal-tissue research, which she feels does not "destroy a human being." Mosteller said the antiabortion group's ads against McCain are "disingenuous" and aimed less at his voting record than at his push to overhaul the campaign-finance laws.
Document: "Letter of Intent"
Human fetal tissue characterization
for transplantation guide


August 6, 1993

Fetus Transplantation of Organs, Biological Resources National, Institute of Child Health and Human Development, National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke.

Letter of Intent Receipt Date: October 1,1993

PURPOSE: This RFA has been developed to encourage research on the standards and methods for identifying and characterizing optimal human fetal tissue for use in transplantation therapy. Joint funding by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases

(NIDDK), and the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) reflects the extent of interest in evaluating human fetal tissues and their biological potentials. Attention should be given to proper collection, processing, culturing and preserving these tissues to assure highest quality control. This research should consider addressing methods for acquisition, establishing morphologic status, determining developmental age and viability, assessing sterility and genetic normality, preserving by cryopreservation, and establishing cell lines.

FUNDS AVAILABLE: It is anticipated that up to six grants will be awarded under this program, contingent upon receipt of a sufficient number of meritorious applications and the availability of funds. To fund these awards, $1,000,000 has been set aside for the direct costs in the first year.

RESEARCH OBJECTIVES The use of human fetal tissue transplants has been advocated for several years as a means of treating a number of devastating diseases. Fetal tissue transplants may allow replacement of tissues and cell products that have been damaged, destroyed, or that never developed properly due to disease or a genetic disorder.

Methods should be considered to optimize and standardize handling and processing of fetal tissues as well as their preservation and storage.