Missouri coalition seeks Stem Cell Ballot

[FayeForCure]

A WIN for Embryonic Stem Cell Research in Missourri!!!

YAY!

The Pro-Cures movement gains steam!!

[FayeForCure]

Patients, Citizens Urge Lawmakers to Defend Will of Voters, Reject Efforts to Overturn Statewide Passage of Stem Cell Initiative



ST. LOUIS, Dec. 19 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Missouri Coalition
for Lifesaving Cures, the grassroots group which includes more than 100
leading patient and medical organizations and more than 60,000 Missouri
citizens, urged lawmakers Tuesday to defend the will of voters and reject
any effort by stem cell opponents to overturn the November statewide
passage of the Missouri Stem Cell Research and Cures Initiative.
"Our state constitution now clearly bans the cloning of a human being,
while allowing potentially lifesaving stem cell research to go forward in
pursuit of treatments and cures for devastating diseases and injuries that
affect over half of all Missouri families," said Donn Rubin, Chairman of
Missouri Coalition for Lifesaving Cures. "This is nothing more than an
attempt by a few politicians to push their failed agenda of outlawing stem
cell research and cures in our state. Our Coalition urges lawmakers to
protect the will of voters and reject any effort by stem cell opponents to
take Missouri backwards."
The Stem Cell Initiative was placed on the statewide ballot after five
years of political wrangling in the state legislature so that voters could
decide for themselves if Missouri patients and families should have equal
access to stem cell research, treatment and cures allowed under federal law
and available to other Americans.

The Initiative approved by voters doesn't
require any taxpayer money for stem cell research and strictly bans any
attempt to clone a human being by making it a felony crime under the
Missouri Constitution, punishable by up to 15 years in prison and a
$250,000 fine.

"We have fought this issue on the floors of our state legislature in
the past and will do so again if necessary. This band of anti-stem cell
lawmakers will be forced to look our most fragile citizens in the eye and
tell them that while the rest of the world is moving forward in pursuit of
cures, they are being denied hope for a better quality of life," Rubin
said.
The Missouri Coalition for Lifesaving Cures, the largest grassroots
group ever formed to support a ballot initiative in Missouri, will mobilize
its members and supporters to work against any attempts to undermine the
voter- approved Stem Cell Initiative.
"We are unwavering in our commitment to protect our access to what is
available to other Americans. With the passage of the Missouri Stem Cell
Initiative, it is time to move forward with finding cures. Missouri
patients, their families and the advocacy groups who support this
potentially lifesaving new frontier of medicine will aggressively fight any
effort to block the ability of Missouri's researchers to conduct the same
stem cell research that their peers in other states are free to pursue,"
Rubin said.


SOURCE Missouri Coalition for Lifesaving Cures

[FayeForCure]

Posted on Tue, Mar. 20, 2007email thisprint thisreprint or license this
Summary Box: Stowers on the hunt for stem cell scientists
Associated Press

GOIN' TO KANSAS CITY: With a modern mix of limestone and glass on the outside and a cutting-edge scientific playground on the inside, the Stowers Institute has proven to be an alluring stop for scientists who otherwise might have passed on Kansas City.

HOPEFUL: Headhunters at Stowers are hoping they can attracting rising science stars - particularly those specializing in early human stem cell research, a tough sell until last year's passage of an amendment that protects federally allowed embryonic stem cell research in Missouri.

BIG MONEY: Officials say recruits at Stowers will be offered salaries from $85,000 to $190,000 a year - figures that are comparable to other medical research institutions

http://www.belleville.com/mld/bellevill ... 940763.htm

[FayeForCure]

Posted on Tue, Mar. 20, 2007
BIO BIZ
Scientists resort to panhandling
By JASON GERTZEN
Columnist

Read more columns by the Star's business staff
Jim Stowers thinks it’s crazy how America pays for science.

Lead researchers in the nation’s university laboratories must act not only as scientists, but also as money chasers for the grants paying for much of their work.

“Sadly, many scientists currently devote 50 percent or more of their time searching and applying for funding,” Stowers, the benefactor of the Stowers Institute for Medical Research, wrote in a new book. “If the search for money begins to outweigh the precious time for vital research, it is a tragic waste of scarce resources – the scientists’ talents.”

Stowers, a mutual fund magnate who founded American Century Investments, had the financial acumen, plus the wealth, to do something about it.

He created a medical research institute now backed with endowments worth more than $2 billion. In 25 years, the endowments are expected to grow to nearly $11 billion, producing almost $380 million a year for research, according to The Best is Yet to Be, a new Stowers autobiography detailing his financial services career and later philanthropy

The idea at its heart, Stowers said, is launching smart scientists in passionate pursuit of major breakthroughs.

“We were determined to offer a luxury most scientists can only dream of: an opportunity to put all their effort into their research,” Stowers wrote. “All the funding would be provided in perpetuity, and the scientists would not have to spend half their time writing grants to please the current politically correct scientific research focus.”

Stowers’ passionate support for carrying out this idea has been a major aid in the institute’s efforts to attract luminary scientists to Kansas City, said Robb Krumlauf, the institute’s scientific director.

“We are free to spend more of our time devoted to research,” Krumlauf said.

The far more common funding approach for the majority of science done by university researchers has another troubling twist, Krumlauf said.

Taxpayers increasingly are demanding accountability for how the federal government parcels out its billions of dollars for research. As a result, Krumlauf said, leaders at such agencies as the National Institutes of Health have grown somewhat conservative about which projects they pick.

Scientists who submit winning grant applications tend to focus on experiments that have a high chance of success, often avoiding murkier areas that could produce breakthrough advances or big flops.

“They basically are funding things that you know will work,” Krumlauf said. “The question is, where do future discoveries come from?”

This is not to say that the Stowers approach allows its scientists to avoid accountability.

While they gain substantial support and great freedom to guide their own work, an advisory board of senior scientists eventually does review their results to determine if the researchers are worthy of being appointed for another term of about five to seven years.

“They do not get tenure. They get a term,” Stowers said in a recent interview. “Then they have to fight like hell to stay there. The interesting thing is they love the competition.”


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
To reach Jason Gertzen, call (816) 234-4899 or send e-mail to jgertzen@kcstar.com.

http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascit ... 936177.htm

[FayeForCure]

Posted on Tue, May. 01, 2007

Missouri stem-cell resolution rejected

A Missouri House committee votes against a proposal that sought to ban research approved by voters last year.
By KIT WAGAR
The Star’s Jefferson City correspondent
JEFFERSON CITY | A House panel on Monday night shot down an effort to override voters’ approval of Amendment 2, which protects stem-cell research.

The House Rules Committee voted 4-3 with one abstention to kill House Joint Resolution 11, which would allow the legislature to regulate or prohibit stem-cell research and would ban the cloning of human cells to search for medical treatments.

Rep. Shannon Cooper, a Clinton Republican and chairman of the committee, said the vote sent the message that if opponents of research want to block it, they need to put the proposed ban on the ballot through an initiative petition.

Jaci Winship, executive director of Missourians Against Human Cloning, said she thought the committee was playing politics by not letting the proposal move to the House floor.

“This is an important issue,” Winship said. “It’s confusing and complicated, and people care about it. It should have a full House debate.”

The House Rules Committee vote comes five weeks after the proposal cleared its first hurdle when opponents of research on early stem cells rammed the proposal through the Health Care Policy Committee. That panel had been deadlocked 5-5 for weeks until the chairman called for a vote when one member was absent. The measure passed 5-0 after four supporters of stem-cell research walked out of the meeting to protest the sudden vote and lack of debate.

In the Rules Committee, the measure was voted down without discussion. Three Republicans — Tom Dempsey and Carl Bearden, both of St. Charles, and Ron Richard of Joplin — voted to approve it. But two Republicans — Cooper and Michael Parson of Bolivar — and two Democrats — John Burnett and Mike Talboy, both of Kansas City — voted to kill it. The third Democrat, Connie Johnson of St. Louis, abstained.

To reach Kit Wagar, call (816) 234-4440 or send e-mail to kwagar@kcstar.com.


http://www.kansascity.com/153/story/89709.html

[FayeForCure]

Posted on Thu, Sep. 20, 2007 10:15 PMreprint or license print email Digg it del.icio.us AIM
COMMENTARY
Missouri curators must defend stem-cell research
By BARBARA SHELLY
Reaction rolled in after Gordon H. Lamb, interim president of the University of Missouri system, issued a strong statement in defense of embryonic stem-cell research.

Most of it was grateful.

From a mother in Rolla, Mo.: “I have an 18-year-old diabetic daughter who just started going to school at the University of Missouri. We sincerely believe her best hope for a cure to her diabetes is via stem-cell research.”

From a retired professor of surgery at the University of Missouri-Columbia: “It is great to have an interim president who is not afraid to express his honest opinion about the issues that impinge on academic freedom and how these will determine the future of a great university.”

Employees at universities around the state weighed in. The chancellors of the university system’s four campuses issued their own statement.

All deemed Lamb courageous for his declaration that university researchers must have protection from “the few who, seeking to reinforce their own personal biases, would shut down research done by highly competent and dedicated scientists.”

From one quarter, though, the reaction was anything but laudatory.

My request for reaction to Lamb’s statement turned up a combative e-mail from David Wasinger, a member of the university system’s Board of Curators.

In the e-mail to Lamb and other trustees, Wasinger fretted that Lamb’s statement may cause trouble with the legislature and “put our future president in an awkward position.”

He included a message he said someone had sent him in response to Lamb’s statement. Wasinger said he was withholding the correspondent’s name because “I did not ask for permission to distribute.”

The anonymous writer began by comparing embryonic stem-cell research to medical experiments the Nazis conducted on Jewish prisoners during World War II, and also to the despicable Tuskegee syphilis study conducted on impoverished black men for 40 years starting in the 1930s.

He proceeded to call upon the university to “step away from research that most Missourians consider to be morally repugnant.”

Of course, most Missourians don’t think scientific research seeking to cure diseases with early stem cells is repugnant at all. A majority of voters last year supported a constitutional amendment protecting scientific research that is not banned by federal law.

The anonymous screed contained other errors. But its flaws aren’t the issue here.

The issue is: Does Wasinger, a member of the university system’s governing board, really believe that lab-dish research on a cluster of cells smaller than the head of a pin is comparable to atrocities committed against human beings?

If he does, that’s a problem. If he doesn’t, why is he passing along such tripe?

I posed those questions to Wasinger in an e-mail. Through a university system spokesman, he said that stem-cell research was “not his issue,” and the e-mail he passed along did not “necessarily” reflect his views.

“He was merely sharing a viewpoint that he had received,” the spokesman said.

Not exactly an enlightening response.

Being a curator doesn’t require one to personally support somatic cell nuclear transfer, the form of research that anti-abortion groups have turned into an endless political hurdle in Missouri.

But a curator should have a healthy respect for the right of university faculty to proceed with work that is deemed ethical by mainstream scientific associations, as is the case with all forms of embryonic stem-cell research.

What Wasinger doesn’t seem to comprehend is that scientists cherish that freedom, and an attack on one form of research is considered a threat to others.

Lamb had it right when he said that a group working toward a constitutional amendment to ban the somatic cell procedure “is taking the first step to controlling and impeding Missouri’s research agenda and potential for future research.”

It’s bad enough that some politicians are abetting that effort; for a university curator to do so is unconscionable.

Now is the time for the remaining eight members of the university system’s Board of Curators to step up with a statement defending freedom of research at the four universities. Wasinger can either join in or stand in isolation.


Barbara Shelly is a member of the Editorial Board. To reach her, call 816-234-4594 or send e-mail to bshelly@kcstar.com.



http://www.kansascity.com/273/story/284389.html

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