Day 4: The beneficiaries
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By CINDY LANGE-KUBICK / Lincoln Journal Star
Everyone seemed to stare as the wheelchair bumped down the narrow aisle.
They stared as two airline employees struggled, finally calling the pilot to help lift 6-foot-2 Ben Stahl into his seat for the flight to Washington, D.C., and the Working 2 Walk rally.
It hurt his mom’s heart to watch as they tried to stuff his wheelchair into a cramped cargo bin, the flight attendant’s voice calling over the plane’s speaker to announce the delay.
BY MARK ANDERSEN
Lincoln Journal Star
The benefits of embryonic stem cell research will first become apparent in the areas of understanding normal cell development and in cancer research, said Baldwin Wong, policy analyst with the National Institute of Health.
Therapies for diabetes, Parkinson’s and heart failure should follow ” but may be decades later.
In addition to political barriers stand significant scientific hurdles.
That’s been cited as a reason not to do research.
Others disagree.
“That’s why we need to do the research,” said David A. Crouse, Ph.D., of the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha. “These cells and what we learn from them will change medicine.”
Crouse, an administrator and professor at UNMC, believes advanced therapies will be derived from embryonic stem cell research within 20 years, in scientific terms, the blink of an eye.
“We didn’t know how aspirin works for 50 years,” he said.
Crouse has worked for a generation with adult stem cells. Embryonic stem cells were a later arrival. They were known to exist in animals since the late 1950s, but scientists couldn’t get human embryonic stem cells to thrive until 1998.
Then in August 2001, President George W. Bush limited federal funding to research on then-existing embryonic lines ” in practical terms there are 20.
About 200 established lines are now available to researchers who do not use federal funds. There are three main reasons researchers want to be able to experiment with newer lines.
n The original 20 were created using mouse feeder cells. Stem cells like to be around other cells. Methods since have been developed that don’t contaminate the lines with cells from other species.
n More lines would help scientists because some lines are more easily pushed down one path than another.
n Researchers would like to create lines with known mutations. For example, they might create a line with a DNA mutation that increases the odds of breast cancer. Studying those cells would further the knowledge of cancer development and could lead to novel therapies that neutralize the defect. These lines then could be used to test the effectiveness of experimental drugs.
Testing and knowledge are fine, but ultimately the promise of embryonic stem cells is the restoration of lost functions.
To that end, repair of a pancreas or restoring dopamine production in the brain will never be as easy as injecting embryonic stem cells into a body.
That causes tumors.
At the other end of the scale, there also is no expectation of growing entire replacement organs, like a new heart or pancreas.
Instead, scientists hope to grow replacement cells.
Reach Mark Andersen at 473-7238 or mandersen@journalstar.com.
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And it was frustrating later to wait two hours to find a special taxi to take them to the hotel, to a room with no handicapped bathroom.
And it was a nightmare trying to sightsee on the cobbled streets of Georgetown, before heading to the Mall, where doctors and politicians spoke about the importance of embryonic stem cell research.
By the time they got to Capitol Hill for a minute with Nebraska Sens. Chuck Hagel and Ben Nelson, Ben Stahl’s body was worn out.
His mother, Emy, did most of the talking and most of the crying.
Would the senators support a bill that would open more lines for embryonic stem cell research?
They didn’t get the answer they hoped to hear.
“They were both against it,” Ben, 22, says from his parents’ home in Tecumseh a year after the rally.
He’d graduated from Tecumseh High School in 2003, a month before he fell asleep driving on a Sunday morning.
The Blazer rolled and he flew out. His spine smashed at the C7 vertebra.
That means he has some feeling in his thumbs and in his forearms, enough to push himself from his wheelchair to his bed, to propel into a car, to navigate his chair and pass the ball playing rugby.
At first he didn’t want to give up any of his dreams. He knew he’d walk again. He knew he’d be a dad some day and run alongside his kids, the way he used to with his nieces.
He was encouraged by the things he and his parents read on the Christopher and Dana Reeves Foundation Web site. There was so much going on. So much hope in research being done overseas.
But Ben knows that the longer the time between the injury and therapy, the smaller the chances of regenerating cells.
Even if the stem cells were made available. Even if the research were funded.
Even if embryonic stem cell research turns into real cures for real people with Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, cancer, spinal cord injury.
Ben has gone on with his life. He completed the academic transfer program at Southeast Community College in Lincoln. He hopes to be at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln this fall, majoring in political science.
He hasn’t stopped wanting to walk. But it’s more than that. It’s all the little things he can’t do, the bodily functions he can’t control. Falling out of his chair if he leans too far forward, dropping his phone and having to wait until someone comes home to fetch it for him.
At a symposium in D.C., Ben and his mom saw a mouse that had been paralyzed and then injected with embryonic stem cells.
“He walked,” Emy Stahl says. “He didn’t walk good, but he could move.”
It gave them hope.
“A lot of guys, they don’t want to get their hopes up,” Ben says. “They’re content and they’re trying to go on with their lives.
“That’s good thinking, but I think we need to be the ones at the front of this.
“There needs to be a cure so other people don’t have to go through the life changes we have to go through.”
He gives speeches on stem cell research.
He asks people to think about life and when they believe it begins.
He tells them he doesn’t equate embryonic stem cells with human life. He tells them there are thousands of fertilized eggs in clinics that are never going to be used. And that in research, the embryonic stem cells are harvested five days after fertilization.
He tells them it’s frustrating, watching the politicians debate. And that there are laws to safeguard against abuse, against cloning.
But first he tells people about Ben Stahl, before.
I was 17 years old …
My dreams were never-ending and my days were as carefree as I could have ever desired.
Reach Cindy Lange-Kubick at 473-7218 or clangekubick@journalstar.com.
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