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Following in the footsteps of California and New Jersey as well as other US states, the Connecticut legislature may this year pass legislation allowing both adult and embryonic stem cell research—a bill the state's governor, Jodi Rell (R), has said she will sign.
In 2004, the state Senate passed a bill to allow stem cell research with overwhelming support, but the bill was subsequently defeated by four votes in the House of Representatives. Sen. George Gunther (R), one of the bill's sponsors, told The Scientist he hopes to see his bill passed this year with strong bipartisan support.
Gunther believes now that legislators have had more time to study the issue, there is stronger support for the bill in both the House and Senate. Governor Rell has said she would take between $10 and $20 million from the current budget surplus to promote stem cell research in the state.
Those aligned against the bill include the Catholic Conference of Connecticut and last year also included then-governor John Rowland (R), Gunther said. "Prayer might help, but by God, I'd rather have that stem cell in there being able to produce the results we have seen," he said. "I'm a Republican, and a damn good one. But I disagree 100% with the attitude the president has."
The proposed legislation was written with the help of CURE, a nonprofit group of biotech companies and educational institutions that promotes the biotech industry and biological research in Connecticut. "The core part of the bill creates a safe haven and makes it clear that the policy of the state is behind embryonic stem cell research," Paul R. Pescatello, president and chief executive officer of CURE, told The Scientist.
CURE has devoted its energies to building a biotech cluster in Connecticut, Pescatello said, and the stem cell bill "makes it clear that the state is behind this cutting-edge research."
Economics is playing a role in the desire to make this bill law. Connecticut is a leading employer in the biotech pharmaceutical field, House sponsor of the bill Rep. Larry Miller (R) told The Scientist. "From an economic development point of view, it is important that we maintain our status in that area."
Miller also has a personal interest in seeing the bill pass. In 1998, he was diagnosed with multiple myeloma and given 3 to 5 years to live. He received an autologous stem cell transplant, and the disease remains in remission, he said.
Catholic Conference of Connecticut spokesman David Reynolds told The Scientist his group supports adult stem cell research but is opposed to embryonic research because "we view it as the destruction of life in its earliest stages." Reynolds admitted it was going to be tough to stop the bill this year. "With the governor's support, it may have a better chance of passing," he said.
"This bill is critical," said Diane Krause, an associate professor of laboratory medicine at Yale University in New Haven, Conn. Krause, who has been helping to write the bill, told The Scientist the bill is more important now than last year.
"Last year, all we wanted to do was make sure that Connecticut was a supportive place for research in adult and embryonic stem cell biology," Krause said. "But now that proposition 71 has passed in California and there are funds to recruit stem cell biologists, they are going to be able to… start to recruit people away from existing institutions in Connecticut."
Citing the governor's funding pledge, Krause, who is also the medical director of the Yale New Haven Hospital Stem Cell Processing Laboratory, said, "That kind of money is necessary for us to keep researchers here and recruit new researchers and to build the facilities needed for the work to get done."
References
| 1. | | [http://www.the-scientist.com/news/20041103/02]
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| | | I. Oransky, "California OKs stem cell measure," The Scientist, November 3, 2004.
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| 2. | | [http://www.the-scientist.com/news/20040819/04]
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| | | A. McCook, "Stem cells in New Jersey," The Scientist, August 19, 2004.
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| 3. | | [http://www.senatereps.state.ct.us/senainfo/Gunther.htm]
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| | | Sen. George Gunther
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| 4. | | [http://www.curenet.org/new_press.php?PressID=17]
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| | | "CURE, Connecticut's bioscience cluster, selects Paul R. Pescatello as new CEO," CURE press release, November 18, 2002.
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| 5. | | [http://www.housegop.state.ct.us/pages/Miller.htm]
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| | | Rep. Larry Miller
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| 6. | | [http://www.yalepath.org/faculty.lasso?id=KrauseD]
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| | | Diane S. Krause
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