Summers Supports Cell Research

In light of the Massachusetts Legislature’s vote to promote embryonic stem cell research last week, University President Lawrence H. Summers published an op-ed in Saturday’s Boston Globe, urging state lawmakers to embrace the research opportunities available in the biological sciences.

The op-ed marks the first piece Summers has written for a major publication since making his controversial remarks about women in science last January.

In the op-ed, entitled “Give scientists the tools they need,” Summers emphasized the potential for advancing stem cell research in the Boston area.

“Massachusetts must lead the way because the extraordinary intellectual resources of our state bring with them a moral responsibility to help alleviate human suffering,” Summers wrote. “No other area can match the concentration of academic and medical research talent in the life sciences that exists in Cambridge and Boston.”

Summers stressed the importance of the region’s universities and hospitals for furthering scientific studies.

“Without an appropriate legislative environment,” he wrote in the op-ed, “there is a real risk that major initiatives, such as Harvard’s Stem Cell Institute, which can attract talented students, scientists, as well as industry, would be gravely compromised.”

Summers also noted the humanitarian benefits that may eventually result from work with stem cells.

“More than 100 million Americans and millions more worldwide suffer from diseases that may be susceptible to future treatments developed through stem cell research,” he wrote.

Acknowledging ethical concerns about stem cell research, Summers pointed to the safeguards that Harvard has established for such scientific work.

He also wrote that he expects that stem cell research using human embryos to be “almost universally accepted” in the future.

The Massachusetts Senate, and later the state’s House of Representatives, voted overwhelmingly late last week to permit the use of somatic-cell nuclear transfer, a process by which scientists clone embryos and extract their stem cells for research purposes.

Mass. Governor W. Mitt Romney has voiced opposition to embryonic stem cell research, saying that it involves the creation of a life that will ultimately be destroyed.

Romney has said that he will “vote [his] conscience” and veto the Massachusetts Legislature’s bill, although the vote in both houses will likely be large enough to override his veto.

Bass Professor of Government Michael J. Sandel also published an op-ed in Saturday’s Globe discussing the “ethical thicket” through which legislators must pass.

“Rather than ban cloning for stem cell research, the governor should join the Legislature in banning human reproductive cloning, limiting the length of time that research embryos can be grown in the lab, and restricting the commodification of eggs to prevent the exploitation of women,” Sandel wrote. “Such regulations are the friend, not the foe, of responsible science.”

Current state law requires scientists to seek the approval of the local district attorney before conducting research with stem cells.

—Staff writer Daniel J. T. Schuker can be reached at dschuker@fas.harvard.edu.