The Community Relations Committee of United Jewish Communities of MetroWest New Jersey voted Sept. 8 to support state funding for stem cell research in New Jersey, including experimentation with cells derived from fetal tissue.

Without specifically endorsing initiatives sponsored by acting Gov. Richard Codey or a competing measure by State Assembly member Neil Cohen (D-Dist. 20), the CRC agreed to put its political weight behind public funding for research grants and construction of an institute for stem cell research.
 

“We have a position in favor of New Jersey spending dollars for the development and advancement of stem cell research in this state, and we also urge the federal government to fund research in all forms,” said CRC director Lori Price Abrams.

The vote was a follow-up to a CRC program in April at Ahawas Achim B’nai Jacob and David, an Orthodox synagogue in West Orange, at which leading rabbinical scholar and bioethicist Rabbi Moshe Tendler said the research being considered on embryonic stem cells was permitted under Jewish law and consistent with the talmudic imperative of saving lives.

“That shaped our ability to be outspoken on this,” said Price Abrams. “I am sure we are going to be issuing statements and working with proponents of the measure” if it becomes a bond issue referendum on the November 2006 ballot.

President George Bush has limited federal spending on research into embryonic stem cells, and conservative Christian groups have been vocal opponents of the research, saying the destruction of the embryos — created during in vitro fertilization — is destroying human life.

The CRC’s overwhelming vote came after a lively exchange of views by two experts on economic issues, Rutgers University professor Joseph Seneca and Gregg Edwards, president of a “market-oriented” think tank based in Bloomsbury.

Addressing CRC members at the Bleiwise Conference Center on the Alex Aidekman Family Jewish Community Campus in Whippany, Seneca argued that “the state needs to make investment that is consistent with the state’s legacy of scientific discovery” and is needed to compensate for what he called “a vacuum created by federal abdication.”

Citing a study he coauthored for the governor on the economic benefits of stem cell research, Seneca said that by “conservative estimates,” a state-funded institute and research grants will “create over 4,000 jobs and generate $335 million in additional economic activity in New Jersey and increase state and local tax revenues by a total of $21 million.”

The study considered five health conditions — diabetes, Parkinson’s disease, heart attacks, stroke, and Alzheimer’s disease — “which, by current scientific thinking, are the likely ones to benefit from stem cell therapies. An estimated 363,000 New Jerseyans currently suffer from one of these conditions,” said Seneca, university professor at Rutgers’ Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy in New Brunswick.

“We conservatively estimate that health care costs in New Jersey will be reduced by $11 billion over the 10 years between 2016 and 2025 as a result of the implementation of effective stem cell therapies — including a $1.7 billion savings in health care costs to the state budget and a savings of 10.6 million workdays lost because of illness,” said Seneca.

Although he said he “would not take much issue” with the findings in Seneca’s report, Edwards, who is president of the Center for Policy Research of New Jersey in Bloomsbury, told CRC members that the “stem cell initiative needs careful scrutiny.”

Although his think tank is often described as conservative, Edwards said the scrutiny should be based not on the moral debate but rather on scientific and funding issues.

“States in general ought not to be engaged in public funding of stem cell research,” he said. “But if you said, ‘Gregg, you have to pick your poison,’ I would say the better place for this funding to come from would be the federal government, not the state government, for one simple reason. With the federal government, we have a model which works, the National Institutes of Health.”

Edwards said the NIH “has a very good reputation as an institution with a broad national view of all the research going on around the country and serves as a very good jury in assessing grant applications for research dollars. For the life of me, I don’t know why we would have to develop a system where you have mini-NIHs all around the country. I think it’s duplicative, unnecessary and I don’t believe the states are up to it.”

While his organization takes no position on the bioethical issues surrounding the use of research on fetal tissue, Edwards told NJ Jewish News he has no personal opposition to such experimentation.

“When you have discussions about stem cell research — really embryonic stem cell research because that’s what the real controversy is about — there is a big elephant in the room we tend to close our eyes to, and that is the politics of the situation,” he said.

“Those who lost the debate” to Bush’s refusal to fund embryonic cell research with federal dollars shifted their focus to the states and organized their own interest groups. “It has an awful lot to do with politics, frankly, and very little to do with science,” Edwards said.

As her organization gears up to mix politics and science as it commits itself to a campaign for all types of research funding, Price Abrams told NJ Jewish News she disagreed.

“It does have economic benefit,” she said, “and the real reason we are doing it is because we think stem cell research is so important and vital and will lead to the kinds of cures that are hoped for in so many ways.”