Do stem cells need a national commission?

Tom Okarma, CEO of Geron, the first biotech company to receive FDA approval to take an embryonic stem cell treatment into clinical trials, is calling for President Obama to appoint a national commission on stem cells. That commission, he says, should be a part of the Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO), a biotech trade association and lobby group.

Okarma has been clamoring for this idea since before Obama was elected. The logic, he says, is that stem cells aren't just some therapy which, like many current cancer drugs, simply increases life span for a few months. "With a single intervention, you permanently restore function to the organ or tissue that’s damaged by injury or disease," he told Bloomberg News.

To me this sounds like hogwash. The embryonic stem cell field is a fascinating one and it no doubt holds great promise, but there's no need to put stem cells on a therapeutic pedestal. Also, basing a commission within a lobby group seems like a conflict-of-interest hornet's nest.

What do you think?

-Alla Katsnelson, news editor, The Scientist

I agree.

I DISagree.

I agree that a lobby or trade group should not be part of a national commission. Stem cell therapies are too nascent to even consider separate regulation, yet. I say let the FDA and NIH do their regulatory and advisory things. When it becomes readily apparent to all parties concerned (including the general public) that a federal regulation is needed, then talk about a national body.

So in other words, you want to wait to close the barn door until after the horses are out.

The government establishes an advisory commission, but this commission is subservient to an organization that represents the industry that the commission is looking to advise on or regulate? This sounds like the very definition of conflict of interest. We don't even need to debate the relative merits of different stem cell approaches to know that this is a bad idea.

An advisory commission is just that - advisory. The fact is the at the people who are most qualified are only going to be found in industry. Cutting edge scientists are not the lifers at the FDA. You also assume that an "independent" commission is somehow immune to conflicts of interest - when we know that is not the case. Better to be upfront and open about potential bias and have the people who are best informed involved contributing to the discussion.

In that case, the Biotechnology Iindustry Organization should create the advisory commission, not the federal government. The problem I have is not with the advisory commission itself, but with the federal government creating a commisison that is under the rule of the industry organization.

That is not what the original post is about. The Okarma quote as paraphrased by AllaTS (original poster) says that commission should be part of the BIO organization, not vice versa. In otherwords, we are not talking about bringing lobbyists into the government; we are talking about bringing the government into leading biotechnology organization. Unfortunately, AllaTS either does not quote Okarma accurately, or misinterprets the proposal by suggesting that a government commission would be made of lobbyists.

With all the controversy surrounding ESC research, do we really need misinformation like this?