Lawmakers pass bill allowing creation of stem cell blood banks

BYLINE: Travis Fain, tfain@macontel.com

Legislation to create a public network of stem cell blood banks easily passed both chambers of the General Assembly on Friday after months of controversy and debate.

Senate Bill 148 heads now to Gov. Sonny Perdue for his signature. It would create, in partnership with colleges in the state, banks where donated stem cells from umbilical cord blood and post-natal tissue that typically are discarded after childbirth could be stored.

Those stem cells then could be used for various cutting-edge treatments.

Debate on the bill, which nearly passed during last year's session, was bogged down by ethical controversies over different types of stem cell research. Some legislators wanted language in the bill decrying embryonic stem cell research, because a human embryo must be destroyed to harvest the cells.

In the end, though, all specific references to embryonic stem cell research were removed from the bill.

In its place: "Permitted stem cell research means stem cell research permitted under federal law and Senate Resolution 30 ... as approved by the United States Senate on April 11, 2007."

The Senate bill also states that "any public funds expended for stem cell research" also will conform to those requirements.

With that language, the bill incorporates not only existing federal law on stem cells, but also legislation working its way through Congress. That U.S. Senate resolution promotes "the derivation of pluripotent stem cell lines without the creation of human embryos for research purposes and without the destruction or discarding of ... embryos other than those that are naturally dead."

"The bill prevents taxpayer funds from being used in research that ... destroys human embryos," the bill's sponsor, state Sen. David Shafer, R-Duluth, said in an e-mail. "It also prevents taxpayer funds from being used to create or clone human embryos for research. Instead, the bill advances nondestructive stem cell research involving umbilical cord blood and other noncontroversial sources."

The compromise language was worked out after conversations between the Shafer and Speaker of the House Glenn Richardson, R-Hiram.

The blood banks would be established next year, according to the amendment. They would be funded both by charging people who need stem cells and through an optional donation state taxpayers can make.

The bill also requires doctors to tell pregnant women of their options in donating stem cells to the public network, or to private banks, which already exist.

"It's an incredibly good bill," state Rep. Tom Rice, R-Norcross, said from the well of the House, shortly before the comprised bill passed 158-0.

The Senate followed 48-0.