STEM CELL RESEARCH
Produced by KMTV, Loretta Carroll reporting

[Wally Mohr] "One of these things in all of the pictures I ever take of her, she's always smiling."

Yes, Phoebe Mohr smiles at her husband Wally, but she doesn't know his name. She has severe Alzheimer's, and needs 24-hour nursing care. Wally wants UNMC to find out what causes Alzheimer's, even though it won't help Phoebe. He doesn't know why critics of this research don't see a different picture.

[Mohr] "They oppose abortion. I oppose abortion, but yet again, abortions are legal and if we can utilize the tissue, why not use that fetus and let it establish a new life in another person?"

UNMC is not using fetal tissue now. But the research continues with brain tissue from patients who have recently died. To do that, an autopsy must be done within two hours of death. Families must make quick decisions to donate tissue for research, and few say yes.

[Mohr] "I've thought about it."

Wally Mohr isn't even sure he would do it.

[Mohr] "It's very personal, people's, everyone's thoughts, derived from the brain."

[William Brown/ UNMC Tissue Coordinator] "This is one of the hardest things a family has to do, because they're trusting you with their prized possession, a loved one."

To successfully study Alzheimer's and AIDS-related dementia, three kinds of brain cells are needed. They're called microglea, astrocites, and neurons, which are the most important. These are the human neurons from fetal source. Neurons are the cells that make us walk and talk. They control everything we do. All three cells can be found in fetal tissue, but only two have been found in the tissue from rapid autopsy. The cell Dr. Jenae Limoges needs most, isn't one of the two.

[Dr. Jenae Limoges/ UNMC Researcher] "The fact remains that we still cannot get neurons from this tissue, we have not, we'll keep trying, but so far, those have eluded us.

"I guess the other possibility is adult stem cells, to try to get neurons to grow from these types of cells. People have been able to get limited success."

Stem cells are your body's master cells. The very first cell of life, the fertilized egg, is a stem cell. Research shows these master cells produce the specialized cells that then become tissue, or blood, even organs. Dr. Anne Kessinger studies stem cells in the blood.

[Dr. Anne Kessinger/ UNMC Oncologist] "These cells, we thought naively four years ago, that they all turned into bone marrow, but when we looked very carefully, we could find evidence that some of these stem cells helped replace perhaps a damaged liver or a brain cell or a muscle cell."

So could these adult stem cells, which we all have, become a substitute for fetal tissue?

[Kessinger] "Ideally I think that's what everybody would want. You'd want that for any type of research. If there were a supply such as stem cells, that would be the ideal way to do, right now. We can't bet on it."

A university bio-ethics committee is now debating the ethics of still another source of stem cells. Human embryos. The embryos would be created in a lab during fertility treatments. The ones leftover could be donated for research. Embryonic cell research requires that the embryo be destroyed.

[Kessinger] "Is there an ethical objection in your viewpoint to using that tissue for research purposes?"

[Bob Blank/ Metro Right To Life, Omaha] "Yes. If it were to otherwise be destroyed." "We believe that God is in control, that when you select people, whatever class of people they are, whether it's because of their religion, their color, or whether it's because of their size, their age, and you say this one should live and this one should die, that's wrong. That's inheritantly wrong. It has been throughout time and it remains wrong today.

Whether the cells come from fetal tissue, embryos or rapid autopsy, doctors expect someone will question the ethics of this research.

[Blank] "There are people out there who probably think it's just as bad no matter where we're getting the tissue from. As long as it's a dead person, they don't think we should be experimenting on their remains. The fact is we're not experimenting on anybody's remains. We're experimenting on tissue and cells, but a lot of people aren't able to draw the line and separate the two."