Just two weeks ago, stem cell researchers in Massachusetts won an important victory. A bill allowing scientists to conduct embryonic and adult stem cell research with fewer bureaucratic obstacles became law on May 31 after a long legislative battle.

Introduced in February by State Senate President Robert E. Travaglini, the bill immediately generated controversy—Mass. Governor W. Mitt Romney vowed to veto it, arguing that creating embryos for scientific purposes could destroy human lives. Yet the bill sailed through the House and the Senate, easily surpassing the two-thirds margin necessary to override Romney’s veto.

The passage of this bill marked a major victory for Harvard scientists and administrators, who in the face of ethical and political challenges have stubbornly persisted in promoting and developing stem cell research across the University.

Gathering a group of top-notch researchers, the University started the Harvard Stem Cell Institute (HSCI) one year ago in the hope of creating revolutionary medical treatments through therapeutic cloning and embryonic stem cell research in a centralized facility. Since then, the HSCI has garnered over $30 million in private funding.

And University President Lawrence H. Summers has thrown his full weight behind the HSCI, telling an audience at the Harvard Club of Washington this year that stem cells and the “revolution in the life sciences” offer Harvard “a historic opportunity.” He compared today’s Boston to Renaissance Florence, stating that the biological sciences hold the possibility of developing “a center of central intellectual activity of mankind” in the greater Boston area.

To support Travaglini’s bill, Summers submitted an op-ed to the Boston Globe on April 2—one of only three he has ever written in his career as University president.

“Recent history suggests that human embryonic stem cell research, once it becomes more prevalent, will become almost universally accepted,” he wrote, and compared it to the achievements of other doctors whose work had been considered “sacrilegious” by their contemporaries—such as the development of DNA research, which Summers wrote had been decried at first, but soon became a standard part of medicine and biology.

In addition to Summers’ efforts, Harvard scientists have also supported the political cause of stem cell research. Many lobbied and testified in support of the Travaglini bill before members of the Mass. state legislature—a fact which Travaglini’s office says was key to overturning Romney’s veto by a wide margin.

But Massachusetts is just the first step for Harvard’s lobbying efforts. Douglas A. Melton, Cabot professor of the natural sciences and co-director of HSCI, among others, has made a point of testifying to national committees, and remains emphatic that stem cell research cannot be conducted effectively without the financial support of the U.S. government.

Currently, federal guidelines only permit the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to fund embryonic stem cell research using cell lines created before August 2001. This creates significant hardship for scientists, limiting both financial and physical resources. Embryonic stem cell researchers are also prohibited from using any equipment purchased with federal funds.

And while the new Massachusetts law sanctions experimentation with both fertility clinic-derived cell lines and somatic cell nuclear transfer, it does not provide monetary support to researchers.

This means that Massachusetts researchers who wish to experiment with non-federally approved cell lines must rely exclusively on private funding.

But despite Harvard’s most valiant efforts to secure private support, researchers say that federal support is necessary to keep Harvard and other universities up to speed with research conducted worldwide, and Harvard researchers have become involved as both advocates and scientists.

PUSHING POLICY

Harvard researchers were heavily involved in the state debate about stem cells over the past few months.