Melton first testified before a U.S. Senate Labor, Health and Human Services Appropriations Subcommittee on Jan. 10, 1999 on behalf of stem cell research, acting as a volunteer for the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation International.

He referenced his own children, both of whom have juvenile-onset diabetes, in arguing for the necessity of developing stem cell therapies.

“I am here today because my seven-year-old son, Sam, has had Type I diabetes since he was six months old,” he said in the hearings, later adding, “The opportunities presented by human stem cell research offer us the promise of significant advances—and perhaps a cure—for diabetes.”

Melton has often reiterated that he wants the U.S. to loosen restrictions on how federal funds can be distributed—arguing that the ostensible license to conduct stem cell research is useless unless the government backs scientists financially.

“It’s like telling you that you can drive your car, but you can’t use gasoline,” says Melton. “Ninety-nine percent of research done in the U.S. is funded by federal funds.”

At the inauguration of the HSCI in April 2004, Summers said that the U.S. government was mistaken in its conservative stance on stem cell research.

“For reasons that are sincere, but that I believe are deeply misguided, the federal government has made a decision that, despite its traditional role as the major funder of basic research in the biomedical sciences, not just in the United States but in the entire world, that this is an area from which it will withdraw,” he said, adding that this decision put the burden on Harvard to fund and develop the HSCI.

Because the federal government will only fund experiments with embryonic stem cells from lines that existed before August 2001­—which amounted to $28 million in funding from the NIH in 2004—but does fund experiments with adult stem cells freely, scientists have felt particularly pressed to prove the necessity for research on the embryonic lines.

George Q. Daley, who is an associate professor of biological chemistry and molecular pharmacology at Children’s Hospital and HMS and a member of the executive committee of HSCI, testified before the U.S. Senate Commerce Subcommittee on Science, Technology, and Space in September 2004. He spoke about the limitations of adult stem cell research, saying that it had been successful in certain instances—exemplified by bone marrow transplants—but that scientists need to move forward with experiments on embryonic stem cells.

“Adult stem cells are not the biological equivalents of embryonic stem cells, and adult stem cells will not satisfy all scientific and medical needs,” he said to the Senate subcommittee. “Claiming that the study of adult stem cells should trump the study of embryonic stem cells is an opinion at the fringe and not the forefront of scientific thinking....Ultimately this will slow the pace of medical research and compromise the next generation of medical breakthroughs.”

The issues confronting lobbyists at the national level can be more complicated than those at the Massachusetts state level, according to Corlette.

“It’s hard for Republicans, who depend on a right-wing base. If you know that 25 to 30 percent of people believe that life begins at conception, then it’s tough to vote for stem cell research,” says Corlette.

Melton himself has begun to collaborate with South Korean researchers, who have relatively unfettered access to government funds. He says that with that kind of support, they have quickly surpassed comparable American research in recent months.

GRASSROOTS SUPPORT

In the meantime, Harvard has secured $30 million in private funding for the HSCI, and one of Harvard’s teaching hospitals, Beth Israel Deaconess, received a grant of $6 million earlier this year to support its own stem cell initiative.