03-30-2002

HEALTH: Fiscal Solvency, and Immortality Too

Cures for many dread diseases. A sound Social Security fund. Much-reduced
Medicare outlays. And a down payment on youthful immortality for
all.


Now that's an attractive government program, and it can be had for the
low, low annual price of just $1.5 billion. All you have to do, says
William Haseltine, chairman and CEO of Human Genome Sciences Inc., in
Rockville, Md., is to redirect that amount of federal money each year
toward research in something he calls "regenerative
medicine."


By that, Haseltine means improving the funding and coordination of
research into the new kinds of medical skills and technologies-cell
biology, and reconstructive and transplant surgery, for instance-that
could help humans live longer. "It is conceivable that you could
increase the mandatory retirement age, over the next 20 years, for those
people who remain healthy ... to 75, maybe even 80, especially for jobs
that don't require heavy physical work," Haseltine said. This would
keep workers on the taxpayer rolls longer, he claims, and thus produce
more government revenue to help pay for the many new, and cheaper,
therapies needed by an older population.


Haseltine is the very model of a modern scientific entrepreneur. He
started in academia, first at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, then at
Harvard University Medical School and the Harvard School of Public Health.
He launched his first company in 1981, went on to start six more, and then
became the CEO of Human Genome Sciences in 1993. He has also earned 50
patents and worked as a venture capitalist, helping to launch 20 other
companies.


Haseltine's policy proposals are as ambitious as his entrepreneurship. Way
back in 1989, he helped found the Society of Regenerative Medicine and
Stem Cell Biology, and as its current president, he repeatedly pitches the
society's goals to the media and the public. He is also a board member of
the Washington-based Alliance for Aging Research, which lobbies for more
research dollars for that field and against restrictions on cloning and
stem-cell research. His society's agenda, which is supported by the
alliance and many other groups, has been very successful-Congress is
doubling the National Institutes of Health budget to $27 billion, and
President Bush has allowed some federal funding for research on stem cells
taken from embryos.


Haseltine says his society focuses not on Congress, but on academia and on
NIH, which he says now funds many worthwhile, but poorly connected,
research projects. Convincing academia of the potential for regenerative
medicine will lead NIH and other agencies to award the needed grants, he
believes, because the "funding agencies largely take their direction
from the academic community." Haseltine explains: "In part ...
the same people who get grants are the ones who decide what grants ought
to be given-not exactly the same people, but there is a substantial
overlap" in education, career paths, interests, and social
interactions.


The National Science Foundation's recently created
"nanobiotechnology" centers, which seek to combine
molecule-sized machinery with electronics and biomedicine, could be models
for a new focus on regenerative medicine, Haseltine said. Working with one
of the centers, researchers at Brown University in Rhode Island implanted
a fingernail-sized chip into a monkey's brain that allowed the monkey to
move a cursor on a computer screen simply by thinking about it, without
using its hands or feet. Such research could offer hope to paralyzed
patients.


With more federal support for regenerative medicine now, Haseltine
believes that therapies could eventually be developed to help patients
fight off the major degenerative diseases-Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and
heart disease, for example-and live normal and productive lives. This
would also provide a solution, according to Haseltine, to the global
population explosion of older people, most evident in Western Europe and
Japan.


In the long run, he argues, this science will also provide a path toward
immortality. "For the first time we can really begin not just to
think about a Fountain of Youth ... but to create either immortality or
something close to it." It can be done, he said, "within the
next 100, 200 years, if medical science progresses and our current
theories of aging are correct."


But, ironically, citizens and legislators could face many difficult
financial and ethical decisions if this research succeeds-or succeeds only
halfway. If more older Americans keep working, they could stultify
innovation and hold back younger people, suggests Francis Fukuyama, a
professor of political economy at Johns Hopkins University's School of
Advanced International Studies, and the author of a new book on
biotechnology, Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology
Revolution. On the other hand, if the technology does not extend working
lives, it could produce the "national nursing-home scenario"
where younger people are stuck taking care of ailing elderly parents,
grandparents, and even great-grandparents for additional years, Fukuyama
said, at the same time they are struggling to bring up their own kids in a
society in which parenting gets little social or government
support.


But Haseltine, after more than 26 years of working in biotechnology, has
faith that the potential gains from regenerative medicine are worth the
potential risks: "My belief is that the primary impact will be to
extend working lives rather than to keep people alive during their later,
unproductive years."


Neil Munro

National Journal