© 1999 Macmillan Magazines Ltd

tion. “We prohibited the funding of researchprojects in which the lethal dissection orharmful manipulation of living humanembryos is a necessary prerequisite,” wrotethe House members.

In testimony to the Senate in January,Varmus said he was unsure whether stemcells derived from the inner cell mass of theblastocyst might come together in culture toform an embryo. If so, the senators argue,then stem-cell research itself, regardless ofissues surrounding their extraction, wouldbe in direct violation of the embryo researchban.

Senator Arlen Specter (Republican,Pennsylvania), chair of the Senate subcom-mittee that funds the NIH and a strong sup-porter of stem-cell research, told the NewYork Times that the House letter puts propo-nents of the research “in very deep water”.

Varmus plans to convene a subcommitteeof his advisory committee to develop guide-lines specifying what stem-cell work NIHcan support. The subcommittee will alsosuggest a mechanism for an extra layer ofreview for stem-cell research proposals.

But this would become moot if Congresswidens the ban to cover stem-cell researchrelying on the destruction of embryos. JayDickey (Republican, Arkansas), principalHouse author of the existing ban, issued astatement last week pointing out that theresearch relies on stem cells from embryosthat were killed by having their stem cellsremoved. “This is precisely the kind ofresearch for which we intended to ban, anddid ban, federal funding.” Meredith Wadman

news

NATURE | VOL 397 | 25 FEBRUARY 1999 | www.nature.com 639

Rabb’s memo as “a carefully worded effortto justify transgressing” the ban on embryoresearch.

The letter’s authors include the Housemajority leader, Dick Armey (Republican,Texas), the majority whip, Tom DeLay(Republican, Texas), and the chairman of theHouse Judiciary Committee, Henry Hyde(Republican, Texas).

Signatories to the letter sent by senatorson 12 February include the majority whip,Don Nickles (Republican, Oklahoma). Lau-rie Boeder, a DHHS spokeswoman, says thatShalala will respond “in a timely fashion”.She adds that Varmus has emphasized that,because of the potential benefits of theresearch for patients with a wide variety ofdiseases, “it’s important for us to look intohow we can appropriately fund federalresearch using existing stem cells”.

But one biomedical lobbyist says “thepolitical environment has changed dramati-cally”. The letters “alert everybody that thisgroup of people is going to fight very hard theability to do stem-cell research under theexisting statute”.

The embryo research ban, first enacted inthe 1996 fiscal year and renewed by Congresseach year as part of annual spending bills thatfund the NIH, bars federal support for“research in which a human embryo orembryos are destroyed”.

The letter-writers claim that Rabb makesa specious distinction by reading the law nar-rowly to apply only to the act of destroyingembryos, and not more broadly to includeany research that depends on their destruc-

[WASHINGTON] Seventy-seven anti-abortionmembers of Congress have written two let-ters to the Secretary of Health and HumanServices, Donna Shalala, criticizing her forthe recent decision to allow federal fundingof research using human embryonic cells.

In a letter from members of the House ofRepresentatives, 62 Republicans and eightDemocrats call on Shalala to reverse the deci-sion. They warn that if Harold Varmus, thedirector of the National Institutes of Health(NIH), proceeds as planned to fund theresearch, the NIH will be in violation of“both the letter and spirit” of the law banningfederal funding for research in which humanembryos are harmed or destroyed.

In a separate letter, seven Republican Sen-ators accuse Shalala of a “unilateral attempt”to “effectively undermine congressionalintent, by circumventing the current federalfunding ban on embryo research”.

Last month, Harriet Rabb, the generalcounsel of the Department of Health andHuman Services (DHHS), issued a legalopinion that stem-cell research is exemptfrom the ban (see Nature 397, 185; 1999).Rabb argued that because stem cells are not‘organisms’ as defined in the law, federallyfunded scientists can work with them, eventhough the extraction of stem cells fromembryos (which requires their destruction)cannot be publicly funded.

Varmus then announced that the NIHwould begin funding stem-cell research inthe coming months, under careful ethicalsupervision. But in a letter sent to Shalala on11 February, the House lawmakers describe

Congress may block stem-cell research

Co-discoverer of evidence for quarks killed in diving accident[BOSTON] Henry Kendall — professor ofphysics at the Massachusetts Institute ofTechnology (MIT), Nobel laureate and atireless political activist — died last weekwhile scuba diving in a Florida lake. He was72 years old.

Kendall was an experienced deep-seadiver who had written books on the subjectand designed underwater cameras. He hadbeen photographing Wakulla Springs, theworld’s largest freshwater springs,accompanying a team of divers from theNational Geographic Society.

Members of this team found himunconscious in shallow water a few feetfrom shore and took him to hospital, wherehe was pronounced dead on arrival. Thecause of death is unknown, but his divingequipment is being tested to see if itmalfunctioned.

Kendall received the Nobel prize forphysics in 1990 with his MIT colleagueJerome Friedman and Richard Taylor of

Stanford Universityfor work at Stanford inthe late 1960s andearly 1970s thatprovided the firstdirect evidence forquarks.

In electron-scatteringexperiments, theyshowed that protonsand neutrons were‘lumpy’, with point-like substructures in

their interior consistent with the quarkmodel independently proposed in 1964 byMurray Gell-Mann and George Zweig. Thefinding paved the way for the StandardModel of physics.

Kendall will also be remembered for hisactivities on many political andenvironmental fronts. A co-founder of theUnion of Concerned Scientists (UCS), and

its chairman since 1973, he was one of thefirst scientists to reveal safety flaws in thedesign and operation of nuclear powerplants. He also warned against an uncheckednuclear arms race, and fought the ‘StarWars’ defence initiative and space-basedweapons.

Kendall co-authored books on energypolicy, arms control, nuclear war and thefallacy of missile defence. More recently, heurged the adoption of measures to curbglobal warming — a subject on which hebriefed President Bill Clinton in 1997.

“He always saw the big picture,” saysFriedman. Howard Ris, UCS executivedirector, says that Kendall “firmly believedthat scientists could — and should — playan important role in public policy debates.His leadership ... was deeply rooted in thebelief that, given accurate and credibleinformation, the public and policymakerswould, ultimately, make the right choicesabout the future.” Steve Nadis

Kendall: an activist aswell as an academic.

DO

NN

A C

OV

EN

EY

/MIT