James Thomson Interview (page: 2 / 8) Father of Stem Cell Research	Print Interview

You've said that you had qualms from the beginning, because in your work with the human embryo stem cells, you necessarily destroyed the embryo.

James Thomson: I wouldn't say qualms exactly.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. I had to do a lot of soul searching about whether this was something I wanted to do. It's actually a fairly complex issue, but what it comes down to for me is fairly simple, is that the way in vitro fertilization is currently practiced, embryos are made that the couples ultimately don't want. And sometimes because they've had the family that they want, or whatever reason, and they have to come to a personal decision of what to do with those embryos. In our case, they had the option to donate to some other couples if they wanted to attempt to have babies. They could simply discard them, or they could donate them to research if they want, through this consent process. So for the embryos we use, they would simply have been thrown out had not they been used for this research. And for me it would be a better thing to do that than to simply throw them out, since there is a great deal of value to doing this research.

[ Key to Success ] Integrity

Potentially saving many, many lives.

James Thomson: Yeah, and again, if the decision's already been made that otherwise they'll be thrown out, then it's not like if you didn't do this research those embryos would be saved.

Did you anticipate this being such a huge political issue?

James Thomson: Yes and no.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Dolly had been cloned in 1997, and everybody had been tuned up for this story. And I could see what happened to Ian Wilmut, so I was quite aware what I was getting into. What I didn't anticipate is how long it would last, because it's ten years now and it's still a politically viable story, right? I thought people would get tired of it mostly in three months, and by six months they'd be thinking about something else, and now we're ten years into it. So the political process in the election of George Bush stretched it out a great deal, much longer than I anticipated. I also thought it would be a lot nastier. People were very civil in Madison, Wisconsin. Madison itself is very liberal, but we're in a very conservative state. Nonetheless, the discourse is very civil, and I appreciated that.

Did you have any personal confrontations about this?

James Thomson: Yeah. People would approach me on the street now and then. But like I say, it was pretty civil. It was never violent.

What about your friends and family?

James Thomson: They were mostly supportive, actually entirely supportive. And like I say, Madison is kind of a little bubble that's not in tune with the reality of the rest of the country. It's an academic community. It's liberal, it's been very supportive. The state as a whole has been mixed.

So let's talk about how you actually cultivated the human embryonic stem cell.

James Thomson: You have to remember...

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Back then it was illegal to use federal funds for the derivation of these cells, and still is. And the university was extremely nervous about what I was doing, because I could lose all their federal funding. So for a variety of reasons... so I didn't have federal funding and the university itself would not fund it. So a small company offered to fund it, and I didn't have any choice, so I took that funding. So we set up a small lab that was completely devoid of anything that was bought with federal dollars, and I physically did all the work myself, so it would protect other people around. So over a course of I guess about nine months or so, we derive these cell lines. And everybody asked like whether there's this "Aha!" moment that was exciting and all. The reality is pretty much no. It's just kind of this long, drawn-out process, where you kind of think you have the right thing, and it takes several months, little by little, to increase your confidence. So there's no single moment. And at the time that it was all done and it's finally published, instead of being happy, it was more like relieved that it was done after all this work.

[ Key to Success ] Perseverance

Did you ever have doubts about it?

James Thomson: Prior to starting it, I doubted that we'd be successful, especially part of the primate stuff, because part of the primate stuff I really didn't know whether it was possible. At the time we did the primate work, my confidence that this was possible was fairly high. I had doubts whether we'd get there first, 'cause a lot of other people were trying to do the same thing.

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