MAY 2004 Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation Tribute to Nancy Reagan Beverly Hills, California Leeza's Speech: Like most of us here tonight, my experience with devastating disease is a very personal one.  At the young age of 63, my mother – the rock of our family – was diagnosed with early stage Alzheimer’s.  To make our hearts ache even more, this diagnosis closely followed her painful struggle with her own mother’s battle with the same disease.  We lost my Granny, and we lose a little more of Mom each day.  I also know firsthand about the grim realities of living with type1 diabetes.  When she was in the second grade, my niece Taylor, now 15, was diagnosed with the disease and bravely struggles with it daily. When my family began its journey with these terrible diseases, we felt alone and frightened, as we watched our loved ones suffer every minute of every day.  Since we have started on our quest to find cures for these diseases, we know that we are not alone. We have found a mission, and we have found a community, and together we have found hope. That hope has increased over the past few years as a result of the extraordinary promise of stem cell research - research that can help produce therapies and cures for ourselves and our loved ones. It is a hope I cling to every day, and I am joined by 128 million Americans and their families who wait for cures. Let me give you a very quick stem cell primer. For over a century, scientists have known of the existence of stem cells - the cells that eventually develop into every organ, tissue, and cell within the human body.  Yet it has only been since the late 1990’s - when scientists successfully created human embryonic stem cell lines in the laboratory - that the rich possibilities in the field of stem cell research began to be understood.  Scientists work mainly with two types of stem cells: embryonic and adult stem cells. Research with both types has led to important progress, but researchers are most excited and optimistic about embryonic stem cells because of two capacities believed to be unique: First, they are capable of seemingly limitless reproduction, offering us a potentially unlimited supply of cells. And second, they can develop into almost all of the specialized cells that make up the body, which means that embryonic stem cells may one day be used to replace the brain cells damaged in Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s, or the pancreatic cells destroyed in diabetes, or the abnormal blood cells that cause leukemia, or the heart muscle tissue destroyed in heart attacks People paralyzed because of spinal cord injuries could walk again. Stem cells could also benefit people with other auto immune diseases - ALS, cystic fibrosis, Ms, Muscular dystrophy, hemophilia, and rheumatoid arthritis. The list could go on and on… Finally, stem cells are key to the increasingly exciting area of regenerative medicine, medicine which utilizes the patient’s own body to initiate its own repair.  In type 1 diabetes, for example, that would mean regenerating the insulin producing beta cells that the disease has destroyed, without any need for islet cell or panaceas transplants and the toxic anti-rejection drugs that go with them. The promise of stem cell research has brought us to an incredible juncture in medical research, a juncture whose impact, in terms of saving lives, and improving the quality of lives, may well one day be compared to the advent of the small pox vaccine, or the discovery of antibiotics. But, let’s be clear, we’re still at the beginning and time is not on our side.  As we are now painfully aware, the development of stem cell research has been severely crippled as a result of our Administration’s 2001 policy on federally funded embryonic stem cell research. The Administration’s guideline, which established only 78 embryonic stem cell lines eligible for federal funding, may have been meant to create a scientific and ethical foundation for furthering the research, but instead has had the chilling effect of drastically limiting medical progress. More than 2 years since that announcement, the National Institutes of Health tells us that of the original 78 stem cell lines approved by the Federal government, only 19 lines are actually available to researchers - far short of any adequate number needed to conduct widespread scientific investigation.  What’s more, federal policy has had the effect of, discouraging the best and brightest among our scientists from entering the field, and has forced this promising area of research to move overseas. Meanwhile every day, more children, more men and women, are suffering and dying. We can no longer let these bottlenecks, and obstacles, stand in our way. Too much is at stake, and we do not have time to wait. We are here tonight to seize the opportunity to change minds, and hearts, and the public policy that has proved to be the main impediment to progress.  Organizations like JDRF, CuresNow, the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research, the Christopher Reeve Paralysis Foundation, Project ALS, the Coalition for the Advancement of Medical Research, and the Leeza Gibbons Memory Foundation have come together in a coordinated effort to put stem cell research front and center in the public consciousness. Bipartisan groups in both the U.S. House and Senate have launched campaigns calling for revamping the Administration’s policy.  And when, three years ago, Nancy Reagan took a strong stand in favor of human embryonic stem cell research and its potential to save others from her husband’s plight, she brought a trusted voice to so many millions who felt voiceless, who felt unheard and forgotten as they plowed through daily struggles of surviving their own disease or that of a loved one. In 2001, in a letter to President Bush, she described her struggles as a caretaker for her husband, and said, “I am determined to do what I can to save others from this pain and anguish.  I’m writing, therefore, to ask your help in supporting what appears to be the most promising path to a cure – stem cell research.”  In an additional letter to Senator Orrin Hatch, she said, “there are so many diseases that can be cured, or at least helped, that we can’t turn our back on this. We’ve lost so much time already. I can’t bear to lose any more.”  Thank you, Nancy, for your love, dedication, and persistence. With your inspiration as a guiding light, we are geared up for battle.  Tonight’s event is a major step in that battle. Our first line of business is to urgently press the President and his Administration to expand the current federal policy and the number of cell lines researchers can use, so we can have our cures. At the same time we can also encourage the research through private universities and institutions, and through individual states. Polls show that most people, be they Republicans, Democrats, or Independents, see the need for an expanded federal stem cell policy.  Nowhere is this more evident than in our own state of California. The California Stem Cell Research and Cures Initiative - set to appear on our ballots in November - would supply our state’s universities and biotechnology industry with as much as $295 million a year for 10 years.  We think we have a tremendous opportunity to pass this ambitious and extraordinary legislation because of the efforts of so many in this audience, and because we know that nearly 85% of Californians have a family member or close acquaintance with a medical condition that potentially could be treated or cured with stem cells. Providing leadership and vision, the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation is building a formidable war chest for stem cell research. By investing millions of dollars in the U.S. and around the world through its Stem Cell Development Fund, chaired by Mary Tyler Moore and Dr. Robert Levine. Likewise, Universities like Harvard, Stanford, Johns Hopkins, UCSF, Minnesota, and Cambridge are making stem cell research a top priority.  Recently, scientist Douglas Melton and his colleagues at Harvard announced that they had derived17 new embryonic stem cell lines and made them freely available to researchers around the world. These lines more than double the number currently available for use, and help in overcoming the current limitations on research progress. Most of us can recall when President Ronald Reagan, in a speech made near the Berlin Wall implored, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.” Today in the same vein, and for the betterment of mankind, we ask that a similar wall be torn down - the wall of politics, the wall of ignorance, and the wall that separates us from our cures. Meanwhile, we will proceed with unwavering focus on our quest.  With our passion, commitment and urgency to reduce human suffering, we the people who have made promises to our loved ones - will push this vital research forward until we ultimately unlock its promise to give life and hope to us all, and to the hundreds of millions throughout the world waiting for cures.  I know that we will succeed.