[NYT] AUG 13, 2001 Cell Biologist Traded Religious Fervor for Scientific Zeal By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
WASHINGTON - MICHAEL WEST slipped into a chair in the restaurant of the Mayflower Hotel here, ordered a plate of shrimp and a glass of red wine, rubbed his furrowed brow and offered an immediate apology. "Forgive me if I'm a little distracted," he said. "I have a lot on my mind."
Indeed he does. As chief executive of Advanced Cell Technology, a small biotechnology company in Worcester, Mass., Dr. West is at the center of this summer's debate over human embryonic stem cell research and cloning. His company plans to harvest stem cells from cloned human embryos, experiments that Dr. West predicts will lead to tailor-made cures for some of mankind's most devastating diseases - among them heart disease, which killed his father.
Others take a dimmer view. The House of Representatives, backed by President Bush, recently voted to ban research cloning; if the Senate agrees, Dr. West's studies would become a crime. And Mr. Bush singled out research cloning for special criticism when he announced last week that the government would pay for certain limited stem cell experiments.
"We recoil," Mr. Bush said, "at the idea of growing human beings for spare body parts."
Dr. West, 48, forges ahead undeterred, knowing that his critics regard him as a mad scientist. "It is so ironic," he says. "I am the opposite of the bogeyman. I work every waking hour trying to help people who are sick. It has been at the center of my life for 20 years."
Thoughtful and intense, Dr. West sprinkles his conversations with literary references, from works including Greek mythology and the Bible. Ever since his days as a schoolboy chemist - "I blew up the janitor in junior high school," he confessed, exaggerating only slightly - he has yearned to be a scientist. But his career path has been a meandering one, which took him, oddly enough, deep into fundamentalist Christianity, a movement that fiercely opposes the work he does today.
That was in the mid-1970's. Dr. West had graduated from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y., with a degree in physics and had returned home, to Niles, Mich., to help his father run the family automotive business. Increasingly, though, he was drawn to the study of religion.
He studied Greek in correspondence courses at Moody Bible Institute in Chicago and later enrolled at Andrews University, a Seventh-day Adventist institution in Berrien Springs, Mich., where he obtained a master's degree in biology and studied biblical archaeology and Hebrew. He aligned himself with the Creation Research Society, a scientists' group that asserts that the events in the Book of Genesis are true. He wanted to prove that God designed the world.
"My goal was to use science to defend Christianity," Dr. West said. It was a crushing blow when he realized he could not. "Kicking and struggling with every bone in my body, I had to admit that the theory of evolution was true."
Trading religious fervor for scientific fervor, Dr. West, by then in his late 20's, went on to study the biology of aging, eventually obtaining a doctorate in cell biology from Baylor College of Medicine in Houston in 1989. The next year, while running the family business after his father's death, he rechartered a truck leasing company, the West Leasing Company, as a biotechnology business, Geron.
The Greek name means old man; Dr. West took it from a passage in the New Testament in which Jesus discusses how a man who is old might be born again. By this time, however, Dr. West was not so much interested in spiritual rebirth as in physical rebirth. Specifically, he wanted to use science to slow the aging process.
Dr. West arranged for Geron, now based in Menlo Park, Calif., to finance the work of Dr. James A. Thomson, the University of Wisconsin researcher who became the first person to isolate stem cells from human embryos. He knew the work would be extremely controversial. But he also knew that the cells, which have the potential to grow into any cell or tissue in the body, held the secret to long life - the secret, in essence to being born again.
Today, three years after leaving Geron for Advanced Cell Technology, Dr. West's goal is to create embryonic stem cells that will be a perfect genetic match for patients. The way to do it, he says, is by cloning - taking bits of DNA and inserting them into a woman's egg to create an embryo that will yield the valuable cells. His critics say the work will lead scientists inevitably toward the cloning of people.
SO Dr. West has been spending a lot of time testifying in Washington these days; over time, he says, he is convinced that lawmakers will come around to his point of view. Having spent so much time among religious conservatives, he says he sometimes feels as if he were fighting his old self. "I do know my enemy," he said, smiling slyly.
Carried to its logical extreme, Dr. West's work would lead to immortality, a concept he does not seem to shy away from. "Sickness and death are inherently evil," he said at one point. At another, he said, "I hate death." He said actuaries have estimated that if people did not age, they would live 600 years, on average, and die in accidents.
Is that his goal? "I'm not thinking that far," Dr. West replied. "All I'm thinking is that the way we live our lives today could be improved. And I'm on a campaign to do something about that."