LifeSite.net has an article about President Bush's veto of the embryonic stem cell bill, and the subsequent Executive Order he signed allowing some stem cell research.
I oppose embryonic stem cell research because it destroys a human life, even if in the embryonic stage. I support adult stem cell research because unlike embryonic stem cell research it has ALREADY produced cures and therapies, and it does not involve the destruction of human life.
However, I know little about this "pluripotent" stem-cell research referenced in Bush's EO. From what LifeSite says about it, though, it sounds like it may just be embryonic stem cell research that just takes the long way around.
From a 2006 report:
In the SCNT cloning process, the nucleus (the cell compartment containing the genome) of an adult cell is inserted into an egg cell that has had its nucleus removed. The result is a cloned embryo that is then killed in order to extract embryonic stem cells. This is objectionable on two counts. First, killing human embryos is wrong. Second, the harvest of the necessary eggs exploits and injures women. It also entails the risk of death.
Though I find egg harvesting from women repugnant (I felt this way even before the Ted Klaudt incidents came to light), the most troubling aspect would be if this is just a roundabout way of still producing a human embryo. At this point, I'm uncertain if this is the case.
More from last year's LifeSite article:
William Hurlbut, M.D., a member of the President's Council on Bioethics and a professor at Stanford University, proposed ANT/OAR as a way around these moral difficulties. (We will refer to the process as ANT henceforth.) He strongly advocated this technique in the Spring 2005 issue of Perspectives in Biology and Medicine1, and then in a May 2005 paper from the President's Council on Bioethics2. At that time the procedure was "untested experimentally (even in animals)."
Hurlbut suggested that the genome be modified before transferring the somatic cell nucleus to the egg cell. By disabling the genes necessary for the organization and development characteristic of a human embryo, he stated:
The resulting biological entity, while being a source of pluripotent stem cells, would lack the essential attributes and capacities of a human embryo [emphasis in original]. For example, the altered nucleus might be engineered to lack a gene or genes that are crucial for the cell-to-cell signaling and integrated organization essential for (normal) embryogenesis. It would therefore lack organized development from the very earliest stages of cell differentiation. Such an entity would be a 'biological artifact,' not an organism.
The council's paper notes that there was some debate over whether the resulting entity would only be a disabled embryo or whether it would truly be a "biological artifact" that lacked the attributes of a human organism. However, it appeared at least conceptually possible that ANT could be used to derive the pluripotent stem cells typical of embryos, without creating or killing any human embryos.
"Sadly," said Judie Brown, "the experimental testing of ANT so far has rendered this benign hypothesis beside the point. The current research in mouse models does not fit the original vision of creating non-embryo entities. Rather, it has created embryos that, like the 'replicant' characters of the science fiction thriller Blade Runner, come with a 'termination date.'"
The article says some believe this pluripotent method does constitute a human embryo:
Turning off Cdx2 creates a severely disabled embryo but an embryo nonetheless, says Tadeusz Pacholczyk of the National Catholic Bioethics Center in Philadelphia. Stem cell researcher George Daley of Children's Hospital in Boston says the data Jaenisch and Meissner show suggest Pacholczyk has a point. 'The embryo that is established in the first few days is substantially normal,' he says.
Human embryologist C. Ward Kischer, Ph.D., emeritus professor from the University of Arizona, analyzed and objected to this use of ANT. He stated: "These examples of ANT do not resolve the moral issue and do not resolve the scientific issue of the continuum of human life." He added that this ANT protocol, "Involves the destruction of human life."
For my part, I plan to do more research into this method, but at this point I'm dubious.
1 comments:
There is every reason to be dubious, Bob. ANT does not eliminate the ethical concerns, but merely adds to them. To purposely modify a human zygote but the purpose of assuring non-viability is as reprehensible as destroying a viable embryo.
I am with Dr. Kischer. To bring together the chromosomes of human germ cells for the purpose of destroying them is repugnant. Would it have made the medical experiments of the Nazis more moral if they had done them only on genitically deficient children?
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