Why Not Expand Stem Cell Research that is Showing Real Results?
New science has emerged which radically undermines the already spurious case for cloning: entirely ethical science that obtains the same “tailor-made” stem cells that cloning hopes to obtain, but without the creation and destruction of cloned embryos. Since June 2007, the whole debate has been radically changed.
Nature journal and Stem Cell journal, on June 7, published three papers confirming a simple method of turning mouse skin cells into genuine “pluripotent” stem cells – the functional equivalent of embryonic stem cells. These cells are the putative goal of “research cloning”, but they are reached in a simpler, saner way.
In a comment that sweeps away the whole ethical nightmare of creating cloned human embryos solely for research, and all the concerns about commercialising women’s eggs, Shinya Yamanaka of Kyoto University, who pioneered the new technique, says “Neither eggs nor embryos are necessary. I’ve never worked with either”.
Headlines around the world asked if there was a way around the socially divisive science of cloning. Time magazine from June 14 said: “Because Yamanaka did not use human embryos, his technique offered researchers everywhere a way to sidestep the ethical controversies that have dogged the field of science since its birth”. What Yamanaka did was to make a mouse skin cell and introduce four small proteins which reprogram the cell’s nuclear DNA to make it pluripotent – effectively the same as an embryonic stem cell.
Cloning has always been promoted as the only way to get embryonic stem cells that exactly match a patient – an exact match because the cloned embryo is the patient’s identical twin. But if that goal of patient-specific pluripotent stem cells is now achieved by Yamanaka’s ethically uncomplicated method, what’s left for cloning?
Embryonic stem cell research involves the creation of a human embryo solely to be destroyed and used for the extraction of stem cells. Adult stem cell research, which does not involve the destruction of human life, is already achieving much more tangible results than embryonic stem cell research.
To cite a few examples:
– The Food and Drug Administration has approved the first clinical trial in the US for a treatment for heart disease using stem cells from adult bone marrow. Such trials have already taken place in Europe and Brazil where they showed success in treating damaged hearts. – Carron Morrow from Alabama survived her fourth heart attack due to stem cell therapy where 30 million stem cells were injected into the right side of her heart. In a PBS documentary Morrow says, “I’m living proof that adult stem cells work far better than embryonic. And why should embryonic be in discussion? I’m here to say, I’m living proof. It saved my life. This is going to revolutionise heart disease”. – Embryonic stem cell research has suffered a catastrophic blow with a major Singaporean Australian company abandoning work on therapies due to a lack of success and soaring costs. ES Cell International (ESI), which raised $24 million in investment, has pulled out of the pursuit of cures for diabetes and heart damage.According to the leading international journal Science, investors had lost interest in human embryonic stem cells therapies because the likelihood of having products in the clinic in the short term was vanishingly small. Professor Alan Colman, who until last moth was ESI’s chief executive, said “making well-functioning, insulin producing cells proved really difficult as both therapies would have needed at least a billion cells for each dose and producing them at such numbers was prohibitively expensive”.
In contrast to the difficulties confronted by embryonic stem cell researchers, Professor Mackay-Sim’s team from Griffith University are able to produce 20 million adult stem cells in four weeks using olfactory stem cells taken from the adult nose.
It is evident that the potential for further research using adult stem cells is clear. Investors are diverting their resources away from dead end technology. Now we can say for certain that harvesting fertilised human eggs is not the way forward for curing people with cancer, Parkinson’s disease, and spinal damage.
The move undertaken by investors clearly confirms the use of embryonic stem cell is economically unviable and highly impractical. There is no need to compromise one life for another. Not one achievement in human therapy has come from embryos, while adult stem cells are rapidly being applied to a range of incurable afflictions.
There is no legitimate justification for this. If we dare tread on this path, we will be greasing the slippery slope. The fact remains that we must not – and clearly do not have to – resort to the unethical act of creating new embryos solely for research. We do not have to violate the deepest bond of human life – that between mother and offspring – by creating living human embryos that have no natural mother, and are denied any place in the human family. Human procreation must stay human.
To disregard life at its inception, the continuum of life at each stage and even at its last, will be in jeopardy of debasement. Adult stem cell research will allow us to cure disease and avoid the ethical concerns of destroying embryos. This new technique provides the best of both worlds. There is only one question: what possible justification is left for legalising cloning? I implore those in remaining in power to make such decisions to ensure that funding is directed towards ethically acceptable avenues of research and one that is showing real results.