Thank you, Bob:

I was very interested to learn, in much more detail, what the Pope and
his advisors, if you will,  had to say about the various therapeutic
techniques, and not just the recent Papal edict forbidding fetal or
embryonic uses in medicine.  Also, I thought it was very well written,
and points out how really murcky the comparisons are, of one therapy,
say, bone marrow donation for example, and another therapy, say, stem
cells donated from remaining embryos after in vitro fertilization.  I
really feel the latter is life from life.  A couple, who has been unable
to have a child, happily is able to have a family;  but to be
successful,  must produce a surfeit of fertilized eggs only a few of
which can be implanted.  If they choose to donate the remaining embryos
to save and/or repair a life, that surely is: an act of love, and the
same as organ transplantation, of which he approves.  The only
difference is, in the latter, that organ donation is usually, sadly,
from the death of another human being.  Embryonic donation is, in my
view, surely life from life.  It must be made clear, that the sole
purpose of  creating the excess fertilized eggs, is to ensure the
successful birth of a child.  The therapeutic use of stem cells
extracted from the remaining embryos is simply a very fortunate
consequence of this happy event.  They were not created to be destroyed
for therapeutic research, but to ensure a successful birth!  Is the Pope
against a birth brought about in this way, because it results in
left-over embryos that are then discarded?  If not, then there is
something very wrong with the Papal analysis of what is taking place.

Thanks for the opportunity to respond to this interesting article.

Charlotte Mancuso

ROBERT A MARTONE wrote:

> The following article from Praxis MD presents both sides of
> the stem cell argument. I learned a bit more from it and
> will use it in my advocacy efforts. Any observations would
> be appreciated.
>
> Bob Martone
> President Houston Area Parkinson Society
>
> Vatican v. Dolly
>
> This week all roads led to Rome, where the International
> Congress of the Transplantation Society became the center of
> a storm over cloning and stem cell research.
>
> Pope John Paul took the unusual step last week of leaving
> his cool summer palace, the Castel Gandolfo north of Rome,
> to address a scientific meeting in the steaming city. The
> 80-year-old pontiff, showing the effects of his losing
> battle with Parkinson's disease, lifted his frail,
> incantatory voice to thank the audience of transplant
> experts for having developed a technique that permitted
> donors to engage in an "act of love." "Transplants are a
> great step forward in science's service of man, and not a
> few people today owe their lives to an organ transplant,"
> said the pope. That tribute won repeated applause from his
> audience of about 4,000 specialists, as did the homage he
> paid to such newer techniques as bone marrow transplantation
> and adult stem cell research [1].
>
> His audience was somewhat less than enthusiastic, however,
> when he reiterated a recent Vatican directive forbidding
> research on embyronic stem cells, human fetuses, or what he
> called the "frutto della generazione umana" (the fruits of
> human generation) [2]. The pope was quoting a text prepared
> by his Pontificia Accademia Per La Vita (Papal Academy of
> Life), which, on the occasion of his address, had issued its
> "Directive on the Production and the Scientific and
> Therapeutic Uses of Human Embryonic Stem Cells" [3]." The
> document, soundly argued and based on good modern science,
> takes a no-nonsense view of human life: it begins when sperm
> and eggs mix their genes. It argues that all the "fruits of
> human generation" should be guaranteed "the unconditional
> moral respect deserved by the human condition, both physical
> and spiritual." In accord with that position, the pontiff
> insisted that methods which fail to respect the dignity and
> value of those fruits-such as the use of embryonic stem
> cells or cloning-must always be avoided [1].
>
> The cloning empire struck back. Speaking to Italian
> reporters immediately after the Pope's remarks, Dr. Ian
> Wilmut, the Scottish scientist whom Corriere della Sera
> impishly headlined "Il papa di Dolly" (the father-or pope-of
> the now-famous lamb) [4], argued persuasively that "un
> embrione non è ancora una persona" (an embryo is not yet a
> person). He pointed out that an embryo is only a potential
> human being, since it lacks a nervous system; therefore no
> ethical barriers should be raised against those who wish to
> use embryo cells for research or treatment. Indeed, in the
> US and the UK, research on embryonic stem cells has been
> given a grudging go-ahead by the responsible authorities
> [5].
>
> The pope forbids embryonic "acts of love."
> When is a diploid a consenting adult?
> The loves of a stem cell
> Richard Titmuss called it the "gift relationship."
>
> Let's define what the two papas were debating. In embryonic
> stem cell cloning, a fertilized egg is permitted to reach a
> stage somewhere between blastula and gastrula, consisting of
> 1,000 to 2,000 cells. From this round cluster can be
> extracted an inner mass of pluripotential cells. Given
> appropriate culture conditions in the dish or in a
> recipient, such cells can form any cell in the body, with
> the possible exception of the organs of special sense and,
> certainly, the placenta. The Pope may be railing against a
> cure for his own condition: one of the most promising stem
> cell therapy applications has been the successful treatment
> of Parkinson's disease [6,7].
>
> Somatic cell cloning is quite different. An adult somatic
> cell (diploid) is taken from any tissue of a donor and
> plonked into an unfertilized ovum of the same species from
> which the nucleus has been removed. If the egg cytoplasm
> acts properly on the genes of a strange nucleus, if the
> growth factors are favorable, and if the moon is right, a
> whole new adult can be produced, but only after the creature
> has been reinserted into a uterus of the same species and
> permitted to come to term. That's how Dolly was created [8].
> Both the British and the Clinton governments have forbidden
> research that would introduce such a cloned homunculus into
> a uterus.
> In therapeutic somatic cell cloning, the egg, with its
> foreign nucleus, is kept in vitro. The resultant assemblies
> are cultured in another defined brew of nutrients until,
> with a pinch of tissue-specific hormones, they can be
> persuaded to become a pound of the proper flesh: islet cells
> for diabetes, liver cells for cirrhosis, and, again, brain
> cells for Parkinson's disease. But molecular biology
> techniques will permit us to doctor the genes of those cells
> at will. To quote Dolly's papa: "Precise genetic
> modification will be achieved by site specific recombination
> in the donor cells before nuclear transfer. In all mammals
> it will become possible to define the role of any gene
> product and to analyze the mechanisms that regulate gene
> expression" [8].
>
> When does life begin?
> Which batch of cells can be defined as "life"?
>
> The debate between the two papas hinges on the question
> "When does life begin?" On the Upper West Side of Manhattan,
> where I was raised, it is generally agreed that life begins
> when the fetus graduates from medical school. If one
> believes, instead, that human life begins when a haploid
> sperm meets a haploid egg and a diploid blob develops (in
> womb or dish), or if one believes that all life deserves
> what the papal academy has called the rispetto
> incondizionato, then it follows that research which disrupts
> any diploid assembly will violate that respect.
> But wait! What about organ transplantation? Isn't that just
> another name for engrafting an organized blob of diploid
> cells? What about marrow donation? Marrow cells are simply a
> collection of early diploid cells that-given the right
> moon-can reassemble to become a whole human. Give a pint of
> blood, and you enter into what Richard Titmuss has called
> the "gift relationship" [9]. A blood or organ donor is,
> literally, a philanthropist who passes on the "fruits of
> human generation."
>
> The pope is therefore right to praise organ transplantation
> and marrow transplants as "acts of love." But why should we
> not consider that the donor of an egg that harbors a foreign
> nucleus, or one that is fertilized in vitro to yield a
> pluripotent cell line, has also engaged in an "act of love"?
> The gift of life is an act of love. Since we now know that
> adult stem cells from one organ can turn into entirely new
> tissues in the dish [see "Down to the marrow" in "This
> Week", August 23, 2000] why should one batch of diploid
> cells be defined as "life" while another batch is not?
> Dolly's papa really has it right: none of those batches of
> diploid cells has a nervous system. That is formed only
> after the embryo develops in a uterus where two lives remain
> intertwined until parturition. At term, life begins in a
> painful act of love.
> Gerald Weissmann, MD, is professor of Medicine and director
> of the Biotechnology Study Center at New York University
> School of Medicine. He writes "This Week" alternate weeks.
>
> References
> 1. Baker L: Pope tells scientists cloning morally
> unacceptable. Reuters. 2000 Aug 29. Accessed 2000 Sept 1:
> [Link].
> 2. Lattin D: Vatican assails new guidelines on human embryo
> research: ethicists divided over morality of cell studies.
> San Francisco Chronicle. 2000 Aug 25. Accessed 2000 Sept 1:
> [Link].
> 3. de Dios Vial Correa J, Sgreccio E: Dichiarazione sulla
> produzione e sull' uso scientifico e terapeutico delle
> cellule staminali embrionali umane. Pontificia Accademia per
> la Vita. 2000 Aug 24. Accessed Sept 1: [Link].
> 4. Il papa di Dolly: la clonazione e necessaria. Corriere
> Della Sera. Accessed 2000 1: [Link].
> 5. Wade N: New rules on use of human embryos in cell
> research. New York Times. 2000 Aug 24.
> 6. Colman A, Kind A: Therapeutic cloning: concepts and
> practicalities. Trends Biotechnol. 2000 May;18(5):192-6.
> 10758513 [ PubMed abstract ]
> 7. Asahara T, Kalka C, Isner JM: Stem cell therapy and gene
> transfer for regeneration. Gene Ther. 2000 Mar;7(6):451-7.
> 10757017 [ PubMed abstract ]
> 8. Wilmut I, Young L, Campbell KH: Embryonic and somatic
> cell cloning. Reprod Fertil Dev. 1998;10(7-8):639-43.
> 10612470 [ PubMed abstract ]
> 9. Titmuss RM: The Gift Relationship: From Human Blood to
> Social Policy. New York: New Press; 1997. [Purchase]
>
> Extracted from Praxis MD
>
> Bob Martone
> [log in to unmask]
> http://www.samlink.com/~bmartone