Ethics dilemma obstructs embryonic stem cell research
Web posted Friday, March 30, 2001
By Byron Spice
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette/Scripps Howard News Service
PITTSBURGH - Tissue engineering was so much simpler back
in the days when it was so much harder.

At least, from Alan Russell's perspective, it was simpler in
ethical and moral terms.

No one ever lost much sleep, for instance, over using foreskins
to make artificial skin for burn patients, explained Russell,
executive director of the Pittsburgh Tissue Engineering Initiative.

Today, ambitions have ballooned, as biotechnologists work on
ways to treat strokes with neuron transplants, use polymer
coatings to keep coronary arteries from narrowing and eventually
grow replacement livers, muscles and other tissues. But one of the
hottest topics in tissue engineering - embryonic stem cells - also is
its most troubling.

Scientists believe almost any type of cell in the body could be
produced from these embryonic stem cells, perhaps leading to
cures for such diseases as diabetes, Parkinson's and muscular
dystrophy. But the only way to obtain those cells is to destroy
human embryos, a fact that has landed tissue engineering in the
midst of the abortion controversy.

Stem cells will be on the minds of 400 to 500 tissue engineering
researchers expected to attend the three-day Engineering Tissue
Growth international conference that begins Tuesday here.
Several researchers will be presenting papers regarding stem
cells - the adult-derived type, not the embryonic type - and how
they might be used for such tasks as repairing the central nervous
system.

Embryonic stem cell research, now performed by only a handful
of researchers, could soon burgeon, depending on the outcome
of a debate within the Bush administration and the Congress.

The National Institutes of Health last year issued guidelines for
funding research on embryonic stem cells. The research would be
performed using left-over embryos produced by in-vitro
fertilization clinics that would otherwise be discarded.

Many abortion foes, contending that the unimplanted embryos are
every bit as human as a fetus, have opposed the NIH plans.
President Bush has expressed his personal opposition to this type
of research and has asked Health and Human Services Secretary
Tommy Thompson to review the guidelines.

At the heart of the issue, said Michael Brannigan, executive
director of the Center for Ethics Studies at LaRoche College, is
whether an embryo has ``moral status'' - whether it has such basic
human rights as the right to exist.

For those who believe embryos have moral status, it isn't
possible to justify destroying an embryo to obtain its stem
cells. Abortion foes, moreover, fear that allowing
experimentation on embryos creates a ``slippery slope'' that
could be used to justify abortions as well.

``One can't discredit that line of thinking,'' Brannigan
acknowledged, though he personally is not convinced of an
embryo's moral status. Proponents of the research maintain
that the embryo doesn't have moral status, he added, and that
manipulating or destroying embryos is justified, particularly if
it is done to achieve a greater good.

Russell, a biochemist and molecular biologist who heads the
University of Pittsburgh's chemical engineering department,
is personally conflicted.

An embryo is human life, he said, emphasizing that he was not
speaking on behalf of the tissue engineering group he heads.
``It's not just a clump of cells; that clump of cells is a life.'' Yet
he finds it difficult to conceive of even adult-derived stem cell
research being able to advance without embryonic stem cell
research.

Adult-derived stem cells, such as the stem cells in bone marrow
that give rise to all of the blood cells, originally were thought to
have much less potential than embryonic stem cells.

But experiments at research centers now suggest that adult-derived
stem cells can be reprogrammed, so that a blood stem cell can give
rise to, say, a liver cell or a brain cell.

Using adult-derived stem cells in this way would allow researchers
to sidestep the moral minefield of embryos.

For the foreseeable future, parallel experiments with both
adult-derived and embryonic stem cells will be needed until
scientists understand the capabilities of each type.

http://augustachronicle.com/stories/033001/tec_124-1672.shtml

********

----------------------------------------------------------------------
To sign-off Parkinsn send a message to: mailto:[log in to unmask]
In the body of the message put: signoff parkinsn