Hi All,
I just watched the 18 minute CBC Documentary:
Stem Cells - The Promise & Protest on the National....



Here is the text transcript....

The National Online - Transcripts 01/06/05

Title: Introduction
Host: PETER MANSBRIDGE
Date: 010605
Time: 22:00:00 ET - 22:30:00 ET
CBC-TV THE NATIONAL

Title: Stem Cell Therapy
PETER MANSBRIDGE: They are tiny cells, but their potential is
huge. Scientists say stem cell research could some day unlock the
cruel mysteries of Alzheimer's Disease, Parkinson's, Multiple
Sclerosis, cancer, heart disease, paralysis, the list goes on and on.
But some of the best stem cells, the most versatile ones come from
human embryos and the embryos are destroyed in the process and
there is the rub. Some people say that's too high a price to pay for
progress and that our society should not pay it. The CBC's Leslie
MacKinnon now with a documentary look at cell therapy, the
promise and the protest.

LESLIE MACKINNON: What must seem particularly unfair to
Marc Bergeron is that he's very young to have what for anyone
is a dreadful affliction. Now just 38, he was diagnosed four years
ago with Parkinson's disease, a disorder that usually strikes people
who are over 60. His whole left side is slowly becoming rigid and
uncontrollable. There is no way to predict Parkinson's disease or
to prevent it or to cure it. But this could be the magic bullet, too
small to be seen, a human fertilized embryo captured in a glass straw.
Here lies the power to remake tissue destroyed by disease or injury.

MARC BERGERON: If that research succeed it's sure that myself,
I will be able to have some benefit of it.

MACKINNON: But this is controversial because in the process of
procuring its cells, called stem cells, the embryo must be destroyed.
There are those who believe it should be accorded all the rights of a
human being.

SUZANNE SCORSONE (Former Royal Commissioner): We cannot
do things that are inherently evil to bring about a good.

MACKINNON: The moral line defined by that good might mean no
relief in his lifetime for Marc Bergeron. Even though his leg and foot
constantly seize, he's still in the early phase of this disease.

BERGERON: Every month and every year it gets worse and
worse and one day it will affect both sides of my body.

MACKINNON: He begins taking medication as soon as he gets
up and then he waits for the drugs to stop the cramping and
spasms. With the help of these drugs, many Parkinson's patients
reach a stage where they exhibit no symptoms at all. But not Marc
Bergeron. As the pills kick in, his arms start trembling.

BERGERON: I don't like very much that shaking of the arm and the
shaking, it affects also my face.

MACKINNON: There's no comfort zone for him. The side effects
of the drugs cause dyskinesia, the involuntary twitching of muscle.

BERGERON: This movement, the energy that is required is the same
as if it was voluntary. And if you do it yourself for two hours, you
will get your arm tired.

MACKINNON: Inside a Parkinson's patient's brain, the cells that
produce dopamine, the regulator of nerve and muscle movement
stop functioning and die. Drugs that mimic dopamine don't halt
the disease's progress. But what if brand new dopamine producing
nerve cells could be transplanted into the brain? Inside an embryo,
this is the promise of the microscopic stem cells. Stem cells are a
blueprint, an instruction manual for life itself, they can morph into
a muscle cell, bone cell, brain cell, or whatever the body needs.
In the world of science, their power is almost mythical.

ROGER GOSDEN (Royal Victoria Hospital): Stem cells are exciting
because they're going to usher in a new phase in medical research
and treatment. We're going to be able to treat degenerative diseases
like Parkinson's disease and cancer using regenerative medicine by
transplanting the stem cells to make new cells which have been lost
in the disease.

MACKINNON: Recognizing the hopes in this novel medicine called
cell therapy, Health Minister Allan Rock recently proposed to allow
research on human embryos to obtain stem cells. This legislation will
lead Canadians into a new era in medicine as momentous as the
mapping of the human genome. In stem cell work, Canadian scientists
are leading the field. Michael Rudnicki is a molecular geneticist in
Ottawa and a stem cell pioneer. Stem cell research is a new rontier in
science even though embryonic stem cells were isolated only three
years ago.

MICHAEL RUDNICKI (Ottawa Health Research Institute): Over
here we have clump of neurons, nerve cells. There are many,
many different cells forming a spidery network. Each one of
this little round parts is a, is an individual neuron. So they're
thinking in the dish, I don't know what they're thinking. What am
I doing here? Nerve cells are produced in the petrie dish, into the
brains of a patient, for example, who either has Parkinson's or a
patient who suffered a stroke could replace the neurons that have
been lost due to damage. Those neurons would grow and thrive
in the brain. They'd make the appropriate connections and
essentially replace the cells that have been lost.

MACKINNON: And has this been tried in animals with any
success?

RUDNICKI: Absolutely. The studies that have been done in
mouse and rats suggest that the transplanted nerve cells do
n fact connect in appropriate ways, at least in a limited way
with their surrounding neighbor cells.

MACKINNON: Rudnicki has also taken the stem cells from
mouse embryos and crafted them into mouse heart cells in his
lab.

RUDNICKI: Okay, let's go find the cardiac cells. How's that? Isn't
that cool. This is a clump of cardiac tissue. Cardiac tissue will beat
all by itself. That's the nature of heart cells.

MACKINNON: Here are single heart cells. In this big clump is a pile
of several thousand cells which beats in a petrie dish very much like
it's a small heart. These could be injected right into a heart muscle.

RUDNICKI: Hearts do not regenerate themselves. So these are
potentially the cells that could repair that damage following a heart
attack, for example.

MACKINNON: Canadian scientists want to expand soon from mice
to human embryos to help people like Marc Bergeron. Stem cell
treatment for him is still something he can only dream about, but it
gives him the kind of hope Parkinson's patients in the past haven't
had -- to be freed from his drug regimen. In a sense, to have his
own body back.

BERGERON: If nothing new happens in the therapy of the disease,
I will have to live with Parkinson's disease for the rest of my life
which means I won't be able to make much because this disease is
turning you into a statue.

GOSDEN: Here we're talking about a cell transfer to replace cells
that are damaged.

MACKINNON: Roger Gosden is a research scientist at the Royal
Victoria Hospital in Montréal. Stem cells, once nature's secret could
supply body parts and fend off death. He sees this as a revolution
in medicine.

GOSDEN: We may be able to treat these diseases one by one,
no longer just by drugs but perhaps by giving cells. And
remember, that if we were able to replace the cells, it will be
presumably a healthier situation because rather than having
the side effects of drugs, we would be able to have the body
regulating its own supply of the nerve transmitter substances
or insulin and other hormones which would be a much healthier
state.

MACKINNON: Could this be a fountain of youth? I mean, could it
reverse the effects of old age?

GOSDEN: I'm sure that this technology will be able to blunt the
effects of aging. It's not going to slow down the basic process
of aging, but aging brings a host of pathological diseases,
degenerative diseases and we want to treat degenerative diseases
with regenerative medicine. And so embryo stem cell research is
ideally placed to treat diseases of old age.

MACKINNON: But there's still the dilemma of destroying a human
embryo. Suzanne Scorsone was a member of the Royal Commission
on Reproductive Technology. Like many of the religious groups,
she isn't so cruel as to advise sick people to just forget about stem
cell therapy.

SCORSONE: There are other ways we can do the good things that
are being sought. We can use adult stem cells. We can use stem
cells from umbilical cord blood, from the placenta which are
plura-potent, which can become many different kinds of tissue.
So we should be able to do the good things that are desired in
ways that don't have ethical problems.

MACKINNON: In fact, every part of the human body has stem cells.
They're active in bone marrow where they make new blood and in
the epidermis of the skin, repairing the normal wear and tear of daily
living. But when it comes to mending a damaged heart or replacing
a lost limb, they seem to hibernate. No one's sure why. Recently
scientists have learned that adult stem cells can be manipulated to
form new tissues to do most, although perhaps not all the things
embryonic stem cells can do. Embryonic stem cells can become
literally any cell. Adult stem cells haven't yet proven to be as
versatile but they have an edge in being morally unassailable.
Most scientists would like to work with both.

RUDNICKI: I agree with that, that adult stem cells look very, very
promising at his point in time. But we cannot say that embryonic
stem cells are useless. And by excluding the study of embryonic
stem cells, we are really ghettoizing ourselves intellectually and
hurting the research effort.

SCORSONE: One of the things that we learned in the period during
which we fought World War II was sure, there's research that can be
done on human beings and sure, it gives you results but it's not
ethical to do it. And that isn't just something that was done by nazi
Germany. It was done in North America, as I'm sure you know, with
the Tuskegee Institute research on syphilis that was, that withdrew
treatment from black males just to see what would happen. Was
knowledge derived from that, that was useful? You betcha. Was
it wrong? Oh yes.

MACKINNON: And you would compare that with research in
human embryos?

SCORSONE: Yes I would. It's still doing, it's making objects out
of entities that are human. It's reducing human dignity.

MACKINNON: But the fact is the disposal of human embryos
has been going on for years in in-vitro fertilization clinics, ever
since freezing embryos became an option. Inside this tank are
many dozens of frozen human embryos. And in the straw, a few
ready to be thawed and placed inside a woman who wants to
have a baby. First the embryos are examined and any flawed ones
are discarded. So are any surplus ones left over after the couple
completes their family. So the moral line of destroying a human
entity has been crossed without any ethical debate. Perhaps
because the intent is noble. The freezing technology ups the
chances of pregnancy. It's suggested that these spares left to
thaw out and expire could, with the parents consent, be saved
for stem cell research. Because, the rationale goes, they're going
to die anyway.

SCORSONE: It's one thing to say that a human being, because
that's what these are, you know, may die. It's another thing to say
well, because they may die, we can use them as industrial raw
materials and that's not acceptable.

GOSDEN: It seems to me that it's better to do some good than no
good. For instance, if you got embryos that are going to waste, the
patient no longer wants and is prepared to donate them, rather than
just destroying them, it is better to try to use them for some good
for a patient, to convert them into embryo stem cells to treat some
dread disease.

MACKINNON: Dalhousie University bio-ethicist Françoise Baylis
points out that there are ways of respecting the humanness of the
embryo and still allowing some scientific research.

FRANCOISE BAYLIS (Dalhousie University): It is a human being
biologically. Is it a person which is now a moral category and it's
with persons that we look at issues of the moral rights and the right
to life. And what we're doing is we're saying that this isn't just any
kind of tissue, that there is something special about the embryo
and most people do tie that specialness to the potentiality of it
becoming a person, because it already is a human being. And that
in recognition of that, we are going to hold ourselves accountable
in terms of how we interact with, engage or destroy the embryo.
And so I think it's in that context that it makes sense to say out of
respect in the context of accountability, we'll put limits on what we
can or can't do.

MACKINNON: Some limits that Canada is proposing in its draft
legislation. First, although using leftover embryos from IVF clinics
would be allowed, after that, there would be severe restrictions. No
embryo could be created from donated egg and sperm just for
research. And no embryo could be created by cloning. Canada
isn't just proposing to ban these procedures, it wants to criminalize
them with heavy fines, even jail terms. Setting up a kind of
regulatory regime that research scientists just haven't seen before.

RUDNICKI: I think it, it sends a chill down my spine that we can in
Canada have big brother controlling what is a research activity that
is, we're not talking about creating life. We're not talking about
cloning human beings. We're talking about a research endeavor
that would never leave the petrie dish. This is unprecedented that
research activity becomes criminalized. It's absolutely ludicrous.

SCORSONE: There have to be sanctions that will in fact indicate that
this is unacceptable, that it is not to be done. Full stop. Only the
criminal sanctions will do that.

MACKINNON: But sanctions don't take into account changing
social norms. Back in 1978, the birth of Louise Brown, the world's
first test tube baby shocked and horrified many critics. Britain,
which had pioneered this technique came very close to outlawing
it altogether. After more than 20 years, IVF has worked so well
that it's produced half a million babies. In that spirit, Britain has
just given approval to the creation of embryos, either by cloning
or by IVF to produce stem cells just for research. But not Canada.
Ethicist Françoise Baylis thinks it's too hasty to impose
sweeping bans.

BAYLIS: Right now, as it's put forward, you could only do research
on embryos that are leftover, so the spare embryos, embryos that are
going to be discarded in any case. Well, it's conceivable that you
could run into a situation whereby that in the context of ongoing
research, there aren't enough embryos in this way leftover from
these various treatments in order for you to pursue the research.
Well, then you have, I think, a very interesting and difficult question.
Do you go back and try to change legislation?

RUDNICKI: The thing in 2001 we cannot foresee all the possible
situations that may arise. So a moratorium now is reasonable, but
to criminalize it for, for the foreseeable ten or 20 years, we may
really regret that's done. And it
may be very difficult to change.

MACKINNON: In the end, no matter what the ethical debate, it's
likely stem cell research will be largely driven by patient demand
by people like Marc Bergeron who's facing a life sentence.

BERGERON: What I see from where I am now is that at the speed
the science is developing, I'm convinced that I'm young enough
to see the day where that disease will be history.

MACKINNON: In the meantime, he can just wait for the debate,
for the long delayed legislation and maybe the possibility of a cure.
For The National, I'm Leslie MacKinnon in Montréal.

MANSBRIDGE: Now the legislation that Leslie mentioned is still
in the early stages. Hearing are expected to begin sometime around
year's end and after that will come first reading.

http://tv.cbc.ca/national/trans/T010605.html

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