The source of this article is the Washington Post: http://tinyurl.com/3uupm

Saturday, December 4, 2004

Lab techniques may offer solution to stem cell ethical dilemma

By David Brown / The Washington Post

WASHINGTON -- The panel of experts that advises President Bush on bioethical
issues heard descriptions Friday of two new laboratory techniques that may
give scientists a way to get large numbers of medically promising stem cells
without either creating or killing human embryos.

The two proposals were greeted enthusiastically, with several panel members
saying the techniques, still in the experimental stage, may solve one of the
most contentious bioethical dilemmas of the last decade.

"If this pans out scientifically, it will be a major step forward. It may
provide an opportunity to get through the political impasse," said Leon
Kass, the physician who chairs the President's Council on Bioethics.

In one technique, scientists would harvest viable cells from embryos created
to treat infertility that have stopped developing and are functionally dead.
Taking the cells -- which can grow into stem cells -- would be analogous to
removing organs of brain-dead accident victims for transplantation.

In the second technique, scientists would intentionally sabotage a cloning
process called "nuclear transfer" so the resulting bundle of cells is not an
embryo but still has stem-cell precursors. They could then be removed and
used.

The purported advantage of both techniques is that neither involves an
embryo with the potential for future growth. In the first, the embryo has
already died; in the second, it never existed. Conventional methods for
obtaining stem cells involve the destruction of a viable embryo, which
opponents, including President Bush, consider unethical.

Both strategies have been under development for at least two years by
researchers in several labs but only recently became widely known. They
would need more refinement in animals before they could be tried with human
cells.

Kass said the ideas raise the possibility that "the partisans of scientific
progress and the defenders of the dignity of nascent human life can go
forward in partnership without anyone having to violate things they hold
dear."

Panel member Diana Schaub, a political scientist at Loyola College in
Maryland, said, "It seems to me almost too good to be true -- that
scientific advance would solve a moral dilemma."

Stem cells are cells with the capacity to develop into many different types
of tissue, and theoretically even whole organs. Many biologists believe they
could yield a universe of therapies for diseases in which a person's organs
or tissues fail. People whose insulin-producing part of the pancreas is
destroyed by type 1 diabetes, for example, might be able to replace it with
new tissue grown from stem cells.

The federal government currently funds embryonic stem cell research only on
embryos created before 9 p.m. on August 9, 2001. Twenty-two colonies of stem
cells, called "lines," fitting that restriction are available for use.
Nongovernment funding -- by universities, charities, or private donors --
can pay for research on other cell lines, but some scientists argue that the
lack of federal funds is slowing research.

That view was apparently shared by many California voters, who in the recent
election passed a bond issue that will provide up to $3 billion over 10
years to pay for research on "non-qualifying" stem cell lines and on cloning
of human embryos for therapeutic purposes.

The president's bioethics panel hasn't taken a stand on whether the federal
restrictions on the financing of stem cell research should be loosened. The
17-member group is roughly divided on the matter.

The first technique was described last month in the Journal of Clinical
Investigation by two Columbia University researchers, Howard Zucker and
Donald Landry, who spoke to the panel Friday. They argued that a certain
percentage of embryos created, frozen, and later thawed out for potential
use in assisted-reproduction procedures are similar to brain-dead adults.
They no longer have the capacity for human life.

Cells have stopped dividing in those embryos, which in some cases account
for about 60 percent of ones made in infertility treatments. Most such
embryos die because of biological accidents that occur in the crucial first
days of after fertilization. They cannot be put back on the path to normal
development into a fetus and infant. They are, in Zucker and Landry's term,
"organismically dead."

Studies have shown, however, that some of those "dead" embryos contain cells
that are entirely normal and, if removed, capable of developing normally
into stem cells. Removing them and using them, the scientists argued, would
be like removing organs for transplantation from a brain-dead adult kept
alive on a mechanical ventilator -- an act fully accepted by society.

"We would like to extend this idea to the developing human," Landry told the
panel.

To do that, biologists would need to learn how to identify with certainty
which thawed embryos are "organismically dead." That will be done by
observing many of them for days and determining if there are biological
"markers" -- something that can be tested for in a lab -- shared by all
embryos that have stopped growing.

The second technique was described by panel member William Hurlbut, a
Stanford University physician. He helped develop the concept but doesn't
have the training to undertake the procedure himself or do research on it.

Hurlbut called his idea "altered nuclear transfer" -- a cloning procedure
with one crucial alteration.

One or more genes essential for normal embryonic development would be
temporarily canceled or inactivated at the start. Consequently, the cluster
of growing and dividing cells that would be produced would never have the
capacity to develop into a human fetus. Thus, he argued, it would not have
the status of a person by anyone's definition.

Agglomerations of cells like this, known as teratomas, sometimes arise
spontaneously as tumors from human egg or sperm cells. They contain
partially or fully developed tissue, sometimes even teeth. But they are
structurally disorganized and nonviable.

In Hurlbut's concept, the cells could be removed and then have their
inactivated genes restored, making them functionally normal and presumably
capable of developing into usable stem cells.

"If we could biologically mimic what goes on in teratomas, that would be
what I'm after," he said.

The enthusiasm for the two ideas wasn't universal.

Paul McHugh, a psychiatrist from Johns Hopkins University, told Hurlbut:
"What you propose, really, is to build a weird genetic hybrid. ... Is that
right?"

He added that he hadn't "finished my thoughts on this. But a few red flags
come up."

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