I agree with the writer of the op-ed piece.  Guess we will have to hope for
Hwang to come through for us.  He and his team will advance while we fiddle
around due to politics and religion.
Ray
----- Original Message -----
From: "[log in to unmask]" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Wednesday, October 19, 2005 10:11 PM
Subject: OpEd on stem cell studies


> This op/ed puts the newly announced stem cell research in perspective.
>
> And lest we think our government is racing towards finding cures for
> diseases like PD, we learned today from PAN that the Senate will not be
> voting this year on HR 810 -  the stem cell bill passed by the House
> earlier in the year. This is the bill that was expected to pass in the
> Senate and that Sen. Majority Leader Frist ended up supporting to
> everyone's surprise. Guess he just found too many other priorities on
> Capitol Hill to bring it to a vote.
> Linda
>
> FROM: San Jose Mercury News.
> oct. 19, 2005
>
> Don't let critics stifle stem-cell studies
>
> By David Magnus and Arthur Caplan
>
> It is often said that science is racing ahead of ethics. Whether that is
> true or not, it makes no sense to distort science to meet a perceived
> ethical problem. That is what has just happened with the publication of
> two articles appeared in the prestigious journal Nature, touting
> ``alternative'' approaches to embryonic stem-cell research.
>
> The articles suggest that it is important to find ``alternatives'' to the
> existing methods for creating embryonic stem-cell research. But neither
> paper explains why existing methods -- using leftover embryos from
> infertility clinics or cloning them -- are immoral. Instead, the
> scientists involved in the new papers suggest that there may be ways to
> disable an embryo or to remove a cell from an embryo at a very early stage
> of development and create embryonic stem cells that way.
> The driving force behind these papers is not science. It is, rather, to
> use some rather unimpressive technical tricks to meet the objections of
> some critics of embryonic stem-cell research. In a word, it is scientific
> pandering. And it is wrong.
>
> Of course it makes sense to experiment and figure out the best ways to
> make embryonic stem cells. But few in the scientific community think that
> either of the techniques proposed will do that.
> Does it make sense to fiddle with embryos to satisfy critics? Hardly.
> People are kidding themselves if they think opponents of embryonic
> stem-cell research will not find major moral problems with any technique
> that involves embryo disabling or embryo manipulation using in-vitro
> fertilization where some embryos are inevitably destroyed.
>
> Moreover, holding up important research to pursue possible alternatives
> because there are critics of the morality of existing techniques is a
> terrible idea. The attention showered upon these articles in the media and
> by some politicians who oppose embryonic stem-cell research is a very
> dangerous development for anyone who is interested in doing embryonic
> stem-cell research or benefiting from it.
> Regardless of what stem-cell opponents claim, a reasonable person might
> think that making it extremely unlikely that an entity has the capacity to
> develop is sufficient for research to morally proceed.
>
> However, it should be pointed out that cloning using somatic cell nuclear
> transfer of the sort already done in South Korea already meets that
> standard. There is no evidence yet that primate cloning is possible and
> all available knowledge suggests that embryos produced by cloning cannot
> reliably develop into fully functioning human beings. In other words, we
> have had the technology and techniques we need already. These so-called
> breakthroughs add nothing of much use, from either a scientific or an
> ethical point of view.
>
> Must science proceed only if everyone in the nation agrees that the
> research is worth doing? If so, no science will ever be conducted. We
> would never do research in evolutionary biology since there are
> creationists who oppose it. We could not do research on cancer, mental
> illnesses or animals, since each of these has its critics. The idea that
> scientists should abandon embryonic stem-cell research while looking for
> alternatives is bad public policy.
>
> The vast majority of the public believes that embryonic stem-cell research
> should be conducted, that embryos outside the body that will not develop
> on their own and that are routinely destroyed at infertility clinics do
> not have the same moral status as fetuses or people. A minority vehemently
> disagrees. We should not be trying to appease a minority with scientific
> flimflammery while delaying promising research that one day may lead to
> treatments that improve millions of lives.
>
>
> DAVID MAGNUS is the director of the Stanford University Center for
> Biomedical Ethics and a member of the California Human Stem Cell Advisory
> Committee. ARTHUR CAPLAN is the director of the University of Pennsylvania
> Center for Bioethics. They wrote this article for the Mercury News.
>
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