Canada may lose its embryo-cell researchers
Funding opens up in U.S.: Ottawa must clarify policy, health agency says
http://www.nationalpost.com/
Justine Hunter - National Post, with files from Agence France-Presse
OTTAWA, August 25, 2000 - Canada risks losing its world-leading talent
to the United States unless it clarifies the legal status of
embryo research, the president of the country's chief medical research
funding agency warned yesterday.
When the United States government announced this week it will permit
federally funded studies on cells from human embryos, it opened the door
for Canada's leading stem-cell researchers, currently operating under a
voluntary embargo, to follow the path to research dollars and support
south of the border, said Dr. Alan Bernstein, president of the Canadian
Institutes of Health Research.
"There are a number of outstanding Canadians in this area, whether any
of them are thinking of leaving, it's probably too early to say. But
scientists go where the opportunities are, and if they perceive a lack
of opportunity,
it is a risk [that Canada would lose them]."
The use of human stem cells retrieved when embryos are in their earliest
stages of development -- just microscopic clusters of cells -- holds the
prospect of major gains in the medical treatment of everything from
diabetes to PARKINSON'S disease.
But the policy vacuum in Canada could also prompt scientists to start
work without the kinds of restraints imposed on U.S. researchers, he
warned.
"One danger is, in the absence of any kind of guidelines, Canadian
researchers may feel free to go ahead under conditions that might be
unacceptable to the Canadian public. That would be very unfortunate,"
Dr. Bernstein said in an interview.
"Conversely, Canadian researchers may be unwilling to go ahead at all,
despite the great promise of this new technology for relieving human
suffering. We are damned if we do and damned if we don't unless we have
clear guidelines on ways to move forward."
It is a subject Allan Rock, the Minister of Health, and his predecessors
have been stalling on for years, a reflection of the murky ethical and
scientific issues raised by this and other related human reproductive
technologies.
A royal commission reported to the federal government in 1993, urging
the government to outlaw a variety of baby-making techniques and
research practices, and also to establish a regulatory commission to
monitor the
practices that are deemed socially acceptable.
A voluntary moratorium on certain practices was adopted in 1995, such as
selling human eggs, and Bill C-47 was introduced by the federal
government the following year to outlaw certain genetic technologies
that would, like
the new U.S. rules, make it illegal for donors to sell their sperm or
eggs.
Among other things, the proposed legislation would have established an
agency to develop national standards for the collection, storage,
distribution and use of human eggs, sperm, embryos and fetal tissue.
The proposed law met with opposition from two sides: Anti-abortion
organizations oppose the use of embryos for research, while the medical
community protested the controls were too stiff. the government let the
bill die in 1997.
Mr. Rock has since made some noise about establishing a new reproductive
technologies authority but has yet to act.
The medical technology has been moving quickly. When Bill C-47 expired,
stem cells had not yet been discovered. Stem cells are the body's early
foundation blocks that develop into the different types of cells that
form tissue and
organs. Scientists believe they can use these foundation cells to grow
new organs, restore severed nerves in spinal injuries and cure diseases.
Dr. Bernstein cited the work of researchers in Alberta who are
developing a promising treatment for diabetes using islet cell
transplantation. He met one patient, formerly insulin-dependent, who has
not taken an injection of insulin
in 18 months. But the islet cells, which make insulin in the human body,
are harvested from cadavers, limiting the supply.
Yesterday, Vatican officials said that the use of human embryos or their
therapeutic cloning is "gravely immoral and therefore gravely illicit.
"The living human embryo is a human subject with a clearly defined
identity, which begins its own co-ordinated, continuous and gradual
development" and cannot be considered a "mere cluster of cells," the
pontifical Academy
for Life said in a statement.
The embryo therefore has "a right to its own life." The removal of cells
which "seriously and irreparably damages the human embryo is a gravely
immoral and therefore gravely illicit act."
Copyright © 2000 National Post Online
--
Judith Richards, London, Ontario, Canada
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