FROM:
USA TODAY
December 11, 2002, Wednesday, FIRST EDITION
SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 3A
HEADLINE: Stanford plans controversial stem-cell work
BY: Elizabeth Wiese
" Stanford University said Tuesday that it plans to develop new stem
cells
through a highly experimental scientific method that some consider
cloning. It
will be the first U.S. university to publicly embark on this
controversial work.
The human stem-cell lines it develops will be used to study diseases
such as
cancer, diabetes, Parkinson's and Lou Gehrig's disease. The research
will take
place at Stanford's new Institute for Cancer/Stem Cell Biology and
Medicine. It
will be privately funded and will avoid any conflict with President
Bush's
policy against using federal fund to create new stem-cell lines. The
research
will be led by Irving Weissman, a strong proponent of stem-cell research
and
acknowledged leader in the field.
Stem cells, found in all human embryos at their earliest stages, are
capable
of turning into any cells the body needs for development. This gives
them the
potential for replacing diseased or defective cells in people. But
creating them
requires the destruction of a tiny ball of cells called a blastocyst, or
pre-embryo, and many who believe that life begins at conception consider
this
the destruction of a human being.
Weissman denies that the method researchers will use at Stanford,
called
"somatic cell nuclear transfer technology," is cloning. Many scientists
make a
distinction between this type of cloning, which is only intended to
create stem
cells, and reproductive cloning to create a new human being.
"We are unanimously against human reproductive cloning," Weissman
said.
In somatic cell nuclear transfer, the same technique Scottish
researchers
used in 1997 to create Dolly the sheep, the nucleus is removed from a
non-reproductive cell -- neither an egg nor a sperm -- and inserted into
a
donated egg cell that has had its nucleus removed. A pulse of
electricity causes
the inserted nucleus to fuse into the egg and begin reproducing,
creating at
least the beginnings of an embryo.
Similar attempts to do human somatic cell nuclear transfer have
failed.
Researcher Roger Pederson at the University of California-San Francisco
experimented with the technique in 2001 but in the end chose not to
publish his
results. Many have speculated that's because the technique did not work.
A Massachusetts company called Advanced Cell Technology created a
furor when
it claimed to have created clones using the technology, but in fact its
embryos
only were able to divide into a few cells.
Michael Manganiello, president of the Coalition for the Advancement of
Medical Research, which supports stem-cell research, is encouraged by
the
Stanford move. "They're going to do it. It's just a matter of perfecting
the
technique."
The creation of lines of human embryonic stem cells can't be done
using
federal money under a ban issued by Bush in August 2001. Only research
on
stem-cell lines created before that date is eligible for federal funds.
Bush has
repeatedly stated his opposition to human cloning."
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