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THE EMBRYO DEBATE The case for: by Doctor Stephen Minger <http://www.sundayherald.com/news/heraldnews/displ ay.var.2140438.0.the_embryo_debate.php#comments_fo rm> Comment <http://www.sundayherald.com/news/heraldnews/displ ay.var.2140438.0.the_embryo_debate.php#comments_fo rm> | Read <http://www.sundayherald.com/news/heraldnews/displ ay.var.2140438.0.the_embryo_debate.php#comments> Comments (11) WHAT WE are interested in doing is taking skin cells from people who have known genetic forms of major neurological disorders - such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease and motor neurone disease - and putting them into an egg which has had its own DNA removed. In that way, we create an embryo and can extract cells that we can turn into human embryonic stem cells. In the process of doing this we will make cell lines which encode genetic mutations which cause Parkinson's, Alzheimer's and so on. We can turn those cells selectively into whatever cell types are most affected in each of those particular disorders. In Alzheimer's patients, certain cells in the brain have died - but these are very different to those cells which die in patients with Parkinson's disease. The research is needed to understand better the mechanism of each of these diseases, and if we can understand at the cellular level how these proteins kill cells we hope to be able to use that as a guide for developing new therapies. The part that becomes controversial is the source of eggs to be used. Typically in cloning, the plan has been to use human eggs. But what we know from work which has already been carried out is that when human eggs are used the efficiency level is incredibly low. The group of researchers led by (now-disgraced) cloning scientist Hwang Woo-Suk in South Korea had more than 2000 human eggs and they were unable to make a cloned human embryonic stem cell line. We decided it is not morally justifiable to ask large numbers of very young women to commit to donating eggs for a procedure where we were going to need thousands and thousands of eggs to create each of these stem cell lines. So we proposed a much more practical solution, which was to use a non-human egg, for example a cow egg. We can obtain large numbers of eggs by collecting them from the ovaries of livestock which are being slaughtered for the food industry. This means we can get very high quality eggs in the large numbers that we need without the moral and ethical problems of trying to obtain human eggs. Where the Church has it wrong is in thinking we are mixing human and animal cells together, creating something that is a true hybrid. But what we are doing in the process of doing this inter-species work - which is referred to by scientists as using "admixed embryos" - is physically removing the nucleus from the cow egg, which completely removes the genetic and species identity, so it is essentially no longer a cow egg. There are cow versions of proteins and some mitochondria (which provide the cells with energy), but as the cell lines expand over time, those proteins will be exclusively replaced with human proteins and the mitochondria will become predominantly human. The Church is failing to recognise that this has been a very long and deliberate process. We went through a very long consultation with the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority over the last year and there was an exhaustive science and technology committee hearing in the House of Commons. In both cases, overwhelmingly, they agreed that these are human embryos, they are not a mixture of animal and human. The fact they have been derived using what was originally a cow egg in no way mitigates the fact they are human. There has been so much support for this research from the general scientific community. Moreover, in an open letter to the prime minister, more than 300 patient charities and organisations supported this research and urged the government to allow it to happen. The cardinal's comments in some ways are offensive to all of those people who supported this research, who see that it might lead to new developments in a field where we have almost nothing to offer patients with these catastrophic neurological conditions. I don't know what the cardinal's personal motivations are for doing this, but I think it is offensive that science which the government feels is important and has allowed, he construes as being monstrous or "Frankenstein research". In fact, the ultimate purpose of this research is to restore hope, life and human dignity to the millions of people across the world suffering from terrible, incurable diseases. What could be more pro-life than this? 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