July 8, 1999
Stem Cells: New Life Or Harvest Of Death?
Full Coverage
Human Stem Cell Research
By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Correspondent
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Depending on who is talking, they are either the best
new hope for fighting disease or the moral equivalent of lampshades made
from human skin.
A year ago hardly anyone had heard of embryonic stem cells -- master cells
that can give rise to any kind of cell in the body, from brain cells to
liver cells. But researchers began reporting in November on experiments that
showed the cells might be a rich source of new tissue for treating a range
of diseases from Parkinson's and Alzheimer's, in which brain cells are
destroyed, to juvenile diabetes, in which the body's immune system
mistakenly nibbles away at crucial pancreatic cells.
The discoveries have sparked a debate that involves patients, politicians,
scientists and theologians -- with no clear dividing line and with all sides
believing they are fighting for a moral cause and for the future of
humankind.
When the first studies were published, researchers, health officials and
patients' groups were delighted. Here was a way to circumvent the problems
surrounding organ transplants, which require patients to take strong
immune-suppressing drugs, even assuming the organs are available. Ten people
die every day in the United States while waiting for an organ.
``The promise of this research for the treatment of diabetes, for
Parkinson's ... is just extraordinary,'' U.S. Health and Human Services
Secretary Donna Shalala told a congressional committee in February.
The cells come from embryos left over from attempts to create test-tube
(IVF) babies. It would also be possible to use cloning technology to create
embryos from which cells could be taken. California-based Geron recently
bought Roslin Bio-Med, a spin-off from the institute in Scotland where Dolly
the sheep was cloned, with an eye to this.
U.S. LAW INTERFERES WITH PLANS
But there is a 4-year-old U.S. law that forbids using federal funds for the
deliberate destruction of or experimentation on human embryos. So the
research has been funded by private companies so far.
National Institutes of Health director Dr. Harold Varmus says there are ways
around this law such as using cells extracted from embryos by private
companies. The manipulation of the embryos would not have been done using
federal funds so their use would be legal, he argues.
The National Bioethics Advisory Commission, made up of scientists, patients'
advocates, ethicists and philosophers, says this research holds so much
promise that Congress should rescind the ban in part. Its recommendations
are still being worked out but commission head Harold Shapiro, president of
Princeton University, said the group would probably endorse the use of
tissue from IVF leftovers but not anything more.
``I think what the current draft says and what I think the committee will
say is that it is unprepared at the moment for federal funds to be used to
create so-called research embryos -- that is embryos created for which the
sole purpose is research,'' Shapiro said in a telephone interview.
Sen. Arlen Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican, and Sen. Tom Harkin, an Iowa
Democrat, say they will push to change the law. But opponents urge Congress
to hold firm or even strengthen the law to ban any experimentation on human
embryonic stem cells.
``We believe that research being proposed by the NIH on human embryonic stem
cells is immoral, illegal and unnecessary,'' Kansas Republican Sen. Sam
Brownback said. He is backing a group sponsored by the Center for Bioethics
and Human Dignity in Bannockburn, Illinois, that maintains there is no
justification for using human embryos in the laboratory -- even those left
over from IVF attempts and slated for destruction.
'A LIVING MEMBER OF THE HUMAN SPECIES'
``What is being destroyed is a living member of the human species,'' Dr.
Edmund Pellegrino, a professor of medicine and medical ethics at Georgetown
University, told a news conference called by the group. He thinks the ban
should be extended to private research as well.
Some members likened the use of embryonic stem cells to the creation in Nazi
Germany of lampshades made out of human skin. Groups such as the National
Conference of Catholic Bishops and the Family Research Council, which oppose
abortion and argue that human life begins at conception, have joined the
lobby.
But other religious-based groups support the research and both sides say its
opponents are not solely ``pro-life'' groups.
``We do not need to take the traditional pro-life view to take the view that
we should not be spending tax dollars on the abuse of the human embryo,''
said Nigel Cameron, who chairs the advisory board at the Center for
Bioethics and Human Dignity.
``You can be anti-abortion, you can have a high regard for the value of
human life, without locking yourself into this kind of extreme commitment
saying that the embryo is a person from conception,'' Ronald Cole Turner, a
United Church of Christ minister at the Pittsburgh Theological Seminary,
said.
``The Western religions -- Judaism, Christianity and Islam -- and to some
degree the Eastern religions absolutely, totally agree that healing is not
just a good thing but that it is morally incumbent upon us,'' he said by
telephone.
JUST A BALL OF CELLS
Many scientists say the embryos employed are very primitive -- just a ball
of cells. They are not implanted in a womb and could never become a living
human being.
But opponents say there is another source of stem cells, those taken from
circulation in the body, and there is no need to use embryonic stem cells.
Stem cells are often taken from bone marrow to regenerate the immune system,
for example.
Adults keep some of these cells in their body, probably for repair after
accidents or disease. But there are so few that scientists who want to use
them have to search for them and then grow them into large enough numbers.
A few teams have found them recently and reprogrammed them. Like all cells
they have a genetic blueprint for the organism in their nuclei and it has
been possible to reactivate it.
Bryon Peterson and University of Pittsburgh colleagues found that bone
marrow stem cells transplanted into rats moved to their livers and helped
repair them. Dr. Evan Snyder and a Harvard team used neural stem cells from
aborted or miscarried fetuses to replace damaged brain cells in newborn
mice.
Tiny Baltimore biotech company Osiris Therapeutics coaxed stem cells from
human bone marrow into growing into fat, bone tissue and cartilage. And
Angelo Vescovi of the National Neurological Institute in Milan, Italy, got
stem cells from the brain to produce blood cells in mice.
TOO EARLY TO KNOW
Scientists such as John Gearhart of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore
say they have to investigate all sources of stem cells. ``I feel that we are
too early in this game to determine which approach will be better,'' he
said.
While stem cells are also taken from aborted or miscarried fetuses, Varmus
said it was not clear whether they are as good as stem cells from early
embryos. ``We just don't know the answer to that,'' he said in a telephone
interview.
``Early embryos are made in excess of clinical need, stored in perpetuity
... and if those cells can be used to benefit our friends and relatives who
are disabled and sick, in my view we should be using them,'' Varmus said.
Scientists also say it would be better if the government oversees and funds
such research keeping ethical considerations in mind, while some ethicists
and patients' groups say it would be immoral to block such avenues of
research.
``We must come up with a public policy that says we will not hold that
person in a wheelchair hostage to our moral concerns about tissues that will
otherwise be destroyed,'' Dr. Arthur Caplan, director of the Center for
Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania, said.
A new lobbying group, the Patients' Coalition for Urgent Research (CURE),
released a survey of 1,000 adults in May that showed 74 percent supported
human stem cell research, even when the cells came from embryos. The group
includes patients such as Michelle Puczynski of Toledo, Ohio, who argue
forcefully for stem cell research.
``If they don't do this they are taking lives away from people, and they are
pretty much taking my life away, too,'' said Puczynski, 15, who has juvenile
diabetes.
Copyright © 1999 Reuters Limited.
--
Judith Richards, London, Ontario, Canada
[log in to unmask]
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