Stem-cell debate changes.

[Guest guest]

November 20, 2007 The Future Is Now - Stem-cell

debate changes.

By Father Berg

It’s

called “reprogramming.” Another technical

term for it is “somatic cell dedifferentiation.”

Just get those terms into your vocabulary because they’ll be

around for the foreseeable future. As reported in

two scientific papers published today, reprogramming is now the future of

stem cell research and renders ethically controversial therapeutic cloning

obsolete.

Another tech Ever

since the debate of embryo-destructive stem-cell research began in earnest in

1998 when researchers at the University of Wisconsin first isolated human

embryonic stem cells, we’ve known that the best overall answer to the

ethical impasse would be a solution that both allows the search for stem-cell

related cures to go foreword, while doing so without harming or destroying

embryonic human life in the process.

We now have that solution.

Two major scientific papers published today in Science

and Cell

offer proof of principle research to show that it is possible to generate

patient-matched pluripotent stem cells without

human cloning and its attendant moral pitfalls: the need to harvest and use

human eggs from female donors and the subsequent destruction of cloned human

embryos. Both studies used reprogramming of adult

human cells to generate stem cells known as “induced pluripotent state cells” (iPSCs)

that have all the properties of human embryonic stem cells.

When the President’s Council on Bioethics reported

in 2005 on a number of alternative sources of the kinds of cells scientists

were after — pluripotent cells, or cells with

the capability of giving rise to all human tissue types for eventual

therapeutic applications — one of those alternatives was hailed, hands

down, as the best all-around solution: cell reprogramming. “We

find this proposal to be ethically unproblematic,” wrote the Council

members, “and acceptable for use in humans, if and when it becomes

scientifically practical.”

In the highly contentious political battle over federal funding for

stem-cell research, one cannot help but note that of all the current

presidential candidates, only Governor Mitt Romney embraced an unambiguous and

principled stance on the alternatives, incorporating them into his proposed

domestic policy.

Reprogramming takes normal adult body cells — such as skin cells

— and sends each cell's nucleus back to a pluripotent

state. In other words, the reprogrammed cells would

then be capable of producing any tissue type in the human body —

essentially equivalent in versatility to human embryonic stem cells. The reprogrammed cells would, furthermore, be

genetically matched to the person who donated the original body cells. They could then be used to grow tissues for future use

in tissue replacement therapies (everything from regeneration of damaged

heart tissue to Parkinson's to spinal-cord injury). A

perfect genetic match, these tissues would not be rejected by the donor's

immune system. Most importantly, there would be no

embryo created, destroyed, damaged or used in any

way at any point in the process.

The papers were published by Shinya Yamanaka

of Kyoto University, and by Thomson

of the University of Wisconsin, Madison. A year ago, the journal Cell published

Yamanaka’s research in which he reported

successes in reprogramming mouse cells by adding four key genes to those

cells. His findings were like a shot heard round the

stem-cell world. Almost immediately after his work

was published, two additional teams of researchers set out to duplicate and,

if possible, exceed Yamanaka’s findings.

In articles published on June 7 of this year in the journals Nature and Cell-Stem Cell,

the three teams gave what most stem-cell scientists would consider definitive

proof that Yamanaka’s four genes can, indeed, reprogram mouse cells to

a pluripotent state.

And as if the rapid success in accomplishing that goal were not

amazing enough, further astonishment accompanied the news that the second

paper was submitted by Thomson himself, the veritable father of human

embryonic-stem-cell research. It will remain a happy

paradox of history that the very scientist who first isolated human embryonic

stem cells in 1998, Thomson now finds himself making history as a

researcher who helps us get beyond the ethical impasse.

But this was not the only paradox making news over the weekend. A portent of news to reach the airwaves today, and a

bombshell of a story in itself, the creator of Dolly the sheep, Prof Ian Wilmut, announced his decision to forego therapeutic

cloning, just days after U.S. researchers announced a breakthrough in the

cloning of primates. Wilmut’s

announcement sent shockwaves through the scientific establishment. In an article published in the Telegraph last Saturday, Wilmut revealed that he has decided not to pursue a

license to clone human embryos, which he was awarded just two years ago by Britain’s Human Fertilisation

and Embryology Authority (HFEA). “This

approach” — reprogramming, he was quoted as saying,

“represents, the future for stem cell research.”

So here we have both the scientist who gave us embryonic-stem-cell

research and the scientist who gave us cloning both telling us that the

cloning agenda is now obsolete and that the future of robust stem-cell

research does not lie in embryos.

Ponder the meaning.

Like the unexpected climax of a romance novel, these historical

paradoxes foreshadow a culmination to the ten-year tale of human

embryonic-stem-cell research that is remarkably unlike anything we could have

imagined. To be sure, a new day has dawned in the

world of stem-cell research, thanks to the intellectual honesty and

scientific acumen of researchers like Thomson, Wilmut

and Yamanaka. The best part, of course, is that, for

advocates of embryonic-stem-cell research, as well as for those opposed to

embryo-destructive research, and especially for those millions of potential

beneficiaries of stem-cell related therapies, the advent of the age of

somatic cell reprogramming marks an enormous victory for all of us.

Father Berg. L.C. is executive director of the Westchester

Institute for Ethics and the Human Person, and member of

the ethics committee of New York’s Empire State Stem Cell Board

Barb in Texas - Together in the Fight, Whatever it Takes!

Son Ken (33) UC 91 - PSC 99 - Tx 6/21 & 6/30/07 @ Baylor in Dallas