PORTLAND, Oregon (CNN) —Scientists have produced sibling rhesus monkeys from cloned embryos in the technology’s closest application yet to a species related to humans.

The monkeys were developed using cells from different embryos, so they are not genetically identical, said Don Wolf, senior scientist at the Oregon Regional Primate Research Center.

“I don’t see it as nearly as big a step as the step that was announced last week in [the magazine] Nature,” Wolf said, referring to a Scottish lab’s successful cloning of an adult sheep.

But the monkey experiment does mean the technology for producing genetically identical animals is now available, and that promises to be useful in experimental studies on diseases and “nature versus nurture” theories, he said.

Conducting tests on genetically identical animals will help reduce the number of animals needed for an experiment to have statistical significance, he said.

Wolf told the Portland Oregonian newspaper the experiment technically was not cloning.

“That is not what I am calling it,” Wolf said. “Cloning in the strict sense of the term is using an adult cell so you get an exact replica of the adult. That is not what we are doing.”

On the “down side,” the achievement takes science closer toward suggesting the genetic procedure called nuclear transfer can be done in humans, he said.

“Of course, we have absolutely no interest in even cloning an adult rhesus monkey, let alone to be involved in cloning in humans,” Wolf said, adding he finds the idea “repugnant.”

The nuclear transfer technology has already been applied to mice, rabbits, cows and pigs, among other animals, said Wolf, who is also is director of the human in vitro fertilization laboratory at Oregon Health Sciences University.

To develop the monkeys, scientists harvested eggs from an adult female monkey, then fertilized each of them in vitro. After about three days, the embryos divided to the eight-cell stage of development.

The scientists then teased apart the cells, taking one full set of chromosomes from each embryo cell and inserting it into a fresh egg stripped of its DNA.

Nine successfully developed into embryos and were implanted in adult females. Three pregnancies and two live births resulted.

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Poll: Most Americans say cloning is wrong (CNN, 970301)

Americans responded unfavorably to news this week that Scottish scientists had successfully cloned a sheep from a cell taken from ordinary tissue.

POLL: Is it morally unacceptable to ... clone animals? 66% said yes ... clone humans? 89% said yes

According to a CNN/Time poll released Saturday, most Americans think it is morally unacceptable to clone either animals or humans, and they think that new cloning techniques will create more problems than they solve.

Almost half of those polled said they would be willing to eat fruits and vegetables that had been cloned, but 56% said they would not eat meat from cloned animals.

POLL: Are you willing to eat cloned products? ... cloned fruits or vegetables? 49% said yes, 40% said no ... meat from cloned animals? 33% said yes, 56% said no

About two-thirds of those polled said the federal government should regulate the cloning of animals.

Opinion was far less divided on the prospect of cloning humans. Of those polled, 69% said they are scared by the prospect of cloning humans, and 89% said it would be morally unacceptable.

Three-quarters said that cloning human beings is against God’s will, and 29% said they are so troubled by the ability to replicate life, that they would participate in a demonstration against cloning humans. Only 7% said they would clone themselves if they had the opportunity.

POLL: Is cloning humans against God’s will? 74% said yes, 19% said no

The poll was based on interviews conducted Wednesday and Thursday with 1,005 adult Americans. The poll’s margin of error is plus or minus three percentage points.

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Should we be cloning around? (CNN, 970224)

Breakthrough raises exciting — and scary — possibilities

(CNN) — The announcement that a team of British scientists had successfully cloned an adult sheep has touched off a new wave of discussion over the ethical implications of such a feat.

The achievement announced Sunday by a team of scientists at the Roslin Institute near Edinburgh, Scotland, marks the first time anyone has successfully cloned an adult mammal.

“There are a number of genetic diseases for which there is no cure ... and this will enable us to carry out research into the causes of those diseases and perhaps develop method to treat them,” Dr. Ian Wilmut of the Roslin Institute said following the announcement.

While some scientists hail the cloning as a major breakthrough for research in agriculture, aging, medicine and genetics, others worry what it may portend. If sheep can be replicated, they ask, are humans far behind?

Suddenly the stuff of science fiction doesn’t seem so fanciful anymore as one considers the possibility of dictators cloning themselves, dead geniuses brought back to life, or beloved family pets resurrected.

Sheep, cattle, pigs ... what next?

At the center of the controversy is a cuddly 7-month-old lamb named Dolly, an exact copy of a 6-year-old ewe born through a process called “nuclear transplantation.” Specifically, the Roslin scientists put genes from the ewe into unfertilized eggs then implanted them in other sheep.

Grahame Bulfield, director of the Roslin Institute, told CNN Monday his team has previously cloned mammals at various stages of development. What makes Dolly different, he said, is that she was cloned not from sex cells, but from mature mammal cells with no reproductive function.

“I expect in the fullness of time, we will be trying to do the same experiments on cattle and pigs,” he said.

What about humans? Maybe such experiments are under way in other parts of the world, but not in Scotland. Due to ethical concerns, Britain has banned human cloning, and research using human embryos is strictly regulated.

Such experiments are not banned in the United States, although some American ethicists are calling for federal laws prohibiting the practice and an immediate international moratorium on human cloning.

“One of the prospects should not be, perhaps should never be, the extension of this technique to human beings,” said Carl Felbaum, president of the Biotechnology Industry Organization, in an interview with CNN. “Now that it may be possible we would say its should be prohibited if necessary by law.”

“We’re going to be facing this issue with humans,” said Stephen Grebe, an associate professor of biology at American University in Washington. “With that possibility open, I’m concerned without adequate safeguards this will become a reality. It may very well already be.”

Don’t go there, ethicists warn

But even if humans could be cloned, they would not necessarily be identical, according to Grebe who noted that human twins may appear to be exactly alike, but have distinct personalities.

While the prospects of cloning may open exciting possibilities like the replication of an Albert Einstein or a Mother Teresa, it brings with it some terrifying prospects.

“Do we want necessarily Einsteins and are we willing to accept the costs of so-called bad copies?” Grebe asked. “What about failed experiments? These are really horrific issues and I think there’s a moral chasm between the technological ability at this point and the public understanding of the purpose of this.”

Felbaum is uncomfortable with such speculation. With regard to cloning Einsteins, he said, “I would assert this is not a line we want to cross. I would say this is not even a line we want to approach.”

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Pope denounces ‘dangerous experiments’ on life (970302)

VATICAN CITY (AP) — A few days after the Vatican called for a ban on cloning humans, Pope John Paul II denounced “dangerous experiments” that harm human dignity.

In his Sunday address to thousands gathered in St. Peters’ Square, the pope focused on the biblical story of Jesus driving money changers from the Temple of Jerusalem.

John Paul decried the “temple merchants of our age” who make “the marketplace their religion, until they trample ... the dignity of the human person with abuses of every kind.”

“We are thinking, for example, about the lack of respect for life, which has become at times the object of dangerous experiments.”

The pope did not mention specifically the news last month that researchers in Scotland had cloned a sheep. On Wednesday, however, the Vatican newspaper urged governments to quickly pass laws banning the cloning of humans because people have the right to be born “in a human way.”

John Paul also denounced environmental pollution and “the merchandising of sex” as damaging to human dignity as well as the exploitation of children and the poor.

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U.S. ethics panel urges ban on human cloning (970609)

WASHINGTON, June 7 — A U.S. ethics panel recommended on Saturday that Congress enact legislation to ban the cloning of entire human beings for now but allow the cloning of human embryos for private laboratory research.

Under the scenario proposed by the National Bioethics Advisory Commission, scientists or doctors could make cloned human embryos for research purposes but would be prohibited from implanting them into women’s wombs to make viable babies.

“Human cloning that leads to the birth of a child should be forbidden by law for at least three to five years,” the panel said in its report, which will be sent to President Bill Clinton on Monday.

Clinton asked the advisory group in February to review the complex legal and ethical ramifications of cloning after scientists in Scotland reported they had cloned a lamb — which they named Dolly — from a single cell taken from an adult sheep.

Their success was controversial, raising the prospect that the procedure could be used to make humans genetically identical to an existing man or woman.

The U.S. commission of 18 scientists, lawyers and theologians was faced with trying to reconcile the views of opponents of cloning who regard it as an affront to nature and demand a complete ban, and supporters who see it as a stunning scientific breakthrough with promising medical repercussions.

Polls taken shortly after the announcement of the cloning of Dolly showed 90% of Americans opposed human cloning.

Clinton in March broadened his 1994 prohibition on government-funded human embryo research to include federal funding of human cloning work, saying it raised deep concerns “given our most cherished concepts of faith and humanity.”

“Each human life is unique, born of a miracle that reaches beyond laboratory science. I believe we must respect this profound gift and resist the temptation to replicate ourselves,” he said.

The panel’s proposal would extend that human cloning ban to include privately funded work, but leave in place the current policy allowing private embryo research.

The commission’s recommendations appeared to meet the most immediate concern of many Americans — that the scientific procedure that produced Dolly might be used to make children who would be exact genetic copies of a single adult.

But critics complained the commission had not gone far enough. Sen. Christopher Bond, a Missouri Republican, said it left the door wide open to future cloning.

“I had hoped that the federal ethics commission would not be afraid to make a strong moral statement that human cloning is wrong, period, and should be banned,” he said.

Bond, who introduced a bill that would impose a total ban on human cloning, said it would be up to Congress and state legislatures to resolve the issue.

The Family Research Council accused the commission of “completely avoiding the subject of ethics.”

“FRC strongly opposes this recommendation ... Such a policy is premised on the false assumption that human beings less than 14 days old are not completely human, thereby condoning the destruction of countless numbers of embryonic children for the sake of ‘research,”‘ the organisation said.

American Life League president Judie Brown said the commission had made “a terrible mistake.”

“The persistent effort by members of the scientific community to redefine the human being and equate him with members of the animal kingdom can only lead to moral chaos and social ruin,” she said.

A pharmaceutical industry group welcomed the recognition of the importance of genetic research, but said any ban on cloning complete human beings should be narrowly defined.

“Any legislative prohibition on the cloning of entire human beings must not jeopardise biomedical research that involves the cloning of human genes, cells or tissues,” the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America said.

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New laws may curb surrogate mothers (London Times, 970612)

LAWS to impose greater controls on surrogate motherhood will be considered by an independent inquiry set up by the Government yesterday after a series of cases that highlighted the way legislation is failing to prevent commercialisation.

Tessa Jowell, the Health Minister, told the Commons she had decided to set up the independent review because of public concern. She has chosen three experts in medicine, law and ethics, to carry out the inquiry by Christmas.

The main question is whether payments, including expenses, should continue to be allowed to surrogate mothers, and if so, on what basis. The inquiry will also consider whether to set up a body to regulate surrogacy arrangements. The team will advise on whether there is a need to change the law.

There was public concern last month over the case of Karen Roche, who is understood to have received £12,000 in expenses from a Dutch couple to have a baby for them. She later decided to have the child and keep it.

The Dutch family made the arrangement with the help of Cots, an organisation set up by Kim Cotton, Britain’s first surrogate mother, who tries to find surrogates for childless couples.

She said that she was glad the inquiry had been set up because the work of Cots was getting too difficult. “We have done our best, but it is getting too big for us. We need to have better screening and vetting of the people involved.”

But she said that halting payments to surrogate mothers would stop most of them volunteering. “We would like to see contracts between couples and surrogate mothers enforced to protect everyone.”

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Debate on Cloning Issues Urged (970712)

NEW YORK — The prospect of cloning humans raises new ethical, moral, and policy issues that must be addressed by the public, scientists, and lawmakers, says a leading bioethics advisor.

Writing in the journal Science this week, Dr. Harold T. Shapiro, chair of the National Bioethics Advisory Board, says there is still time for national debate on these issues before cloning technology is allowed to fulfill its potential to create a person.

The statement by the Princeton University president appears just after the first anniversary of the July 5, 1996 successful cloning of a sheep by scientists in Scotland. Shapiro says the issues raised by that accomplishment go beyond concerns triggered by “largely fictional and mistaken accounts of how the technology might dramatically reshape the future of our society.”

He notes that the sources of these concerns were complex, “but usually centered around the basic fact that this (cloning) technique would permit human procreation in an asexual manner, would allow for an unlimited number of genetically identical offspring, and would give us the capacity for complete control over the genetic profile of our children.”

According to Shapiro, “more thoughtful concerns” raised by his advisory panel “revealed fears about harm to the children who may be created in this manner, particularly psychological harm associated with a potentially diminished sense of individuality and personal autonomy.”

Shapiro points out that at the heart of a debate over human cloning are issues that go beyond creating a balance between science and morality, beyond whether or not scientific inquiry should be restricted. Among key issues in the debate, Shapiro lists the questions: What makes us human? Is a cloned child robbed of his individuality? Who are its siblings?

Shapiro writes that these and related issues go to the very nature of what it means to be human and “go to the heart of the way we think about families and relationships between generations, our concept of individuality, and the potential for treating children as objects, as well as issues of constitutional law that might be involved in the area of procreation.”

Responding to recommendations from the bioethics board, President Clinton recently agreed to a temporary ban on federal funding for human cloning pending further research and discussion.

Shapiro says “time is an ally, allowing for the accumulation of more scientific data from animal studies as well as granting an opportunity for fuller national debate on ethical and moral concerns.”

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Frustrated by failures, Chinese scientists mull test-tube pandas (970723)

BEIJING (AP) — Frustrated by the failure of other artificial breeding techniques, Chinese scientists are considering cloning the animal that has come to symbolize endangered species everywhere — the giant panda.

Giant pandas mate only once a year, producing at most two cubs, only one of which usually survives — reproductive habits that have tried the patience of zoologists working to save the species.

They are native only to China, where the shrinking of their habitat and poaching have reduced their numbers to only about 1,000 in the wild.

“If we really can succeed in cloning them, then it will really work much better than the current methods in increasing their numbers,” Chen Dayuan, a zoologist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said in a recent interview with China’s state-run Central Television.

Chen did not say that cloning research had already begun, just that it might be a promising way to save the giant panda from extinction.

However, the announcement in February that researchers in Scotland had succeeded in cloning an adult sheep by inserting genes from a 6-year-old ewe into unfertilized eggs drew attention to China’s own research.

The Chinese Academy of Sciences, the nation’s top scientific body, banned research into the cloning of humans soon after the reports of the cloned sheep.

But academy scientists have spoken out in support of cloning animals, and have announced several breakthroughs of their own, including the cloning of a cow from embryonic cells.

The proposal to clone pandas reflects the frustration of zoologists who, after decades of research, remain puzzled by many aspects of panda reproductive physiology.

“The pandas, particularly the females, don’t go into heat often enough because of endocrine disturbances,” Chen said.

For example, 13-year-old panda Xing Xing gave birth to three cubs, including a pair of twins who both survived. But in the past seven years, she has not borne any cubs, the television report said.

Not all Chinese scientists support research into test-tube pandas. Pan Wenshi, a Beijing University professor who has spent more than 20 years studying the animals, argues that so little is known about their reproductive physiology that such research could cause the animals harm.

Scientists have found that pandas, which have trouble conceiving and rearing healthy cubs in zoos, are more prolific breeders in the wild, Pan says.

The most urgent task for saving the giant panda, he contends, is to expand protected areas and guarantee them a large, natural habitat, preventing poaching and other threats to their survival.

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Scientists Examine Impact of Environmental Estrogen (970723)

WASHINGTON — Estrogen-like substances found in the environment may play a role in declining fertility and other health risks, but much more conclusive research is needed, scientists said Monday.

“There may be critical health problems. We just don’t know. We have to do much more research on this,” said Kenneth Olden, director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, which is hosting a three-day conference on estrogens in the environment in Arlington, Va.

These estrogen-like substances, some scientists argue, have the potential to disrupt the endocrine system and may mimic or block regular hormonal activities. They are found in a broad range of products from pesticides and solvents to detergents.

John Gibbons, science and technology adviser to President Clinton, said the effect of estrogens was one of the Clinton administration’s top five environmental health priorities. “This is a global and not just a domestic challenge,” he said.

Most studies — ranging from these estrogens’ impact on breast and testicular cancer to lower sperm counts — have focused on fish and wildlife but Olden said not enough was known about their effect on humans.

“Feminization of males, reproductive dysfunctions, behavioral changes and developmental problems are well studied in fish and wildlife,” he said, adding that more research was needed on humans.

Fish and wildlife in the research studies were probably exposed to high levels of chemicals rather than the low levels that humans face in their daily lives.

“I think it is still hypothetical that low-level, man-made synthetic chemicals are having a health effect,” he said.

Some delegates said they believed even low-dose exposure of some estrogens could have a negative impact on humans.

Frederick vom Saal, professor of reproductive biology and neurobiology at the University of Missouri-Columbia, said mice fetuses exposed to estrogenic chemicals were born with enlarged prostates, an early indicator of prostate disease.

The mice, he said were exposed to levels of chemicals that humans confront on a daily basis.

“There is no reason to believe that what we are seeing in animals you will not see in humans,” he told Reuters. “We should not continue to assume that humans are disconnected from the animal world.”

Other studies, he said, showed a strong decline in sperm counts in the United States and Western Europe, a rise in early puberty and a decrease in the ratio of male to female newborns which could be linked to estrogens.

However, some scientists said the methodology used in several studies was not adequate, particularly in the decline of sperm counts.

“Has male reproductive health declined? All of the studies published to date contain significant flaws that make it impossible to conclude anything regarding worldwide changes in semen quality over time,” said Dolores Lamb, associate professor of urology and cell biology at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston.

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Cloning technique used to produce human protein in lambs (970725)

LONDON (AP) — The laboratory where the cloned sheep Dolly was created says it has used a similar method to produce a lamb — this one named Polly — with a human protein gene.

The latest development, in which five lambs were produced, is apparently the first time the cloning technique used to generate Dolly has been successfully replicated. It also is the first case in which animals have been cloned from cells taken from living adult animals.

The five lambs were all born carrying additional genes but only one, named Polly, was given the human gene.

Animals with human genes, including pigs, have been fabricated before. But the use of the “nuclear transfer” technique is a step toward achieving more efficient production of proteins that could be used to treat human disease and injury, a spokesman for PPL Therapeutics said Thursday.

Scientists at The Roslin Institute in Edinburgh, Scotland, announced in February that they had cloned an adult mammal for the first time, producing Dolly. The scientists used cells from the udder of a dead sheep.

In the new experiment, the five lambs were produced by PPL and the Roslin Institute. Researchers slipped human genetic material into the nuclei of cells from sheep. These cells were then inserted into sheep’s eggs from which the DNA genetic coding had been removed.

The resulting embryos were transplanted into sheep. Blood samples taken from the resulting lambs confirmed the presence of added genes.

Producing a human protein in animals by inserting a human gene is not new. Such proteins are already produced in the milk of animals that received human DNA before birth.

But DNA is normally introduced into a fertilized egg, explained the PPL spokesman, Chris Gardner. In the new procedure, the DNA was introduced instead into fibroblast cells — specialized cells like those in organs.

This, said American physiologist Robert H. Foote, is significant because fertilized eggs are in shorter supply and the use of more common fibroblast cells would greatly increase efficiency and likelihood of success.

“Through this procedure, scientists can use a few animals that can produce proteins useful in human medicine, to treat burns, etc.,” said Foote, emeritus professor of animal physiology at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y.

“They have taken the next step toward the ultimate goal, which is to produce genetically engineered sheep producing efficiently high levels of proteins for pharmaceutical or clinical use,” said Colin Stewart, an embryology developmental biologist connected with the U.S. National Cancer Institute.

In a PPL statement Thursday, the company’s research director, Dr. Alan Colman, said, “These lambs are the realization of our vision to produce instant flocks or herds which express (produce) high concentrations of valuable therapeutic proteins very quickly.”

“Until now,” PPL’s statement said, “techniques such as microinjection allowed only the introduction of new genetic material into an animal.”

Using nuclear transfer, it said, “more subtle modifications can be performed during cell culture, including the replacement of animal genes with the equivalent human gene.”

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Wisconsin company says it has cloned Holstein calf (970807)

CHICAGO — Dolly the sheep has a U.S. rival. A Wisconsin company said Wednesday it had successfully cloned a Holstein calf, born six months ago.

ABS Global Inc. of DeForest said it had developed a “proprietary, highly advanced genetic technology for cloning dairy cattle and beef cattle” and would announce details at a news briefing Thursday.

Researchers in Scotland earlier this year successfully cloned a sheep and a lamb, setting off a frenzied global discussion on the ethics of the new technology. The sheep, named Dolly, was the first mammal cloned from an adult cell. The cloning process involves use of a DNA-altered cell joined with an egg to create an embryo.

In March Australian scientists reported the cloning of 400 cattle.

Details of the Wisconsin company’s process and its implications for production were not immediately released.

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Multiple births rise with IVF use (971111)

THE number of test‑tube babies is rising rapidly, with increasing risks of multiple births, official figures showed yesterday.

There have been more than 21,000 live births in Britain using the methods pioneered in Cambridge in 1978. A quarter of the total have been born in the past two years, and more than 13 woman a day are now giving birth after having had fertility treatment, as an increasing number of couples take advantage of improved techniques.

The multiple birth rate from test‑tube pregnancies is higher than ever, according to figures published in the annual report of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority. In the past 15 months there were 5,542 test‑tube births, of which 1,774 were twins, triplets or quadruplets.

The stillbirth and neonatal death rate for a triplet pregnancy, with one or more babies dying, is 82.6 per 1,000 births, compared to just eight per 1,000 for single pregnancies.

A woman undergoing IVF treatment has a better chance of becoming pregnant if more than one embryo is transferred. With one embryo, the pregnancy rate is 8.4 per cent and the live birth rate 6.8 per cent. With three embryos, the pregnancy rate rises to 26 per cent with 21.4 per cent live births. Overall, 18.5 per cent of IVF patients become pregnant, and 15 per cent have live babies.

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Dolly Scientist May Have Messed Up (980217)

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — The Scottish scientist who cloned Dolly the sheep said he may have made a mistake and will try the task again with other kinds of animals, The Louisville Courier-Journal reported today.

“There is a remote possibility that the cell came from a fetus rather than from the adult,” Ian Wilmut of the Roslin Institute said Monday at a genetics forum at the University of Louisville.

Scientists have been able to clone mammals from fetal cells for two decades. Wilmut said he had cloned Dolly using the nucleus from the cell of an adult sheep that had died three years earlier, the first time that a genetically identical mammal had been created from an adult cell.

But critics said a fetal cell accidentally could have been used since the sheep from which the cells to clone Dolly were taken was pregnant. Fetal cells can be present in the circulatory system of some animals during pregnancy, Wilmut said Monday.

“We and everybody else had completely overlooked it,” he said.

Wilmut said he doesn’t believe that he used a fetal cell to clone Dolly, “but it has to be said that there is a remote possibility.”

For that reason, he said, tests are being performed to determine Dolly’s genetic history. Wilmut also said he was confident that within a year, “you will see reports from lots of labs that are making this work with other species and other cells.”

Wilmut has strongly opposed the cloning of humans.

Last month, two researchers suggested in a letter to the journal Science that Wilmut’s claim about Dolly could be false. Dr. Norton Zinder of Rockefeller University and Dr. Vittorio Sgaramella of the University of Calabria in Italy questioned Wilmut’s claim because at least three labs have failed in attempts to duplicate the work.

They also questioned why the Scottish lab has not repeated the experiment. Scientific experiments usually must be repeated before they are verified and accepted by other scientists.

At the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Philadelphia on Friday, Wilmut that he may be repeating the experiment to silence critics.

When asked why he hasn’t duplicated the Dolly experiment, Wilmut said only, “Perhaps we are.” He also said is “extraordinarily unlikely” that Dolly came from a fetal cell because such cells in the maternal blood are rare — only one among several million adult cells.

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Pollutants May Account for Drop in Male Births (980414)

NEW YORK — Contrary to traditional belief, men may be the more vulnerable sex — at least before birth.

The birth rates of boys in the United States and other industrialized nations has been dropping slightly but steadily in recent decades, scientists reported this month. While some researchers doubt the decline is cause for worry, a new study questions whether chemical pollutants may be jeopardizing the chances that an embryo will develop into a male child.

“What we’re seeing here is a susceptible male,” said Michelle Gottlieb, co-author of the study, published in this month’s Journal of the American Medical Association. “The fact that we’re seeing this parallel decline in a number of different countries over the same time period is telling.”

In surveying the birth rates of boys and girls over the past 30 to 50 years in the United States, Canada and a handful of European nations, Dr. Devra Lee Davis from the World Resources Institute and two colleagues found that while boys continue to slightly outnumber girls, that gap is narrowing.

In Canada there were 2.2 fewer boy babies per 1000 live births in 1990 compared to 1970, and 1 less boy per 1000 in the United States, amounting to a decline of 46,600 males. In Denmark and the Netherlands, the proportion of male newborns dropped 2 and 3%, respectively, between 1950 and 1994.

Scientists have already learned that an array of factors influence sex ratios. For example, older fathers tend to have fewer sons and couples that engage in sex more frequently tend to have more sons. But Davis argues the decline is significant enough to imply that some other factor is at work.

“This paper shows that what fathers are exposed to in the few months before they try to make babies has an effect on the sex of their babies,” she said.

Davis has been a leading proponent of the controversial theory that chemicals in the environment may be affecting human reproduction. She points to a parallel increase in male reproductive defects, such as testicular cancer and defects of the penile urethra and a worldwide 50% drop in male sperm count, as a sign that the male reproductive system is at risk.

“We need to ask what does this mean,” Davis said. “Could it be related to a complex of phenomena that are all endangering the male?”

Small-scale studies have shown that men exposed to pollutants like lead and pesticides tend to father significantly fewer sons. One analysis from Washington state found that men who worked in the aluminum industry from 1980 to 1990 fathered mostly girls, with boys representing only 38% of all births. And in the Netherlands, researchers learned that men who had been exposed to pesticides at work between 1978 and 1990 fathered sons only 25% of the time.

While no one knows how exposure to toxicants may influence the sex of the child, research suggests the trouble may lie in the male-determining Y chromosome. Either sperm cells carrying the Y chromosome may be damaged, or the gene on the Y chromosome that triggers male development may be thrown out of whack by the exposure.

A third possibility is toxicants may be disrupting the cascade of male hormones supplied to a male embryo during development, and somehow compromising the child’s future ability to produce sons.

The source of that disruption may originate from environmental pollutants that act like the female hormone, estrogen, when they enter the body. Called xenoestrogens — xeno meaning “from the outside” — these chemicals are found in hundreds of items like household products, deluxe shampoos, skin creams and tobacco.

Several tests on animals have demonstrated xenoestrogen’s effects on the male. Last year, when Dutch scientists exposed young fish to a common industrial chemical, the male fish’s sex organs atrophied and some even developed female sex organs. In other studies, rats injected with estrogen-like chemicals fathered male rats with female nipples.

“Our message is, given what we have seen in these highly exposed populations,” said Gottleib, “what fathers and mothers are exposed to and the impact on reproductive health is an important factor and needs more research.”

While the implications are alarming, it may not be time to sweat about a future where men are few and far between. Dr. Jospeh Graziano, head of the Division of Environmental Health Sciences at Columbia University, calls the margin of decline in boy births in recent years “extraordinarily small.”

Furthermore, as Davis notes in her study, during the first half of the century, the proportion of male births rose significantly in industrialized countries. Davis claims that increase is due to improved prenatal care, which has managed to save more stillborn babies. The majority of stillborn infants are male.

“It’s speculation,” Graziano said of the pollution theory. “And difficult to prove.” If researchers had access to data reaching further back in time, he argues, they might realize a dip in boy birth rates — in the big picture — is nothing more than a natural variation.

“It’s worth continuing to track the trend,” he said. “But so far, I’m not worried.”

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Success Seen With Fertility Treatments (980319)

NEW YORK — More than 11,000 women gave birth to 16,000 infants in 1995 with the aid of infertility treatments, according to a report from the Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology (SART).

The most popular treatment remains in vitro fertilization (IVF), which was used in 69% of treatment cycles.

In a cycle of IVF, eggs and sperm are retrieved and mixed — sometimes with the aid of microscopic instruments — in laboratory dishes, and the resulting embryos transferred into a woman’s reproductive tract.

The report, compiled from data voluntarily supplied by 281 clinics in the US, is published in the current issue of the journal Fertility and Sterility.

A total of 59,142 cycles of fertility treatment were attempted, including 41,098 cycles of IVF. The IVF fertilization had a success rate of 22.5% deliveries per egg retrieval procedure, a process in which a woman takes powerful ovulation-stimulating drugs and the resulting eggs are retrieved by a physician for IVF.

In comparison, 39,390 cycles of assisted reproductive technologies were attempted in 1994, including 33,700 cycles of IVF with a 20.7% success rate —although fewer clinics were reporting data at that time.

“The 1995 results from the SART report are certainly exciting for us as doctors but also for those suffering from infertility,” said Dr. Bill Yee, in a statement released by SART. “We have seen a dramatic increase in the number of children born through (assisted reproductive technologies) and with more research and better treatments coming all the time, we should continue to see more couples who are able to realize their dream of having a child,” said Yee, who is president of SART.

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Dutch doctors call for fertility regulations (980522)

LONDON, May 22 — Dutch doctors, concerned about the safety of the latest fertility techniques, said on Friday that regulations are needed to make sure they pose no danger to the unborn child.

Advances in fertility treatments have given hope to millions of infertile couples, but unlike new drugs which must go through a series of extensive safety and efficacy trials, there are no similar regulations controlling fertility treatments.

In a commentary in The Lancet medical journal on two studies of children conceived through intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI), in which a single male sperm in injected into a female egg, Dr Egbert te Velde of University Hospital in Utrecht said safety trials are needed.

“Before any new assisted-reproduction techniques are adopted as routine treatment for infertility, they should be assessed extensively in animal and human embryo research, then in clinical trials, during which the children must be monitored long term,” Te Velde and his colleagues said.

The Dutch experts warned that manipulating human embryos and intervening in natural conception could cause chromosomal damage and developmental problems in children.

“I’m not saying ICSI causes any danger. We don’t know. There are new techniques and I think it would be much better if the introduction of these new techniques would be carefully regulated,” he told Reuters in a telephone interview.

Tens of thousands of children have been born since the ICSI technique was introduced in 1992. It was hailed as a major breakthrough in the treatment of male infertility and allowed many subfertile men with very low sperm counts to become fathers.

But because the technique is so new, its impact on the development of children conceived through it are still not known. Two research projects reported in The Lancet produced conflicting results.

An Australian study of 250 one-year-old children conceived through ICSI, in-vitro fertilisation (IVF) in which the sperm and egg are combined in a test tube, and naturally found that there was an increased “risk of mild delays in development at one year” in the ICSI children.

Using standard measures to assess the children, the researchers found the ICSI children scored significantly lower than the control groups. The development of the boys was also slower than the girls.

Jennifer Bowen and colleagues at the Royal North Shore Hospital in ST Leonards, New South Wales, recommended follow-up studies of the ICSI children.

In contrast, a study in Brussels of two-year-old IVF and ICSI children concluded that there was no indication that either group of children had slower mental development.

“The overall results for ICSI and IVF children indicate a score no lower than that for the general population,” Dr Maryse Bonduelle, of the Dutch-Speaking Brussels Free University said.

But Te Velde and his colleagues said there was enough doubt in some medical and scientific circles to warrant the introduction of regulations either on a national level or European-wide level.

“We know from ICSI that there is a small risk of more genetic aberration. We know that already. But maybe this is an underestimation,” Te Velde said.

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Canada’s first child from embryo screening due soon; Advocates say it averts pained lives; critics see moral risk (National Post, 980000)

Canada’s first “designer baby” — a child screened while at the embryo stage to make sure it had no genetic defects — will be delivered soon, possibly within days.

Carole Craig, the clinic manager at IVF Canada in Toronto, said a young Manitoba woman with a genetic disorder is expected to give birth to a healthy baby conceived with the aid of pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD).

The controversial technique allows parents to reject unwanted embryos before they are implanted in the mother, and thus without having an abortion.

Its defenders say PGD offers an alternative to parents who have had miscarriages or watched children die because of diseases they have passed on. Critics say it amounts to eugenics and could lead to generations of designer children.

IVF Canada is believed to be the only clinic in the country that offers the procedure.

Ms. Craig said the 27-year-old expectant mother, who has abnormal chromosomes, could not give birth without genetic screening because her body would reject her deformed foetuses.

“She would probably abort the foetus and would never be able to carry a child of her own unless she happened to luck out with an embryo which was free of it,” said Ms. Craig, who would not provide more details about the mother or her 39-year-old husband, in order to protect their identities.

With PGD, eggs from the mother are fertilized in a laboratory to produce a number of embryos that are then tested for genetic defects. Only those free of defects are replanted in the womb.

In the past couple of years at least a dozen women have had embryos screened at the clinic, said Ms. Craig, but the Manitoba mother is the first to become pregnant with the technique.

Elsewhere, PGD is producing dramatic results.

Dr. Yury Verlinsky, director of the Reproductive Genetics Institute at Illinois Masonic Medical Centre in Chicago, and a pioneer of the technique, said 230 babies have been born at his clinic free of the medical conditions carried by their parents, including Huntington’s disease, cystic fibrosis, Tay-Sachs disease, hemophilia A, Duchenne muscular dystrophy and Down’s syndrome.

“We can give a choice to the family. The patient can get pregnant and avoid abortion,” Dr. Verlinsky said.

In Britain, the body that oversees reproductive technologies is conducting an inquiry into how far PGD should be allowed to go in eliminating genetic diseases.

It reported earlier this week that from 200 women in Britain who had their embryos screened for genetic defects, 20 babies were born.

There are no laws in Canada or the United States governing the use of PGD, and only limited restrictions in Britain, but clinics used it primarily to screen only for serious genetic diseases.

The procedure is capable of determining sex for parents who want boys, although most clinics refuse to do this.

Geneticists say PGD’s uses will grow as scientists identify the genes responsible for more ailments.

The critics say PGD, even in its current restricted use, is merely eugenics masked as reproductive technology and is being used to rid society of disabled people.

Dr. Patricia Baird, who headed the Royal Commission on New Reproductive Technologies, believes the genetic screening has great potential for misuse.

There are huge financial rewards for physicians willing to exploit the lack of Canadian law governing the use of advancing reproductive technologies, said Dr. Baird.

She points out that a Montreal clinic was marketing PGD for women with a history of breast cancer, even though there is no proof that children born with the gene will get the disease.

(It’s not clear whether the Montreal clinic is still operating.)

Embryo screening costs upwards of $7,000 in Canada, according to IVF Canada.

“There are a large number of people out there who would provide a market for those who want it,” Dr. Baird said.

Dr. Jeffrey Nisker of the University of Western Ontario was part of a team at the London Health Sciences Centre that was one of three centres developing the technology in the early 1990s, along with clinics in Chicago and London, England.

But before any babies were born his centre started getting calls from people across the country requesting the service so they could have baby boys. They decided then to get out of the business.

Now, Dr. Nisker is part of a Health Canada committee advising the department on new reproductive legislation. The legislation is expected soon, but it is too early to tell if it will cover PGD.

“We got into this because we thought it would alleviate suffering without abortion,” Dr. Nisker said, but “we realized that we opened up a can of worms with little moral exploration.”

Margaret Somerville, the director of the Centre for Medicine, Ethics and Law at McGill University, believes the technique can be justified to prevent serious diseases that cause suffering.

But she is concerned that it will be deployed by parents to weed out offspring with trivial imperfections.

“What if all the kid has is a cleft palate?” she asked. “It is genetically inherited. And so, will people say, ‘Well, I would rather have a perfect child, I will [reject] this one and try again’? What is ethically unsuitable decreases [as people become familiar with reproductive technology].

“And we have got to be very concerned about how far that goes.”

Beth and David Bauer, a Michigan couple, wanted to have more children but as carriers of the cystic fibrosis gene, they knew there was a significant chance they would have a baby born with the disease.

Their three-year-old daughter, Meg, has cystic fibrosis and, like others with the disease, she has mucus in her lungs, digestive problems and a high risk of organ failure. Her life expectancy is 31 years.

“It is a terrible, terrible disease and it’s terminal,” said Ms. Bauer, 33.

“You’re looking at many years of stress and sadness with this disease. To me, it is worth preventing a child who will suffer by going through this procedure.”

Last year, at the genetics institute in Illinois, Ms. Bauer was given fertility drugs to stimulate her ovaries to produce eggs, which were surgically extracted and combined with her husband’s sperm in a petri dish. Within hours, 10 embryos emerged. A cell from each was removed and tested for cystic fibrosis.

“They ended up with only three grade A, number one embryos without cystic fibrosis,” she said.

Doctors then planted all three embryos — typically done to increase chances of impregnation — in Ms. Bauer’s womb.

In February, she gave birth to three girls.

“They were a little early,” said Ms. Bauer. “But they’re all healthy and they do not have cystic fibrosis. What they did was wonderful.”

Ms. Bauer said she expects Meg, her daughter with cystic fibrosis, will understand when she gets older that her mother was not rejecting her when she chose to reject embryos with her disease.

Ms. Bauer recognizes the potential for PGD to be misused. But in her own case, says it was the right thing to do.

“I was just trying to have more children that didn’t suffer,” said Ms. Bauer.

“I didn’t look at the other issues that could occur in the long run with other diseases. I was just thankful there was some way to help parents like myself to prevent having more children who could suffer.”

UK fertility clinic gets OK to freeze human eggs (981022)

LONDON, Oct 22 — Cancer patients and career women in Britain will be allowed to posptone motherhood after a fertility clinic was given the go ahead to freeze human eggs.

Mohamed Taranissi, the head of the Assisted Reproduction and Gynaecology Centre in London, said on Thursday that his clinic would be the first in Britain to do the procedure.

“There have been quite a few difficulties (with the technique)...but we have done some work and it has been successful. We applied for a licence from the HFEA and it has been approved,” he said in a telephone interview.

The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authurity (HFEA) is a government body that regulates fertility treatment and licenses the country’s fertility clinics.

A HFEA spokeswoman said the frozen eggs would only be for the patient’s own use.

Taranissi’s clinic is one of a handful around the world that will be freezing human eggs, which is a very new technique. So far only about eight babies have been born from frozen eggs in the world.

The authorisation will allow women diagnosed with cancer to freeze their eggs before undergoing chemotherapy or radiotherpy treatment that could damage their reproductive system. Career women who are not ready to start a family now may also choose to freeze their eggs for future fertility treatment.

“There is a lot of work done on the technique but it hasn’t been available in a clinical context in a lot of centres,” said Taranissi.

Frozen sperm and test-tube embryos have been used in fertility treatment but freezing human eggs, which are very delicate, has been difficult. The perfection of the technology will push back the age of motherhood and elimate women’s worries about their biological clock and dwindling fertility as they age.

After the menopause women stop producing eggs and can no longer conceive naturally. Post menopausal women have become mothers by using eggs donated by younger women. Frozen eggs could change that and open up new options for women.

The procedure could lead to the establishment of egg banks.

“I’m sure this will eventually happen,” said Taranissi.

The women wishing to freeze their eggs will be given drugs to stimulate their ovaries to produce more eggs which will be removed and frozen.

Taranissi said the eggs could be safely stored for years.

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Baby bred to give his sister life (London Times, 001004)

THE first test-tube baby to be genetically selected so that his cells can be harvested to save his critically ill sister has been born to an American couple.

Adam Nash was conceived after tests to ensure that his cells were suitable for a life-saving transplant for his six-year-old sister, Molly, and his birth five weeks ago has provoked unprecedented debate among British doctors about the ethics of “designer” babies.

Last Thursday Molly received a transplant of stem cells from Adam’s umbilical cord, an operation that could offer her a 90 per cent chance of a cure for Fanconi anaemia, an inherited bone marrow disease that kills most sufferers by the age of seven. The operation is Molly’s only chance.

The procedure has divided experts on medical ethics, some of whom believe it could pave the way for the creation of “designer” babies chosen for a range of genetic traits. Adam is the first baby to be born from an embryo that has been screened for anything other than genetic abnormalities.

Current legislation would not necessarily ban a similar birth in Britain, though use of the technique would require approval from the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA). No British IVF clinic has yet applied for permission and the HFEA said it would consider any application on its merits, with particular regard for the welfare of the child.

But Paul Veys, consultant in stem cell transplants at Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children, said that the conception of children as donors was in general unethical and wrong. “This is a very difficult issue and it raises questions about where the cut-off line should be in genetic screening,” he said. “It is a start towards being able to choose the right coloured eyes and the right intelligence.”In this case, however, the use of the technology “might possibly be justified” because the sister would otherwise have died.

Other British experts said the procedure was a humane use of a medical advance to save a girl’s life. “This is precisely the sort of case in which this technique could and should be used,” Juliet Tizzard, director of the Progress Educational Trust, an IVF charity, said.

John Gillott, of the Genetic Interest Group, was also supportive. “This is clearly a child that is wanted, and there is no reason to assume that they are instrumentalising the second child,” he said. “He will get just as much love as Molly. This is something that should be allowed.” The use of stem cells from Adam’s umbilical cord rather than his bone marrow, he added, would mean that he would not have felt any pain from the transplant.

Molly’s parents, Lisa and Jack Nash, of Englewood, Colorado, are carriers of Fanconi anaemia, which can cause bleeding disorders, immune system problems and leukaemia, as well as anaemia.

Molly was born with two holes in her heart and without thumbs, hip sockets and part of her brain. Operations turned fingers on each hand into thumbs and she spent years in a hip brace to enable her to walk. She also suffered gastro-intestinal problems. The most serious problem, however, is her inability to produce bone marrow.

“I was handed this beautiful girl with a potentially fatal disease,” Mrs Nash a neonatal intensive care nurse, said. “We decided she was going to beat the odds. One way or another Molly is going to outlive us.”

The Nashes wanted more children - not least in the hope that a sibling might be able to donate tissue for a transplant - but were afraid to risk having another baby with Molly’s illness.

They opted for IVF after hearing about a technique known as pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) that can screen embryos for Fanconi anaemia, but four cycles were unsuccessful.

Last year Charles Strom, of the Illinois Masonic Medical Centre in Chicago, tried again, and used PGD to identify not only that two of the couple’s 15 embryos were free of Fanconi anaemia, but that their cells were also suitable for Molly’s transplant. Mrs Nash discovered that she was pregnant on Christmas Eve.

Last Thursday cells from Adam’s umbilical cord were injected into Molly’s blood at Fairview-University Hospital in Minneapolis, which specialises in bone marrow transplants. She remained conscious throughout the operation, and held her brother during the procedure.

“Molly was holding Adam in her lap,” Mrs Nash told the Washington Post. “It was the most awesome, monumental experience of our life, yet it was so simple. You’d think there’d be thunderbolts and lightning, but it was calm.”

John Wagner, who performed the procedure, said: “Molly’s having no complications whatsoever. She’s up and playing on the computer in her room.”

The children’s parents and doctors defended the ethics of the operation. “We could not knowingly bring a child into the world with that disease,” Mrs Nash said. “We wanted a healthy child. And it doesn’t hurt him to save her life.”

Dr Strom added: “People have kids for all kinds of reasons: to save a failing marriage, to work on the family farm, to perpetuate the family name. In the scheme of things, this is the most wanted child I’ve ever met. They love the heck out of this kid.”

But Jack Scarisbrick, of the anti-abortion charity Life, said the use of PGD in Adam’s birth was morally repugnant. “Its proper place is in the barnyard.”

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‘We’ve opened a Pandora’s box of medical issues’ (Washington Times, 000000)

THE doctor who performed Molly Nash’s transplant, John Wagner, talked yesterday of the ethical concerns of the treatment and his hopes for the future of it.

Dr Wagner, the scientific director of clinical research, blood and marrow transplants of the Stem Cell Institute at the University of Minnesota Medical School in Minneapolis, said: “We’ve opened a Pandora’s box of ethical issues. I think the biggest concern is: where does all this end? It’s a slippery slope. In future, will we be wanting to select babies for other characteristics, such as height or intelligence? That cannot be done today, but these are concerns that have to be addressed.

“The motivation for the work I’m doing is to try to be of help to families with children with life-threatening diseases and to make transplants safer. For Molly’s family, we could have considered using an unrelated donor transplant, but the chances of a cure were only about 40 per cent. Using a sibling for a match, you can more than double those chances.

“The family wanted to increase the chances of success for Molly and they always wanted a healthy child. From the family’s point of view, it was an easy decision. In addition to helping Molly, this procedure meant they knew they would have a healthy child and would not have to worry about an abortion.

“Molly is doing extremely well seven days after the transplant, but it is too early to be exactly sure of the outcome. We anticipate knowing whether the umbilical cord blood from Adam has taken in about a week, which is when we should see the earliest signs of recovery.

“Molly has no white cells right now to fight infection and we are supporting her with antibiotics. We are watching her in an isolated room where we filter the air to guarantee protection. We’re waiting to see white blood cells. No one has ever done anything like this before, but all the components have been done, starting with the in-vitro fertilisation. We’ve taken the extra step of making a perfectly matched donor and added something to what existed for transplant medicine. We have put it all together.

“Molly’s chances of having a good outcome are pretty high. There is always a possibility of a significant complication, but she is doing remarkably well.

“This technology need not be unique to Molly’s disease, Fanconi anaemia, which causes defective bone marrow. It could be used for any disease where there is a gene that is clearly abnormal, such as sickle-cell diseases. We have about ten families in the queue waiting to go through the same process with various diseases.

“One of our reasons for telling the story now is so that people are at least aware of it. We want to bring this into public debate. We want to do this responsibly. We want people to think about the issues.

“So far the response has been positive. We are having a small conference in Minneapolis in the middle of November and a much larger forum in Washington in the spring to address these issues and to hammer out ethical issues.

“I did Molly’s transplant using a drip. It’s like a blood transfusion. The stem cells know where to go. They actually circulate around the body and find a spot in the bone marrow space and take up residence there to regenerate the blood and bone marrow.

“I’m not sure how much Molly understands, but she does know that her new baby brother has played a role in helping her. She knows she has a problem with her blood and this is a way of fixing her.”

Jeffrey Kahn, director of the Centre for Bioethics at the University of Minnesota, said: “We’ve crossed a line that quickly goes to ‘Let’s select things that we as parents want - height or musical ability.’ That’s the moral difficulty. Once we have tests for eye or hair colour it could be used for those.

“It could become like buying a car, where you decide which accessories you want. Molly’s case helps her and brings a healthy child into the world, which is marvellous. But I can see the technology being taken in directions that I don’t think are appropriate.”

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Dilemma for doctors (Washington Times, 000000)

GUIDO FANCONI, a Swiss-Italian paediatrician who died in 1979, gave his name to two conditions: Fanconi’s syndrome, in which abnormalities of kidney function result in the body losing many essential substances; and Fanconi’s anaemia.

In Fanconi’s anaemia there are fewer stem cells than usual in the bone marrow and those that are present are poor specimens. As well as suffering anaemia the child has a poor immune response and from about the age of five suffers bruising, bleeding, recurrent infection and obviously fails to thrive.

If the parents of the child want another baby it would be foolhardy in the extreme not to have any embryo tested for Fanconi’s anaemia. It would not be difficult to justify bringing a child into the world when such a serious disease could be avoided with modern medical tests.

Nor could the parents be blamed for making certain that any new baby’s stem cells would be a good cross match for its elder sister.

Provided that the provision of stem cells was only a fortuitous spin-off from the desire to have another child, and the baby was wanted for its own sake, few doctors would complain.

Conversely, if the primary objective of having a second child was to provide a supply of spare parts for the existing daughter, the ethical considerations would have been quite different. If, for instance, the daughter had had Fanconi’s syndrome, rather than Fanconi’s anaemia, and the parents had wanted a spare kidney, for which they were prepared to breed, most people would have considered the ethics of the decision quite indefensible.

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Lesbian has brother’s IVF baby (London Times, 010713)

A 51-YEAR-OLD lesbian has given birth to her brother’s child after IVF treatment at a leading US infertility clinic.

The American woman became pregnant using eggs from an anonymous donor. She then chose to have the donor eggs fertilised by her brother because she wanted to have a child that had some “genetic likeness” to herself and her family.

The woman, who has been in a lesbian relationship for 15 years, is described as “a highly successful professional woman”. The baby, who is perfectly healthy, is now six months old. Doctors involved in the case say that they were moved by “the genuine and loving nature of the request”, particularly because the woman’s mother was a Holocaust survivor and she and her brother were among the few remaining members of that family.

“All she was asking was to become a mother,” said Dr Mark Sauer of Columbia University in New York, where the procedure took place.

The case, the first of its type reported by an infertility clinic, is outlined today in a new international medical journal edited by the British test-tube baby pioneer Robert Edwards. Professor Edwards, with the late Patrick Steptoe, created the world’s first test-tube baby nearly 24 years ago.

Professor Edwards said that he believed such treatment, which cost about $30,000 (£21,000), should also be allowed in the UK. “It is a very touching case and the doctors involved have acted immensely responsibly.”

The US doctors have opted to publish details of the case in the British-based journal, Reproductive Biomedicine Online, in an attempt to encourage discussion of this highly controversial treatment for the older infertile unmarried woman who has no male partner and no eggs of her own, but still wants a child that is in some part genetically “hers”.

In a discussion paper in the journal this weekend, Kamal Ahuja, scientific director of the Cromwell IVF clinics in Britain, asks: Is it right to experiment with a child’s psyche? He concludes that detailed, long-term psychological studies at City University in London, which compared families with children who were conceived naturally, by IVF, by donor sperm or egg, or were adopted, found that the children’s psychological well-being is not damaged when donors are involved.

Dr Ahuja notes that the case of the American woman would probably be approved here as the procedure “does not differ fundamentally from sister to sister donation, which is allowed in the UK”. He adds: “When you hear of this case initially, there is an inevitable yuk factor. But when you look at it in detail the case is a very moving one.”

The birth of this baby does not constitute any form of incest or consanguinity. Each of us inherits, in a random pattern, 50 per cent of our genes from our mother and 50 per cent from our father. In this baby’s case the maternal genetic component comes entirely from the woman who donated the eggs. The paternal component comes from the brother of the woman who carried the baby in her womb. Thus, Dr Sauer argues, the familial link so important to a woman “imprinted” with the sadness of the Holocaust is assured.

The brother, a married man with two children, volunteered to donate sperm to help his sister to have a baby with his wife’s approval. He and his wife have agreed not to disclose to anyone that the brother is the baby’s father.

Gillian Lockwood, who chairs the ethics committee of the British Fertility Society, said that some clinics in Britain already treated lesbian couples and that studies showed that they offered “high quality parenting”. “Some clinics would prefer to offer IVF treatment to a couple with a stable lesbian relationship than to a single woman with no partner on the grounds that babies do better with two parents even if those parents are of the same sex.”

Dr Lockwood, medical director of Midland Fertility Services at Aldridge, West Midlands, disclosed that another unusual treatment — to allow a heterosexual couple to have a child who shares the extended family’s genetic make-up — has already taken place in this country. Where a male partner suffers from azoospermia — complete absence of sperm — doctors have made his wife pregnant by using sperm from her husband’s father.

In these father-in-law to daughter-in-law pregnancies, Dr Lockwood said, the intention was to share with the child the knowledge of how it was conceived because the donor was a known family member. She said that it was sad that the child in the American case would be denied the knowledge of his uncle’s “highly compassionate act”.

Dr Sauer believes too much attention is paid to the mother’s age in IVF cases. He says: “Whether you are 16 or 63 you can be the world’s best or the world’s worst parent. That can be the case at any age.”

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Opponents Criticize Claimed Cloning of Human Embryos (Foxnews, 011126)

BOSTON — The first claim of human-embryo cloning has the criticism multiplying like cloned sheep.

Researchers at Advanced Cell Technology in Worcester, Mass., said Sunday that they had succeeded in cloning human embryos, but that their plan is to develop genetically compatible replacement cells for patients with a range of illnesses — not to eventually clone human beings themselves, as critics charge.

“This work sets the stage for human therapeutic cloning as a potentially limitless source of immune-compatible cells for tissue engineering and transplantation medicine,” said Dr. Robert P. Lanza, one of the researchers at the biotechnology company.

But critics of cloning, including President Bush, wasted little time attacking the announcement.

“We should not, as a society, grow life to destroy it,” Bush told reporters during a Rose Garden appearance Monday. He said the reported breakthrough was “morally wrong, in my opinion.”

The Washington, D.C.-based National Right to Life Committee also criticized the announcement.

“This corporation is creating human embryos for the sole purpose of killing them and harvesting their cells,” the group’s legislative director, Douglas Johnson, said on Sunday. “Unless Congress acts quickly, this corporation and others will be opening human-embryo farms.”

The Advanced Cell Technology researchers say they cloned a six-cell human embryo starting with a donated female egg cell. They removed its nucleus and replaced it with a cumulus cell, complete with its genetic DNA. Cumulus cells normally help nurture eggs as they develop.

Such a technique could only yield replacement cells for women of childbearing age. But the researchers have also experimented with injecting cells with DNA from skin cells.

In a separate experiment, the researchers say they were able to develop a more advanced embryo, known as a blastocyst, in a process known as parthenogenesis. They bathed an egg cell with chemicals that changed its concentration of charged particles, reprogramming it to form an embryo.

The research was said to be very preliminary. Neither experiment was found to produce the master cells known as stem cells, which differentiate into other body tissues. Lanza and the company’s top executive, Michael West, said they had no interest in transplanting such early embryos into a woman’s womb to give birth to a cloned human being, nor was it clear that their embryo would be capable of that.

Researchers hope that they will eventually be able to develop and harvest stem cells from such embryos to grow replacement cells. They would be genetically compatible, because they would derive from a patient’s own cells.

The company announced its findings Sunday online in The Journal of Regenerative Medicine. The research was also described online in Scientific American.

Several states, including California, have banned human cloning, and Congress is considering such a ban.

A critic of Advanced Cell Technology, who once sat on its ethics board, said the announcement was premature and would serve only to encourage opposition to cloning. The critic, Glenn McGee, a University of Pennsylvania bioethicist, called the announcement “nothing but hype.”

He said the company’s report lacks any significant details, including what cells company scientists actually grew from the cloned embryo.

“They are doing science by press release,” he said.

The House of Representatives has voted to ban human cloning, and the Senate is considering such a ban.

“I believe it will be perhaps a big debate, but at the end of the day, I don’t believe that we’re going to let the cloning of human embryos go on,” Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., said on NBC’s Meet the Press.

Bush is allowing federal funding of research on existing stem cell lines, but has been adamantly against anything more.

“The president has made it clear that he is opposed to any type of human cloning,” White House spokeswoman Jennifer Millerwise said Sunday

Other research groups in this country and abroad also have plunged into cloning efforts. Some aim at reproductive cloning to produce a new person, but most hope to carry out therapeutic cloning to yield stem cells for treating spinal cord injuries, heart disease, cancer and other ailments.

A second company quickly claimed Sunday it had also cloned human embryos, but in unpublished research. That company, Clonaid, hopes eventually to clone human beings.

“I’m very pleased that I’m not alone,” company director Brigitte Boisselier said. “We’re doing embryos every day.”

She refused to give details of the work. The company says it keeps its laboratory location secret for security reasons.

Many scientists say cloning of cows, sheep and other animals has produced some mysterious defects. They say the science is too weak to justify cloning a person, but they hold strong hope for cloning to produce replacement cells.

Dr. Norman Fost, director of the bioethics program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said the work of the Massachusetts researchers is “a basic part of making stem cell research useful for human beings.” He said most Americans favor such science.

Carl Feldbaum, president of the Biotechnology Industry Organization, predicted that Congress will ultimately allow human cloning for therapeutic purposes.

“Therapeutic cloning has been gaining allies as its applications are understood,” he said.

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Panel Recommends Banning Human Cloning (Foxnews, 020118)

WASHINGTON — Cloning human beings for the purpose of reproduction is medically unsafe and should be banned, a panel of the National Academy of Sciences concluded Friday.

The scientific report comes even as White House bioethics advisers are weighing the benefits of medical advances against the moral hazards of human cloning. On Thursday President Bush challenged the ethics group to be the “conscience of the country.”

The academy’s report said: “Human reproductive cloning should not now be practiced. It is dangerous and likely to fail.”

Animal cloning has shown that “only a small percentage of attempts are successful; that many of the clones die during gestation, even in late stages; that newborn clones are often abnormal; and that the procedures may carry serious risks for the mother,” said the panel on the scientific and medical aspects of human cloning.

However, the panel of scientists added that the ban should not extend to cloning of embryos in order to extract stem cells that have the potential to treat life-threatening diseases. That practice is sometimes called therapeutic cloning to differentiate it from reproductive cloning.

The science panel urged that the safety of reproductive cloning be re-evaluated every five years but that the procedure be banned during that time.

“The panel believes that no responsible scientists or physicians are likely to undertake to clone a human,” the report said. “Nevertheless, no voluntary system that is established to restrict reproductive cloning is likely to be completely effective.”

The panel focused only on medical and scientific issues, saying it was leaving to others any discussion of the ethical, religious or social questions surrounding cloning.

Across town, the President’s Council on Bioethics was diving into the details of human cloning. There is considerable support in Congress to ban the cloning of a human being for purposes of creating another human, but lawmakers are divided on cloning cells for research and medical treatment.

Even as his advisers were deliberating, Bush repeated his opposition to all human cloning Thursday, but said the group can serve an important role in helping Americans understand the issue.

“I have spoken clearly on cloning. I just don’t think it’s right,” Bush told the council, which met with him at the White House. “On the other hand, there is going to be a lot of nuance and subtlety to the issue, I presume. And I think this is very important for you all to help the nation understand what this means.”

Bush created the council, a mix of ethicists, doctors, lawyers and philosophers, after wrestling with whether to allow federal funding for research that used stem cells derived from embryos. He said he hopes the group will help as he faces similar balancing acts in the future.

“I really think you can help be the conscience of the country,” he said.

Bush said it would help people like him understand how to come to grips with how medicine and science interface with the dignity of life, “and the notion that ... there is a creator.”

The 18-member council will examine stem cell research, as well as euthanasia and assisted reproduction, typically in vitro fertilization.

To date, no one has cloned a human, which would be the genetic equivalent of a twin brother or sister born later. But scientists have cloned several animals, and last fall, researchers announced they had created a human embryo clone to provide stem cells for research.

The House has already passed a ban on human cloning and the Senate may take up the issue as soon as this spring. Council chairman Leon Kass predicted the council may have a recommendation by summer.

“We are going to try and do a good job, rather than bend ourselves out of shape to influence the Senate debate,” he said.

Many in the Senate favor a ban that excludes research and medical treatments that do not involve implanting a cloned embryo into a woman’s uterus. For instance, researchers believe they could clone the cells of a patient in order to create embryonic stem cells that are less likely to be rejected when used in treating his or her disease.

Opponents argue that this sort of treatment would involve destroying the newly created embryo, which they say is a human life on its own, and could lead to more objectionable forms of cloning.

On Friday, the council was debating the merits of each argument.

By contrast, Thursday’s discussion was highly theoretical. The council is dominated by academics, and at times its session resembled a graduate seminar.

Several council members pointed with outrage to advertisements in their college newspapers for egg donors that are specifically looking for women with certain test scores or physical characteristics.

“I’m just disgusted by this,” said Robert P. George, a professor of jurisprudence at Princeton University. “It strikes me as quite dehumanizing.”

But others wondered what ethical boundaries it crosses. “You certainly wouldn’t take eggs from someone with a genetic disease,” said Kass, an ethicist at the University of Chicago.

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White couple have black twins in IVF mix-up (London Times, 020708)

Mistakes in infertility treatment are extremely rare, experts insisted today following reports that a white woman who underwent the procedure at a health service clinic gave birth to black twins.

The white couple, who have not been named, went to the clinic for IVF treatment after trying unsuccessfully for years to have a child, according to The Sun newspaper IVF - the checks to prevent mix-ups

The British couple noticed something was wrong when the babies were born and were clearly dark-skinned, the newspaper said. It is expected that there could be a court battle over the twins’ legal parents.

A High Court injunction has been issued to prohibit identification of the parents, the babies, the name of the clinic or the fertility treatment involved, and the name of the NHS Trust involved.

A British Medical Association spokeswoman said the case was “a tragedy for all involved” and went on: “For the courts this will be a nightmare to decide what to do.

“Based on the law of surrogacy, the children would go to the woman who carried them, but this is a new case.”

There were rigorous systems in place to prevent something like this happening.

“We think the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority will have to look into this case and patients need reassurance that this will not happen again,” she added.

Mohamed Taranissi, director of the Assisted Reproduction and Gynaecology Centre in London, said about 40,000 IVF treatment cycles were performed each year.

“To my knowledge it is the first time this has happened in the UK. It is a very very rare event,” he said.

If a white woman were to give birth to a black baby there were three possible explanations: human error, a problem over the use of donor eggs, sperms or embryos, or the child could have a skin disorder which could affect their colouring.

Mr Taranassi, whose clinic has the best IVF results in the country for the past seven years, said that while he expected that the case reported today to cause some anxiety among people considering IVF, there would still be a demand for treatment.

All clinics that provide infertility treatment are licensed by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority. It regularly inspects clinics to ensure they comply with its code of practice and the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act.

Inspectors check that clinics have procedures in place to double-check the identification of people undergoing treatment, the sperm and eggs at the time of insemination and the embryos and the patient at the time of embryo transfer.

The HFEA, in a statement issued today, said this “should minimise the risk of the wrong sperm, eggs or embryos being used”.

The code also provides guidance to clinics on the need for high standards of storage and handling of gametes and embryos and states that only authorised people should have access to them.

Details about the source of gametes and embryos should be accurately recorded and labelled so they are not susceptible to any unauthorised or undetectable alteration. In addition, records should enable authorised staff to trace what happens to an individual embryo, egg or sperm sample from the date of collection.

Although this was the first such incident in the UK, Donna Fasano of New York had given birth to another couple’s baby in 1998. Ms Fasano, who was white, gave birth to a black child and a judge ordered that she should hand the infant over to his biological parents.

Professor Craft said that after the American case his clinic tightened procedures to make sure there could be no such errors - two embryologists checked samples at every stage of the procedure and made sure that container lids were not mixed up.

“I am surprised this has happened again after the American case. The HFEA is very strict, but human error can occur,” he said. “This is very rare, but it should send a message to every clinic to set up something to make sure it can’t happen again.”

He advised couples who wanted IVF treatment to go to a clinic with an established track record and to ask staff about safeguards.

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Bioethics Panel Recommends Moratorium on Cloning (Foxnews, 020711)

WASHINGTON — President Bush’s bioethics advisers rejected a permanent ban on cloning for biomedical research, taking a middle ground in the divisive debate over the promise of science versus the perils of research using human embryos.

The President’s Council on Bioethics was itself divided on what course Congress should take, but neither of two recommendations put forward supports the permanent ban favored by Bush and approved by the House last year.

A slim majority — 10 of 18 members — favored a four-year moratorium to allow for further public debate. Seven members argue that scientists should be allowed to move ahead under strict government regulations. One member failed to attend most meetings and took no position.

“The council, reflecting the differences of opinion in American society, is divided regarding the ethics of research involving cloned embryos,” the report said. “Yet we agree that all parties to the debate have concerns vital to defend.”

The report said members agreed it was better to air their differences than try to paper over them “in search of a spurious consensus.”

The divided report was expected. In February, the council’s chairman, Leon Kass, said opinions were so wide-ranging that he was abandoning hope of finding consensus. He said the council would instead produce two reports, outlining the pros and cons of each position.

Members agreed that cloning for reproductive purposes should be banned outright, for both practical and ethical reasons. In this procedure, a cell from one person would be used to create a second person with the same genetic code — like an identical twin born much later.

Scientists say the procedure would be extraordinarily dangerous because any baby produced would likely have severe deformities. Nonetheless, at least two scientists, including one in Kentucky, say they are trying to produce a cloned baby.

It was unclear what influence the report might have in the Senate, where members are also split over whether to allow cloning for research.

“It is my sincere hope that what we’ve done here will be of some help” in thinking through the issues, said Kass, a bioethicist at the University of Chicago.

Like senators, council members are divided on the central issue: the moral value of a human embryo compared with the promise of science to develop treatments for disease.

The idea, researchers say, is to create embryonic stem cells that could develop into compatible organs and replace a patient’s ailing heart, liver or kidney.

Seven of the 18 members favored a total ban that Bush supports: “We believe it is morally wrong to exploit and destroy developing human life, even for good reasons.”

They joined with three others who wanted a moratorium, which would give time to develop a system of regulation, to form the majority position.

The seven members in the minority argued that a days-old human embryo does not deserve the same protections afforded a human being and the moral objections to the research are outweighed by the good that could come from it.

“This research could provide relief to millions of Americans,” they wrote.

Stacked with academics, the council’s meetings have sounded more like graduate seminars than government deliberations. Members parried over the inherent dignity of human beings and debated, at length, the proper terminology to use in the discussion, with each phrase loaded in one direction or another.

While Kass repeatedly said the council’s deliberations had little to do with the issue of abortion, the question of when life begins underscored the entire ethical debate.

Over several meetings, the council considered whether a human embryo deserves the same rights and protections that society affords people; whether it is a collection of cells with no rights at all; or whether it is something in between.

The House passed a total cloning ban last year, including reproduction and research. But the Senate has yet to act. Last month, a leading proponent of a total ban, Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., said he would support a two-year moratorium on cloning for research, conceding he didn’t have the votes for a permanent ban.

==============================

First Human Clone Born, Cult Chemist Claims (Foxnew, 021227)

HOLLYWOOD, Fla. — The world’s first human clone, a 7-pound baby named Eve, was born Thursday, according to a chemist connected to a sect that believes life on Earth was created by extraterrestrials.

Brigitte Boisselier, head of Clonaid, the company that claimed success in the project, said Friday the 1-day-old girl is an exact genetic duplicate of the 31-year-old American woman who donated her DNA for the cloning process.

Scientists, anticipating the announcement, expressed doubt that Clonaid could clone a human being.

Boisselier said the embryo that resulted from the DNA cloning was implanted in the baby’s unidentified mother, who then carried the girl to term.

She said the baby was born at 11:55 a.m. at an undisclosed location.

“It is very important to remember that we are talking about a baby,” she said. “The baby is very healthy. She is fine, she doing fine. The parents are happy. I hope that you remember them when you talk about this baby, not like a monster, like some results of something that is disugusting.”

She said the mother also was doing fine and had resorted to cloning because her mate was infertile.

Boisselier did not immediately present DNA evidence showing a genetic match between mother and daughter. That omission leaves her claim scientifically unsupported.

Clonaid expects four more babies to be born in the next several weeks, another from North America, one from Europe and two from Asia. Two of the couples are using preserved cells taken from their own children before their deaths, and one is a lesbian couple, Boisselier claimed.

“I do believe that it is the choice of every parent to choose the child they want, even if they don’t have any infertility problem,” Boisselier said. “Who are we to tell the parents the child that they should have?”

The couples were not asked to pay for the procedures, but some had invested in Clonaid, she said.

She said Eve will go home in three days, and an independent expert will take DNA samples from her to prove she had been cloned. Those tests will be done within a few days and take about a week, she said.

“You can still go back to your office and treat me as a fraud,” she said. “You have one week to do that.”

Most scientists, already skeptical of Boisellier’s ability to produce a human clone, will probably demand to know exactly how the DNA testing was done before they believe the announcement.

Clonaid was founded in the Bahamas in 1997 by Claude Vorilhon, a former French journalist and leader of a group called the Raelians. Vorilhon and his followers claim aliens visiting him in the 1970s revealed they had created all life on Earth through genetic engineering.

Cloning produces a new individual using only one person’s DNA. The process is technically difficult but conceptually simple. Scientists remove the genetic material from an unfertilized egg, then introduce new DNA from a cell of the animal to be cloned. Under the proper conditions, the egg begins dividing into new cells according to the instructions in the introduced DNA.

Boisselier, who claims two chemistry degrees and previously was marketing director for a chemical company in France, identifies herself as a Raelian “bishop” and said Clonaid retains philosophical but not economic links to the Raelians. She is not a specialist in reproductive medicine.

Human cloning for reproductive purposes is banned in several countries. There is no specific law against it in the United States, but the Food and Drug Administration contends it must approve any human experiments in this country. Boisselier would not say where Clonaid has been carrying out its experiments.

Bush administration officials had said they were aware of rumors of an announcement but had no plans to comment until after the details were known.

In Rome, fertility doctor Severino Antinori, who said weeks ago that a cloned baby boy would be born in January, dismissed Clonaid’s claims and said the group has no scientific credibility.

The news “makes me laugh and at the same time disconcerts me, because it creates confusion between those who make serious scientific research” and those who don’t, Antinori said.

“We keep up our scientific work, without making announcements,” he added. “I don’t take part in this ... race.”

So far scientists have succeeded in cloning sheep, mice, cows, pigs, goats and cats. Last year, scientists in Massachusetts produced cloned human embryos with the intention of using them as a source of stem cells, but the cloned embryos never grew bigger than six cells.

Many scientists oppose cloning to produce humans, saying it’s too risky because of abnormalities seen in cloned animals.

Dr. Robert Lanza of Advanced Cell Technology, the Massachusetts company that last year produced the first reported cloned human embryo, said before the announcement that Clonaid has “no scientific credibility at this point.”

But he and other experts do not dismiss the possibility of success. In some respects, cloning to produce a baby may be easier than the task Lanza is undertaking, which is to clone an embryo to produce stem cells for medical research.

“They may be able to bypass many of the problems that we would encounter in the lab,” he said. He said his work has found that implanting a very early stage cloned embryo in an animal’s uterus can be successful, while trying to grow the embryo in the lab is more difficult.

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Background: The Raelian Sect (Foxnews, 021227)

The religious sect connected to the company that claims it has produced the first human clone is clearly unlike anything that science has grappled with.

The group’s founder says he met little green space aliens on a visit to a French volcano in the 1970s. That man — a former French journalist named Claude Vorilhon, who now calls himself Rael — says the extraterrestrials told him they created life on earth through genetic engineering.

Brigitte Boisselier, the chemist who made Friday’s cloning announcement, is a Raelian herself — a bishop, in fact.

At the news conference she appeared to be wearing the Raelian silver medallion combining the Star of David and a snowflake, symbolizing infinite time and space.

Cloning humans is at the heart of the Raelian theology of “scientific creation,” which they describe as an alternative to both Darwinian evolution and creation dogma of the major religions.

“Cloning is the key to eternal life,” Rael says. The group claims 55,000 devotees worldwide and operates its own theme park, UFOland, near Montreal.

During the 1990s, Quebec granted religious status to the Raelian movement. Its representatives have conducted condom distribution programs aimed at Canadian teenagers. They also have tried to persuade Roman Catholics to renounce their faith, prompting lawsuits.

Clonaid, the first human cloning company, was founded in February 1997, right after Scottish scientists announced the birth of Dolly the sheep, the first mammal to have been cloned from an adult.

Rael and a group of investors created Valiant Venture Ltd., a corporation based in the Bahamas, to run Clonaid, a project whose main goal is produce the first human clone.

Clonaid says on its Web site that after pressure from the Bahamian government — which feared the experiments might be conducted on one of its islands — Valiant Ventures was dissolved. In 2000, Rael handed the Clonaid project over to Boisselier.

Boisselier formerly taught chemistry at Hamilton College in Clinton, N.Y., and worked as marketing director for a unidentified large chemical company in France.

In interviews, she has said her 24-year-old daughter would be among the young women in the movement who would carry cloned babies to term.

Experts have dismissed the notion that Clonaid is capable of producing a human clone, because Boisselier does not have a track record in the field of either animal cloning or human reproduction.

But Rael has said: “Nothing can stop science.”

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Human cloning ‘flawed’ (BBC, 030410)

Human cloning may never be possible because of a quirk of biology.

Scientists in the United States say hundreds of attempts to clone monkeys have ended in failure.

They think the biological make-up of the eggs of primates, including humans, makes cloning almost impossible.

Cloning has been successful in several mammals, including sheep, mice and cattle, but there is increasing evidence that it does not work in all species.

The research, reported in the journal Science, casts further doubt on efforts by a handful of mavericks to clone humans.

Clonaid, a company created by a UFO cult known as the Raelians, claims to have already cloned several babies. It has produced no evidence to substantiate these claims.

Meanwhile, controversial reproductive scientist Panayiotis Zavos has published a picture of what he claims is “the first human cloned embryo for reproductive purposes”.

Misguided science

The majority of scientists agree that attempts to clone a human baby are dangerous and misguided.

Many cloned animals have been born ill or deformed and successful births are few and far between.

Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine used the method pioneered on Dolly the sheep to try to clone rhesus macaque monkeys.

They were unable to establish a single pregnancy after hundreds of attempts. Other groups have also tried and failed to clone monkeys.

The obstacle appears to be something to do with the way genetic material is parcelled up as a cell splits into two during embryonic development. Cells end up with too much, or too little DNA, and cannot survive.

It suggests that attempts to clone other primates, even humans, may be doomed to failure.

“This reinforces the fact that the charlatans who claim to have cloned humans have never understood enough cell or developmental biology (to succeed),” team leader Dr Gerald Schatten told the journal Science.

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Humans ‘nearly impossible’ to clone: study (National Post, 030411)

It may be impossible to clone human beings with existing technology because of insurmountable molecular obstacles, a group of U.S. researchers said yesterday.

“The chromosomes do not split properly,” said Dr. Gerald Schatten, head of the research team at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. “From the very first cell division, development is inappropriate in vital ways.”

Current techniques, which have been used to create a barnyard of cloned animals including Dolly the sheep, cows and goats, do not seem to work in primates, the team reports in the journal Science today.

Dr. Schatten said it is almost as if someone drew a sharp line between primates and other animals, saying: “I’ll let you clone cattle, mice, sheep, even rabbits and cats, but monkeys and people require something more.”

Still, Dr. Schatten and other researchers are unwilling to write off primate cloning forever. “Given enough time and materials, we may discover how to make it work,” Dr. Schatten said. “It just doesn’t work now.”

In December, Clonaid, a company founded by the Raelian religious sect, which believes space aliens created life on Earth, claimed to have produced the first human clone — a 3.2-kilogram baby girl. The sect claims to have cloned several more babies, but has yet to provide proof.

Scientists and ethicists around the world reacted to the Raelian announcement with disbelief and horror. Even when cloning works, the animals are often plagued with medical problems. Dolly the sheep, the first cloned animal created in 1996, developed arthritis and died prematurely in February. For every cloned animal that is born, many more are stillborn or have severe defects.

The experiments in Pittsburgh show the obstacles to human cloning are huge. Not one of the 716 eggs from rhesus macaques, which the scientists tried to clone using state-of-the-art technology, produced a baby monkey. Few of the clones even developed to the 16-cell stage.

“Our study suggests that reproductive cloning in primates — human and non-human alike — is going to be nearly impossible with current technologies,” the Pittsburgh team said. The failure “demonstrates that neither the cloning process used to produce Dolly nor cloned mice work with a primate.”

The monkey failure is also seen as a setback for so-called “therapeutic” cloning, which many researchers dream of using to grow replacement parts and cells to treat diseases such as diabetes and Parkinson’s disease. Therapeutic cloning would involve transferring new genetic material into human eggs. The resulting cloned embryo would not be used to produce a child but rather to produce cells and tissues that could be harvested.

For therapeutic cloning to work, the cloned embryos must get through several cell divisions before the desired cells can be harvested — a feat the monkey work indicates is going to be more difficult than expected.

“This is complex biology, and just moving nuclei [which contain a cell’s genetic material] around is not as simple as some people might suggest,” said Dr. Alan Bernstein, president of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.

One cloning technique was reported to have produced a healthy cloned monkey a few years ago. No one has ever been able to repeat the experiment.

The Pittsburgh team attempted to clone the monkeys using somatic cell nuclear transfer — the technique used to clone sheep, goats, cows, pigs, mice, rabbits and Cc the cloned cat. The scientists harvested an unfertilized egg, pulled out its DNA genetic material and replaced it with new DNA from an adult cell of the animal to be cloned. The egg was then coaxed to grow using various stimulants.

Although 33 embryos were transferred into surrogate mothers after initial cell division, no pregnancies were established. Although cell division continued in a superficially normal manner, the scientists found there were chromosomal problems within each individual cell.

The Pittsburgh work indicates the hurdles to cloning primates begin the moment the cloned egg cell tries to divide and multiply. Dr. Christopher Navara, a member of the Pittsburgh team, said motor proteins that organize and move chromosomes around during cell division seem to be compromised or damaged when the DNA is pulled from the monkey eggs. “Sometimes they [the eggs] didn’t even make it out of the first cell cycle; they’d just stop right there,” Dr. Navara said. A few clones got to the 16-cell stage. “But we didn’t see any past that,” he said, all of which indicates that no one will be cloning humans any time soon.

“Reproductive cloning is nowhere near as simple as the Raelians would have you believe,” said Dr. Alan Leshner, chief executive officer of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

The association, and most scientists and ethicists, would like to see a ban on cloning of humans, or so-called reproductive cloning. As Dr. Navara puts it: “Everything we know about cloning in other animals suggests that human cloning is not safe, is not ethical and probably should be illegal.”

But many scientists believe human therapeutic cloning could have huge medical benefit and should not be ruled out completely.

“There are clinical reasons for wanting to do it,” Dr. Bernstein said. In order for researchers to be able to explore the potential of therapeutic cloning, they must be allowed to work with cells taken from human embryos. “There are some important experiments that we could and should be doing,” Dr. Bernstein said.

His agency, a main funder of Canadian university medical research, is keen to start funding work in the area but has been waiting more than a year for the federal government to pass legislation to spell out how human embryos can be used.

Bill C-13, which was introduced last May, would make both human reproductive and therapeutic cloning illegal, along with attempted human-animal hybrids. The bill would also ban the creation of embryos for the purpose of research. It would, however, permit the use of surplus embryos for medical research until 14 days after conception. Canadian researchers have expressed interest in producing cells for research from the embryos.

“It is important to get clarity,” said Dr. Bernstein, who had hoped the legislation would pass before April 1.

“There are a number of people at the starting line waiting to get going and patient groups who are very anxious to see that the work move forward,” he said.

Meanwhile, in Pittsburgh, the monkey cloners, though frustrated, are exploring ways to get around the hurdles nature seems to have placed in their way.

Dr. Navara said they still hope to clone monkeys that could be used to test new disease treatments — among them, therapeutic cloning.

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Cloning in New Jersey (Weekly Standard, 031211)

New Jersey Assembly Bill 2840 looks to be the most radical human cloning measure ever put into law. It should be stopped.

USING “embryonic stem cell research” (ESCR) as a Trojan Horse, the authors of New Jersey Assembly Bill 2840 are trying to sneak one of the most radical human cloning legalization schemes ever proposed into law. How radical is A-2840? If the bill passes, it will be legal in New Jersey to implant cloned human embryos into wombs, gestate them for up to nine months, and then destroy them for use in research.

Assembly Bill-2840 is a sneaky piece of legislation. Its advocates publicly state that the proposed law would allow embryonic stem cell research from embryos left over from IVF procedures to be conducted. But promoting ESCR—which is already legal under federal law—is merely the front purpose of A-2840. Its true raison d’être is to explicitly authorize researchers to conduct experiments on cloned human embryos and fetuses, a radical purpose clearly discernable within the bill’s text:

* First, the legislation would explicitly authorize the manufacture of human cloned embryos via the somatic nuclear cell transfer (SCNT) cloning procedure. (SCNT was the method used to create Dolly the sheep.)

* Second, unlike the Hatch/Feinstein approach to authorizing and regulating human cloning for biomedical research at the federal level, A-2840 does not prohibit the implantation of cloned embryos into wombs. This is important because if an action is not illegal, by definition, it is legal.

* Finally, the legislation would criminalize the “cloning of a human being,” as a “crime of the first degree.”

The key to understanding the radical depth and scope of A-2840 is

in the bill’s definition of the term “human being”:

As used in this section, “cloning a human being,” means the replication of a human individual by cultivating a cell with genetic material [the SCNT cloning process] through the egg, embryo, fetal and newborn stages into a new human individual. (my emphasis)

Read this sentence carefully. Its terms would make it legal in New Jersey to create a human cloned embryo, implant it in a willing woman’s womb, gestate it through the ninth month, and only require that the cloned fetus be killed before it becomes a “new human individual,” e.g., at the very point of birth. This means that law would expressly permit implantation and gestation for any amount of time before the cloned fetus becomes a “new human individual”!

Amazingly, in December 2002, an identical bill passed the New Jersey Senate (S-1909) without a single dissenting vote. From there, it went to the New Jersey Assembly where, despite warnings about its radical scope, the Health and Human Services Committee passed A-2840 onto the Assembly floor. By that point, the alarm bells were ringing nationally, generating vigorous opposition.

The crucial moment came when four renowned public intellectuals and members of the President’s Council on Bioethics (William Hurlbut of Stanford University, Robert P. George of Princeton University, Alfonso Gomez-Lobo of Georgetown University, and Gilbert C. Meilaender of Valparaiso University) wrote to Governor James E. McGreevy urging that the bill be withdrawn. “New Jersey would authorize human cloning and the harvesting and use of body parts of cloned humans in the embryonic and fetal stages of development,” they warned, threatening “to make New Jersey a haven for unethical medical practices, including the macabre practice of human fetal farming.” Hurlbut et al further worried:

The pending legislation expressly authorizes the creation of new human beings by cloning and, perhaps unintentionally, their cultivation from the zygote stage through the newborn stage for the purpose of harvesting what the bills themselves refer to as “cadaveric” fetal tissue. Please pause to consider whose cadaver the tissue is to be derived from. It is the cadaver of a distinct member of the species homo sapiens—a human being—who would be brought into being by cloning and, presumably, implanted and permitted to develop to the desired stage of physical maturation for the purpose of being killed for the harvesting of his or her tissues.

With the cat out of the bag, the sponsors of A-2840 pulled the bill from the Assembly floor. But this was only a tactical retreat. Demonstrating that their purpose goes beyond authorizing the already legal ESCR, the bill’s sponsors did not amend their proposal to do away with the cloning license or limit the maintenance of human clones to the early embryonic stage, say, by prohibiting implantation. Instead, they waited for a propitious moment to push A-2840 through the New Jersey Assembly when there would not be opportunity for extended debate. That time has now arrived. As the Assembly session is coming to a close, A-2840 is back on the legislative front burner and being pushed toward a snap vote on December 15. Having already passed the state Senate with vigorous support from Governor McGreevey, New Jersey will become the first sovereignty in the world to legalize cloned human

fetal vivisection unless the Assembly rejects this bill. In the words of Leon Kass, “Shallow are the souls that have forgotten how to shudder.”

Wesley J. Smith is a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute. His next book will explore the science, morality, and business aspects of human cloning.

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Trenton Plays God: A whole new world (NRO, 031216)

In New Jersey this morning, human cloning is one signature away from a statewide legal green light.

Democratic assemblyman Neil Cohen told his colleagues that Assembly Bill 2840 “is not the most significant law we’ll write this session — but this century.” He’s right.

On Monday, during a lame-duck session, the New Jersey state assembly passed an unprecedented bill authorizing human cloning in the Garden State. Veiled as an innocuous “stem-cell” bill in most of the media and by its sponsors and supporters, not one state senator opposed it when it was first up for a vote a year ago this month.

When the assembly voted on Monday, all but one Republican (Rafael Fraguela) either voted “no” or abstained. Only Democratic Assemblyman (Alfred Steele) voted against the bill, and one Democratic assemblywoman (Mary Previte) abstained. That the vote was as close as it was is a credit to the work of the New Jersey Right to Life Committee, fighting against a muddle of disinformation fed by the biotech industry in and out of state. The roll call, too, suggests there is a learning curve on even the most heated issues involving human life: Republicans, for the most part, managed to reach a consensus to reject the bill, despite emotional ad campaigns — and the endorsement of Christopher Reeve.

As Wesley Smith, author of The Culture of Death, pointed out last week, the bill’s “terms would make it legal in New Jersey to create a human cloned embryo, implant it in a willing woman’s womb, gestate it through the ninth month, and only require that the cloned fetus be killed before it becomes a ‘new human individual,’ e.g., at the very point of birth. This means that [the] law would expressly permit implantation and gestation for any amount of time before the cloned fetus becomes a ‘new human individual’!”

That’s why the opponents of the bill, now passed by both houses of the New Jersey legislature, have accurately dubbed it a “clone-and-kill” bill.

Three members of the President’s Council on Bioethics wrote to Democratic Governor James McGreevy last January imploring him not to sign the cloning bill into law. They warned that it “threatens to make New Jersey a haven for unethical medical practices, including the macabre practice of human fetal farming.”

They wrote:

[The] legislation expressly authorizes the creation of new human beings by cloning and, perhaps unintentionally, their cultivation from the zygote stage through the newborn stage for the purpose of harvesting what the bills themselves refer to as “cadaveric” fetal tissue. Please pause to consider whose cadaver the tissue is to be derived from. It is the cadaver of a distinct member of the species homo sapiens — a human being — who would be brought into being by cloning and, presumably, implanted and permitted to develop to the desired stage of physical maturation for the purpose of being killed for the harvesting of his or her tissues.

Although the legislation purports to ban trafficking in fetal body parts for “valuable consideration,” it expressly permits “reasonable payment” for “removal, processing, disposal, preservation, quality control, storage, transplantation, or implantation of embryonic or cadaveric fetal tissue.” This is a virtual invitation to cloning entrepreneurs to conduct in the State of New Jersey what would amount to fetal farming for research, presumably including experimental treatments. There seems to be nothing in the legislation to prevent cloning entrepreneurs from paying women a “reasonable” fee to gestate embryos and submit to abortions for the production of human bodily tissues and organs. The entrepreneurs could then charge a “reasonable” fee to their customers for “processing,” “preserving,” “storing,” “transplanting,” or “implanting” fetal cadavers and tissues.

And what if a gestating woman has second thoughts and decides not to abort the developing fetus? Would a court be asked to enforce a contract for abortion? We hope and trust that no court would do that. But then we would have what the sponsors of the legislation say they oppose: the birth of human clones.

The governor of New Jersey is about to take a giant leap into the brave new world. He and his staff would be wise to read the bill that has just been passed, read the bioethics council members’ letter, and reconsider.

And another legislature, the U.S. Congress, should study this bill carefully and realize what’s happening while they fiddle.

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State of Cloning: An unprecedented law in New Jersey (NRO, 040105)

In New Jersey, Governor James McGreevey (D.) has signed into law the most permissive cloning legislation in the United States. Packaged as a benevolent “stem-cell-research bill” which claims to prohibit human cloning, the fine print is something different. The law allows the cloning of human embryos as long as you kill them.

In practice, of course, don’t expect to see a cloned child tomorrow — or in nine months. But the New Jersey law gives an unprecedented statehouse green light to the biotech industry. As recent developments in Massachusetts make all too clear, human cloning is where the money is going.

At the bill’s signing at the Kessler Institute for Rehabilitation in West Orange on Sunday, actor/advocate Christopher Reeve said, “What it’s about, this legislation, is about whether or not we have the courage to protect the freedom of ethical and responsible scientific inquiry.” Very few are willing to challenge a paralyzed Superman on the point.

Not everyone paints such a dreamy picture of the law, however. In a letter sent to New Jersey’s governor last year, members of the president’s commission on bioethics — including a professor from McGreevey’s state, Princeton’s Robert P. George — warned of the bill’s dangers: “[W]hat if a gestating woman has second thoughts and decides not to abort the developing fetus? Would a court be asked to enforce a contract for abortion? We hope and trust that no court would do that. But then we would have what the sponsors of the legislation say they oppose: the birth of human clones.”

The ethicist noted:

Trenton’s milestone is instructive. “S-1909 has blown the cover off of the true agenda of the biotechnology industry,” says Wesley J. Smith, author of The Culture of Death. “Rather than restricting therapeutic cloning to the harvesting of stem cells from early embryos, as the industry often pretends in the media, the Biotechnology Industry Organization’s (BIO) enthusiastic support of the New Jersey bill proves that [pro-cloning types] want an unlimited license to harvest cloned human life from inception through the ninth month.” Says Smith, “Experiments have already been conducted using cows in which cloned embryos were implanted, gestated to the early fetal stage, aborted, and their organs harvested for transplantation. The New Jersey law would permit this same cloned organ farming to be done in humans. It is urgent that we keep the radical New Jersey cloning license before the public and hold the industry to account every time it pretends to only want access to cloned embryonic stem cells.”

New Jersey Right to Life’s Marie Tasy says, “This law will allow human lives to be treated as a commodity, creating classes of lesser humans to be created and sacrificed for the good of humanity.” She calls “the unethical practices authorized” under the new law “the ultimate desecration of human life.”

A year ago this month, President Bush asked Congress for a total ban on human cloning. He hasn’t gotten one. And he won’t get one until there are more votes for one in the Senate. With the likes of Dianne Feinstein (D., Calif.) and Orrin Hatch (R., Utah) coalitioning and misinforming members and media, lobbying for their proposed partial ban, that’s not happening this session. In addition to reelecting their ally in the White House, cloning opponents would be wise to set their sights on the Senate in this election year.

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Human Cloning in New Jersey (NR, 031226)

“Today we celebrate the possible in our state,” said New Jersey governor Jim McGreevey as he signed the bill. What is now possible in his state is to create a human embryo through cloning, to pay a woman to allow it to be implanted in her womb, to let the clone develop for eight months, and then to sell the cloned fetus or its parts to be used in research — all with the authorization of the state. The bill was not advertised as allowing such monstrosities, of course. It was presented as a way to promote stem-cell research. But the text of the new law clearly allows much more than that. Its proponents never bothered to refute the point. Note how far we have expanded the definition of the “possible” in a few short years. In 2001, we were told to allow research on embryos that had been abandoned at fertility clinics. The embryos had already been created, and would never develop into babies. But — supporters of such research insisted — we would never create human embryos for the purpose of doing research on them. So said Sen. Arlen Specter, among others. A year later, Specter was a co-sponsor of a bill to allow cloning in order to create human embryos for research purposes. But even so, we were told, there would be strict limits. No research would be permitted after the embryos were 14 days old, and it would be illegal to implant the embryo in a womb. Sen. Orrin Hatch, one of Specter’s co-sponsors, made much of these restrictions. Now, in 2004, a state has passed a law that authorizes research when the embryo has become an eight-month-old fetus in the womb. None of the people who told us that they took the moral objections very seriously, and wanted strict limits, and would never tolerate fetal harvesting, has said a word in rebuke of the law. At the bill signing, Christopher Reeve said, “Whenever something truly great is accomplished, its birth is always attended by controversy and antagonism and naysayers. And then, years later, we look back and wonder what all the fuss was about.” His prediction may be right: Years from now, we may wonder what all the fuss was about. If so, it will be because our moral sensibilities have been dulled. Yet more.

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Scientist Claims Implanting Cloned Cells in Woman (FN, 040117)

LONDON — A Kentucky fertility specialist said Saturday he had implanted a cloned human embryo in a 35-year-old woman — a claim met with skepticism by many scientists.

Dr. Panos Zavos said it was too early to say whether the woman would become pregnant and give birth to a cloned baby.

British Health Secretary John Reid said attempting to create a cloned baby was illegal in Britain and a “gross misuse of genetic science.”

A spokesman for Britain’s Royal Society said the scientists’ group was “extremely skeptical.” Wolff Reik, a cloning expert at the Babraham Institute in Cambridge, called the attempt to clone a human irresponsible.

Zavos, a reproductive physiologist based in Lexington, Ky., is not the first to make such a claim. He did not provide any evidence to back it up and would not say where the procedure was done, although he said it was not in Britain, Europe or the United States.

At a press conference here, Zavos said the procedure was similar to the technology that created Dolly the sheep, the first mammal cloned from an adult cell. He said it used skin cells from the woman’s husband and one of her eggs to create an embryo that was implanted into the woman’s womb.

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Brave New Illinois: Cloning advocates come clean in the Land of Lincoln (NRO, 040218)

With last week’s announcement by South Korean scientists that the first known successful cloning of human embryos has taken place, debate on legislation to ban human cloning is no longer a question of banning science fiction. There is fresh impetus to the global cloning debate now that this aspect of a brave new world has arrived.

Interestingly, as human-cloning experiments begin, the duplicitous ways of American cloning advocates may be at an end. If a bill currently poised to pass the Illinois general assembly does so in its current form, it may prove that Big Biotech does not have to hide its intentions while pursing its radical agenda.

To date, they’ve been a devious bunch. In early January, New Jersey became the first state in the union — in fact, the first place in the world — to explicitly legalize human cloning while pretending to ban it. Trying to “ban” cloning in one part of a bill’s text while actually encouraging it in another part has been considered by proponents as a necessary public-relations ploy to help pass the legislation.

The New Jersey law pretends to ban cloning by stating that clones cannot be cultivated “through the newborn stages.” This means that a clone would have to be killed at some point before or at birth. Of course, such a “ban” is completely toothless — no state could force a woman to undergo an abortion or kill her just-born child, clone or not. Not only would it be a public-relations disaster for the state, but Roe vs. Wade presumably protects the woman’s right to carry children to term and keep them based upon the same legal foundation that protects her right to terminate a pregnancy before birth — the right to privacy.

No, the New Jersey “ban” on cloning was merely a fig leaf for public consumption to help pass the bill. Legislators could say they “banned” human cloning while “protecting needed medical research.”

After a successful run in New Jersey with the “ban it but really encourage it” tactic, cloning advocates turned to Delaware. Here the bill has stalled after its deceitful nature caught the eye of some legislators who have refused to move it out of the Delaware House Health and Human Development Committee.

The question of stem-cell research and cloning is now on the table in Illinois — and without the trademark hubris we have come to expect.

In essence, Illinois HB 3589 would do the same thing that the New Jersey law does and the Delaware bill would do in its current form — explicitly allow research on human embryonic stem cells obtained from both cloned and regular embryos; allow adult-stem-cell research on tissues obtained by harvesting body parts from older developing fetuses (presumably up until birth); and allow a market in embryonic tissue and fetal body parts to develop.

What HB 3589 does not do is pretend to ban human cloning. The bill, simply called the “Stem Cell Research Act,” doesn’t even mention human cloning except to list it as an explicitly approved source for human embryonic and adult-stem-cell research. It would, in effect, allow the creation of cloned embryos and fetuses for any reason — including both research and reproduction.

Evidently, the fig leaf is not necessary anymore (or maybe just not useful given the problems in Delaware). Whereas the bills introduced in New Jersey and Delaware would legalize all forms of human cloning-”research” cloning explicitly and “reproductive” cloning by default — the Illinois bill legalizes human cloning without any duplicitous language at all. If you want to experiment on clones, move to this Midwestern farm state.

HB 3589 has already passed the Illinois house and is expected to be considered by the Illinois senate by mid-March. The fact that this bill is near passage is extremely troubling. Having successfully stalled consideration of a cloning ban in the U.S. Senate, the coalition of Big Biotech and patient-advocacy groups have begun a state-by-state attack intending to create as many safe havens as possible for cloning research across the country. If the onward march is successful in bringing enough states onboard the biotech juggernaut, a federal solution could move beyond reach — much to the joy of biotech lobbyists and their cronies.

In some ways the fact that the Illinois bill may be near enactment is not as shocking as the fact that cloning proponents seem to be coming clean. Gone are the pretenses of “limiting” cloning endeavors in any way and all the verbal maneuvering to go with it. Now the biotech coalition promoting this legislation is offering a comparatively clean fight.

If this bill passes, it will amount to an end of innocence. Instead of resorting to trickery, those promoting a dehumanizing biotech agenda will no longer feel it necessary to hide their true intentions. Either by the public’s acquiescence or mere disinterest, the biotech agenda will roll forward more openly and with less difficulty than ever before.

With the passage of the New Jersey bill, we comforted ourselves with the notion that the public was being duped. But if the Illinois general assembly passes HB 3589, Big Biotech will have proof that it doesn’t need to lie to a public who is asleep to the moral questions. While spokesmen for a biotech future may not yet shout their vision of the future from the rooftops, it will be obvious that one more hurdle has been removed.

There still is hope. Opponents of HB 3589 have just introduced a measure that would ban all human cloning and encourage adult-stem-cell research. This bill, HB 6693/SB 2934, would impose a fine of up to $250,000 for an individual or $1,000,000 for a corporation for each act of cloning unless the individual or company has received money for cloning. If they’ve have been paid for their work, their fine would be double whatever gross amount they’ve received (or the standard fine, whichever is greater). In addition, individuals or companies who participate in cloning would have any “license, permit, certification, or any other form of permission required to practice or engage in any trade occupation, or profession regulated by the state” permanently revoked.

Even if this new bill doesn’t pass, it might garner enough support to kill HB 3589 for now. If successful, Big Biotech may have to go back to its duplicitous ways. But if the Stem Cell Research Act passes in the form currently waiting for the Illinois senate, it will prove that Big Biotech dominates the public debate on questions of life and human dignity. As the recent South Korean announcement demonstrates, that brave new future is not as far off as we may think.

— Daniel McConchie is director of public relations and public policy for the Center for Bioethics and Human Dignity in Bannockburn, Illinois.

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The Politics of Bioethics (Weekly Standard, 040510)

From the May 10, 2004 issue: Playing defense isn’t enough.

by Eric Cohen & William Kristol

“NOTHING ILLUSTRATES this administration’s anti-science attitude better than George Bush’s cynical decision to limit research on embryonic stem cells,” declared John Kerry in a December 2003 campaign speech. He was referring to the president’s August 9, 2001, decision to permit federal funding for existing embryonic stem cell lines, where the embryos in question had already been destroyed, but to deny funding for research involving further embryo destruction.

Ever since President Bush announced his stem cell policy, research advocates have attacked it as “not enough.” They want more funding for more lines, without restrictions. They want the freedom to produce embryonic stem cell lines indefinitely, using as many embryos as necessary to advance research on a long list of terrible diseases. The idea of limits—in this case, no taxpayer funding for new embryo destruction—strikes them as incomprehensible and indefensible. In this spirit, Kerry attacks the Bush administration’s “recessive gene of pessimism about progress and people,” and declares that when “faced with a basic decision on America’s health, George Bush chose to go to the right wing instead of the right way.” Kerry aims to portray the Democrats as the party of health and progress, the Republicans as the party of suffering, death, and religious zeal.

The question is: How will President Bush respond? No doubt he will defend his policy on federal funding. And no doubt he will argue that the eligible stem cell lines are “enough” to get the medical benefits we seek, and that the issue is fundamentally about “respecting

human life,” not using it as a means to even the noblest ends. But it is not clear that simply playing defense on this and other bioethics issues will succeed. Indeed, over 200 congressmen sent a letter to the president last week demanding that the current restrictions on federal funding of embryonic stem cell research be lifted. Furthermore, it is increasingly clear that limits on federal funding alone do not guarantee our successfully navigating the “vast ethical mine fields” that President Bush warned of in his stem cell speech. This means reexamining what we have learned in the bioethics fight since it began in earnest in 2001, and sketching what a realistic offense might look like in the months and years ahead.

Since the president announced his stem cell policy in August 2001, the science of the brave new world has continued apace—not just the destruction of human embryos on a growing scale, but the manipulation of human reproduction in radical new ways. In its latest report, Reproduction and Responsibility, the President’s Council on Bioethics finds that the practice of assisted reproduction technology (ART) is largely unregulated. New baby-making technologies are introduced willy-nilly into clinical practice, with little research regarding their effects on the children produced with their aid. Because so many embryos are implanted all at once, nearly half the children born using ART are twins or triplets with disproportionately and often dangerously low birth weights. Some ART clinics already advertise cosmetic baby-making services—such as preimplantation genetic screening to choose the sex of one’s child—and these services only promise to increase as our genetic knowledge expands. And it is the ART clinics and their patients that produce thousands of “excess” embryos each year—embryos that are frozen indefinitely or destroyed for research.

Meanwhile, in February 2004, South Korean scientists announced the creation of the first cloned human embryos to the blastocyst stage—the stage when they could be implanted in a woman’s uterus to initiate a pregnancy or destroyed in the laboratory to harvest stem cells. The report in Science magazine sounds hauntingly like the “decanting room” in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World—systematic, precise, unrepentant about its use of women as egg factories and human embryos as raw materials. The South Koreans harvested 242 eggs from 16 women, tested 14 different cloning “protocols,” developed 30 human embryos to the 100-cell stage, and destroyed them all to get a single stem cell line.

Just a few months earlier, researchers working with animals showed that it is possible to produce both eggs and sperm from embryonic stem cells, including eggs from male embryos and sperm from female embryos. This means that it might be possible, someday soon, to produce a human child with two male parents or two female parents—and even a human child whose mother, father, or both is a dead embryo. Still other researchers fused together male and female embryos to produce a genderless human hybrid. Chinese researchers have already produced chimeric clones using rabbit eggs and human DNA. And what now seems prosaic—the destruction of IVF embryos for their stem cells—is a growing practice, with a number of states (New Jersey, California) contemplating new public funding initiatives, and a number of universities (Harvard, Stanford) actively creating new embryo research institutes.

While this research has proceeded, the

political debate on bioethics has stalled. President Bush’s August 2001 decision established an important moral principle, but also left an ambiguous legacy. The moral principle is that society as a whole, using taxpayer money, will not endorse the destruction of human embryos for any purpose; and it will not create public incentives for embryo destruction in the future. Zealous critics have denounced the policy as the 21st-century equivalent of silencing Galileo—attacking the president directly for imposing his personal religious views on science, and often ignoring the fact that Congress, not the president, made the law that prohibits federal funding of embryo research. More sober critics have argued that because more stem cell lines have been produced since the president’s decision, these new lines should also be eligible for funding. The “life and death decision,” they argue, has once again already been made. But moving the date of eligibility would undermine the moral logic of the Bush policy. It would send the message that the date will keep moving, and that embryo destruction today will be publicly funded tomorrow.

But the Bush decision, while principled, is also a partial decision: It offers no practical proposal for limiting embryo research in the private sector, though it probably discourages some scientists from engaging in research that cannot get NIH funding. It does not confront the question of what to do about excess embryo creation in in vitro fertilization (IVF) clinics during fertility treatment, or what to do about the roughly 400,000 embryos now frozen “in storage.” (Only 3% of these frozen embryos, by the way, have been made available by their parents for research purposes.) Finally, the Bush decision gives the nation a stake in the success of embryonic stem cell research as a whole, and probably benefits (indirectly) those who destroy embryos with private funds by advancing the field.

In the end, neither side in the embryo debate is happy with the current policy: Embryo research opponents lament the ongoing destruction of embryos in the private sector; embryo research advocates resent the limits on funding. But both sides also fear that things could get worse than they are now—that is, funding limits could loosen (the conservative worry) or legal restrictions could tighten (the liberal worry). The difference, however, is that research supporters are on the offensive—lobbying Congress and the president to make the funding policy more liberal, and aggressively seeking funding in individual states. Embryo research opponents, by contrast, are on the defensive: trying to preserve the Bush policy, with little hope or expectation of banning embryo research in the private sector.

In the one area where conservatives have tried to set broader limits on biotechnology—human cloning—the political fight remains stalled. Since 2001, the cloning debate has been a battle between two competing bills: the Brownback bill and the Hatch-Feinstein bill. The Brownback bill would ban all human cloning, including the creation and destruction of cloned embryos for research. The Hatch-Feinstein bill would endorse the creation and use of cloned embryos for research, then mandate the destruction of all cloned embryos to prevent the production of cloned children. The Brownback bill is the best way to stop the creation of cloned children, by stopping this act at the very first step. And it would set an important precedent that we should not “create human life solely for research and destruction.” The Hatch-Feinstein bill, by contrast, makes the American public an accomplice in this troubling practice, and it creates for the first time a class of human life—cloned embryos—that must by law be destroyed.

The case for the Brownback bill is as clear today as it has been for the last three years. But while the Brownback bill has passed in the House of Representatives twice, passage in the Senate is blocked. In the meantime, there remain no ethical limits on biotechnology of any kind: no limits on radical new ways of making babies (cloning and beyond) and no limits on the creation and destruction of human embryos or later-stage fetuses for research, so long as it is done with private money. We are left fighting for limits that may never come, and playing defense for a policy that only deals with one small piece of the brave new world problem. Perhaps it is time to be both more realistic and more ambitious—more realistic about what is possible now, and more ambitious in seeking limits that go beyond the issue of cloning and beyond restrictions on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research.

FOR THOSE WHO WORRY about where reproductive biotechnology is taking us, there are three fundamental concerns: the destruction of innocent life, the degradation of the family, and the threat of eugenics. Each one requires some elaboration.

The first concern is that in the desire to save human life and promote scientific progress, we will become callous towards life, using the weakest among us as tools to keep the stronger alive. This concern overlaps—both politically and morally—with the abortion issue. Both involve questions about the violability or inviolability of nascent human life, and what we are willing to endure or forgo to respect it. But embryo research is at once more defensible and more corrupting than abortion. It is more defensible because the goal is a humanitarian one (to ease suffering and cure disease rather than end a pregnancy), and because the early-stage embryos in question are so existentially puzzling. They are microscopic, developing, genetically complete human beginnings—not just any beginnings, but the beginnings of a particular human life. But they are created outside their natural environment in the human womb, and often left frozen for years in the IVF clinics where they are made. These embryos may be “one of us,” but they don’t seem like one of us. The moral transgression of embryo destruction, though real, is not so obvious, while the sick child or Parkinson’s patient is obviously suffering.

For the very same reason, embryo research is potentially more corrupting than abortion. It is a fruit we seek, not a transgression we tolerate. It is a premeditated project, not a decision made in crisis. Only the most extreme pro-choice advocates see abortion as a “good” and abortionists as heroes. But embryo-based medicine, if it were possible, would quickly become “standard practice” for the entire society, with leading researchers winning Nobel Prizes and parents who reject it for their children seen as legally negligent. Once cures exist, we might quickly forget that there is a moral problem here at all. Late-stage abortion requires a greater willingness of mother and doctor to look away from the facts of what they are doing, because of the obvious humanity of the developed fetus. But embryo research, so closely tied to the modern medical project that we all esteem, could become a celebrated American way of life in a way that abortion has not.

The second concern about biotechnology involves the degradation of the family, and the possibility that new ways of making babies will undermine the relationship between parents and children. So far, we see this problem most clearly in our fears about human cloning. To clone a child is to wreak havoc on the ties that bind the generations; it is to make our twin brothers into sons and twin sisters into daughters. It is to impose our perverse self-love on innocent children. But cloning is only one part of a larger project to transform human procreation and the human family. This larger project aims to use our biological cleverness to make us into post-biological beings—to create a world where male and female no longer matter, and where welcoming the newborn child as a mystery gives way to genetic screening, selection, and quality control.

Ironically, what made this project possible in the first place was acting technologically on the desire of infertile couples to have a child of their own, flesh of their flesh. To fulfill this biological desire, we invented a way to initiate human life in the laboratory—a way to bring human origins into full human view, and thus make them available for manipulation and control. The first IVF child was born in 1978. Since then, many infertile couples have had children of their own, with IVF to thank for this blessing. But as a result, we also opened the door to new ways of making babies that undermine the very biological ties that IVF aimed to serve. Only by bringing the embryo outside the human body is it now possible to give birth to another couple’s child; to have a child where the identity of the father is “anonymous”; or to contemplate women giving birth to genetic copies of themselves or two men having a child that is the fruit of their mixed genes. While of course not all families reflect the biological ties between the generations, there is a difference between adopting a child in need and creating an orphan by design.

Looking back, the significance of IVF cannot be overstated: It is the source of the embryos that are now available for research; it is the technological solution for couples seeking a biological child; and it is the crucial first step in transforming human procreation in radical new ways. Looking ahead, however, it is also clear that we stand at yet another major threshold. IVF, in most cases, still mimics nature—producing a child that is the fruit of a coupled male and female. The new ways of making babies, by contrast, radically depart from nature’s sexual pairing, and they violate the family structure that has long imitated and civilized our given nature in the rearing of children.

The final concern about biotechnology is that our growing technical control over reproduction will open the door to a new eugenics—where parents pick and choose the genetic characteristics of their offspring, and society pressures families not to have genetically unfit children. The longtime fear of genetic engineering—superbabies made to order—is far-fetched. The real danger is something more subtle. It is using genetic information to choose babies with a greater probability of their being superior in ways we desire—that is, a greater probability of being tall, or athletic, or musical, or smart. It is not so much the tyrannical parent as the tentative-obsessive parent that is the problem—the parent who is unwilling to accept the child as given, but obsessed with trying to get the best child possible.

The problem with assisted reproduction today is that infertile couples sometimes put their future child in danger. The problem tomorrow will be that fertile parents, so hungry to have the child they want, will forgo natural reproduction for the clinic—where embryos can be created, screened, and tested in advance. Today, we abort children with genetic diseases. Tomorrow, we will select children with genetic advantages—with all the expectations and deformations that this new imposition of parental will introduces into child-rearing.

AT PRESENT, all of these practices remain unregulated and unrestricted in America: The use of genetic screening techniques to try to pick children with “superior” genotypes is ungoverned and unmonitored. Embryo destruction remains fully legal in the private sector, and a recent law passed in New Jersey protects the right of researchers to harvest later-stage fetuses as research tools. Revolutionary new ways of making babies are unhindered, including the now imminent possibility of using the South Korean “cookbook” (as one researcher called it) to try to clone a human child.

In thinking about how to govern this free for all, we have the benefit of the recent unanimous recommendations from the President’s Council on Bioethics. The council calls for a ban on implanting human embryos into an animal uterus; a ban on producing embryos with human sperm and animal eggs or animal sperm and human eggs; a ban on initiating a pregnancy for research purposes; a ban on buying, selling, or patenting human embryos; a ban on destroying or harming embryos for research once they reach the 10-14 day stage of development; and a ban on radical new ways of producing a child, including “blastomere fusion” (which would create a child with four genetic parents, not two), conceiving a child whose father or mother is a dead embryo or aborted fetus, and human cloning.

It should be obvious that enacting such recommendations would be a great improvement over the laissez-faire status quo. But the recommendations involving embryo destruction and human cloning have been criticized by some pro-lifers on a number of grounds: for not going far enough, for accepting practices that are unacceptable, and for undermining the ethical clarity required for opposing the misdeeds of the biotechnology project. These criticisms are serious but not decisive. They force the question with which we began: What is a realistic conservative offense on bioethics issues? How does the president balance the steady support of the pro-life community—often the only reliable critics of the new practices—with the need to reach beyond the pro-life community to pass bioethics legislation? Is there wisdom in the partial limits proposed by the council? We believe there is, and that it becomes clear by taking up the two major pro-life criticisms directly.

The first criticism is that the council’s recommendations separate reproductive cloning and research cloning, and propose a ban on reproductive cloning only. In doing so, the critics say, the council tacitly endorses the creation of cloned embryos for research; it offers another version of the Hatch-Feinstein bill that pro-lifers have been fighting against for three years. But this is incorrect.

The council’s recommendations offer a way of banning reproductive cloning that differs from the two bills that have so far gone nowhere in Congress. When it comes to the dignity of the family, the council is more ambitious than the Brownback bill—banning not only cloning, but a number of radical ways of making babies. But it does this by recommending a ban on the creation of cloned embryos (or other wrongfully produced embryos) with the intent of implanting them to begin a pregnancy. Such a law would not (like Hatch-Feinstein) mandate the destruction of any embryos. It would not (like Hatch-Feinstein) endorse the use of embryos for research, but rather preserve the status quo of public silence. The illegal act (unlike Hatch-Feinstein) would be embryo creation, if not all embryo creation. And it would allow the fight for the Brownback bill to continue in parallel, while banning a range of reproductive practices that everyone abhors.

The pro-life rejoinder is that silence means an implicit endorsement of cloned embryo research. And yet, as Leon Kass has pointed out, the Brownback bill, which aims to ban research on cloned embryos, is silent on the creation and destruction of IVF embryos for research. Of course, pro-lifers also reject this practice. They don’t endorse it simply by not trying to ban it, and they don’t imply that cloned embryos have a more sacred status than IVF embryos. Rather, they take aim at the evils they can limit in the real world, while remaining legislatively silent about the evils they cannot now stop. This is exactly what the council’s recommendations do as well—protecting the dignity of human procreation, while remaining silent on the destruction of early embryos.

The second pro-life rejoinder is that by offering an alternative to the Brownback bill, the council recommendations will undermine ongoing efforts to pass the Brownback bill (or legislation like it in the states). They point to the fight in Nebraska, where a pro-embryo-research legislator introduced the council’s recommendations verbatim in an effort to stop passage of the Brownback-style bill. But the fact that a pro-embryo research senator is willing to propose recommendations endorsed by pro-life council members like Robert George and Mary Ann Glendon suggests not a weakening of the pro-life side, but a possible movement of the pro-research side in a more conservative direction. Indeed, the Brownback strategy, by itself, may make pro-lifers less ambitious than they could be in conservative states, where they might ban all creation of human embryos for research, not just the creation of cloned embryos.

Another pro-life criticism of the council’s recommendations is that banning the destruction of embryos for research once they reach the 10- to 14-day stage of development would implicitly endorse research on the earliest human embryos; it would suggest that the moral standing of developing human life changes at the 10- to 14-day line. But this argument seems to us to miss the wisdom of seeking partial—and principled—limits. To ban all embryo destruction after 10 to 14 days is the embryo research equivalent of a partial-birth abortion ban. The only difference is that instead of the 8- to 9-month fetus being given protected status under the law, it is the 10- to 14-day-old embryo. Imagine if a pro-abortion activist like Kate Michelman endorsed the proposition that all abortions after 10 to 14 days should be outlawed. Pro-lifers would be ecstatic. To enact a 10- to 14-day limit on embryo research would put in place the strongest legal protections of developing human life in the post-Roe v. Wade era. It would force the other side to accept that at least some embryos are morally and legally inviolable. And if those embryos are to be protected, why not others? It would shift the terms of the debate in a pro-life direction, and limit coming evils (like fetus farming) without betraying pro-life principles.

Certainly a total ban on cloning—indeed a total ban on embryo research—would be ideal from a pro-life perspective. But such bans do not seem forthcoming at the federal level. The status quo prevails—which is ultimately a victory for biotechnology without limits. What conservatives need, instead, is a realistic offense, and the council’s recommendations are a good example of this approach, though one could imagine other initiatives along these lines as well. The council offers limits that are much better than nothing—by preventing the destruction of some innocent human life, stopping new ways of degrading human procreation and family ties, and shutting down some gateways to a new eugenics.

We stand at a crucial moment in the debate about reproductive biotechnology—a moment like the late 1960s and early 1970s on abortion, or the early 1970s on in vitro fertilization. Despite the many ethical and legal precedents cutting in the opposite direction—towards a culture of autonomy without limits—there is a widespread consensus today against the most radical new ways of making babies and against harvesting fetuses for research. Reproductive freedom does not yet mean the right to have a child by any means possible. And even the most ardent supporters of embryo research still say they would never harm an embryo after 14 days of development. This broad consensus leaves open a door for enacting limits on the most dehumanizing uses of biotechnology, but it is a door that will not remain open forever.

The council’s report lays the groundwork for setting such limits. It establishes the principle that not all science is good for the country, and that scientists, too, must answer to the deliberative judgment of the American people. If we act today to prevent some of the worst abuses of biotechnology, we will at least have begun to face the task before us, governing scientific progress in a democratic and moral way.

Eric Cohen is editor of the New Atlantis, a resident scholar at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, and a consultant to the President’s Council on Bioethics. The views expressed here are his own. William Kristol is editor of The Weekly Standard.

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The Wrong Tree: Embryonic stem cells are not all that (NRO, 040513)

Once again the media are trumpeting the call among many in Congress, pushed by millions in Big Biotech lobbying money, for President Bush to reverse his decision to limit federal funding of embryonic-stem-cell research (ESCR) to those lines already in existence on August 9, 2001. Fronted this time by the grief-stricken Nancy Reagan, and boosted by Hollywood celebrities such as Christopher Reeve, Michael J. Fox, and Mary Tyler Moore, we are warned darkly, as a recent New York Times editorial put it, that the existing federal-funding restrictions “are so potentially damaging to medicine” that the administration is encountering opposition to its policy even among its “own conservative supporters.”

We have heard this mantra many times before but repetition does not make it true. A great deal has been learned about the potential of regenerative medicine since President Bush reached his “compromise” decision ending the stem-cell debate of 2001. And indeed, perhaps the time has come for us to revisit this issue, albeit from a different angle than suggested by ESCR boosters. Perhaps the problem with the Bush plan isn’t that it provides too little federal money for ESCR, but too much — at least if our national goal is to find cures to diseases such as Alzheimer’s, diabetes, and Parkinson’s in the shortest period of time.

The media is so excited about the supposed potential of embryonic stem cells that it gives far too little attention to the many and serious problems associated with this potential source of regenerative medicine. Listening to the hype, one might think that ESCR is on the verge of tremendous success. But the hard truth is that it does not appear likely that embryonic stem cells will soon become the panacea that fervid supporters of the research often claim. For example:

In animal studies, embryonic-stem-cell treatments have been found to cause tumors. In one mouse study involving an attempt to treat Parkinson’s-type symptoms, more than 20% of the mice died from brain tumors — this despite researchers reducing the number of cells administered from the usual 100,000 to 1,000.

Tissue rejection is another major hurdle to the use of embryonic stem cells in medical treatments. This is why ESCR is known as the gateway to human cloning, since one proposed way out of this potential dilemma is to create cloned embryos of patients being treated as a source of stem cells, a process known as “therapeutic cloning.” Not coincidentally, many of the same proponents who are now urging increased funding for ESCR also advocate that we legalize and publicly fund therapeutic-cloning research, which many find immoral because it creates cloned human life for the sole purpose of experimentation and destruction.

Besides being immoral, therapeutic cloning also looks to be wildly impractical. For example, a recent report published by the National Academy of Sciences warned that it could cost in the neighborhood of $200,000 just to pay for the human eggs to derive one cloned human embryonic-stem-cell line.

The hope that embryonic-stem-cell lines are immortal, thereby allowing them to supply unlimited cells for use in regenerative medical treatments, appears to be fading fast. Several studies, including one published in the March 25, 2004, New England Journal of Medicine, have now shown that over time embryonic-stem-cell lines develop severe chromosomal anomalies, including a form of cell change found in some types of cancer.

These and other significant scientific obstacles facing embryonic-stem-cell researchers mean that treatments from this source of stem cells are unlikely to become a part of medicine’s armamentarium at the clinical level for more than a decade — if ever. Indeed, as reported in Washington Fax in 2002, the noted stem-cell-research pioneer John Gearhart has suggested that embryonic stem cells, in the end, will probably not be “used in therapies.” Rather, he said, “patients’ own cells,” e.g. adult stem cells, are “where I see the future now.” (Gearhart does support ESCR, believing that it will provide useful information permitting patient’s own cells to be used in regenerative medicine.)

Fortunately, embryonic stem cells are not the only potential source for regenerative medical treatments. There are also adult stem cells, umbilical-cord-blood stem cells, and other cellular-based treatments that do not use embryos at all. Here we see a completely different picture emerging. Under-reported by the ESCR-besotted mainstream media, many of the diseases that embryonic cells are supposed to treat may be ameliorated with adult-stem-cell and related therapies far more quickly. These include:

Heart Disease: The FDA has allowed a human trial to proceed that will use bone-marrow stem cells to treat severe heart disease. The experiment will be conducted at Texas Heart Institute in Houston. This approach has already safely improved heart function in 14 patients in Brazil, as reported in the medical journal Circulation. Indeed, the researchers found “significant improvements in exercise capacity,” improving oxygen capacity “from 17% to 24% in treated patients.” A similar result has already been reported in the U.S. using a patient’s own blood stem cells, as have other human experiments in France and Hong Kong. (On a sour note, while not disproving the benefit of adult cells in treating heart disease, researchers in two mouse experiments failed to replicate earlier studies that seemed to show adult stem cells could be transformed directly into new heart muscle. Meanwhile, further studies still need to determine whether the treatment could cause dangerous arrhythmias.)

Diabetes: As reported in the November 14, 2003, issue of the distinguished journal Science, Type 1 (juvenile-onset) diabetes has been cured in mice using human spleen cells. The cells migrated to the mice pancreases, “prompting the damaged organs to regenerate into healthy, insulin-making organs” and thus curing their diabetes. The authors noted that “because the cell donors and hosts are adults, this system would preclude ethical issues associated with the use of embryonic stem cells, as well as concerns that [cell] transdifferentiation of embryonic stem cells may be incomplete.”

Neurological Conditions: HealthDay recently reported that “Cells found in a patient’s own bone marrow might someday be a safe, ethical source for replacing brain cells lost to Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and other neurological conditions.” German researchers cultured human bone-marrow stem cells and were able, within a few weeks, to morph them into mature neural or glial cells. We learned just this month that cells derived from dental pulp can be transformed into neural cells and may someday be a readily available source of treatment for conditions such as Parkinson’s.

Along these lines, human patients have already benefited substantially from the alleviating of symptoms of Parkinson’s with adult stem cells and related therapies. For example, Dennis Turner of southern California was the first human patient known to have been treated by his own brain stem cells for Parkinson’s. It is now a few years post treatment and his Parkinson’s — which by now was expected to have substantially disabled him — has instead gone into substantial remission. Turner has been able to reduce his medications and rarely experiences significant symptoms of his disease. Meanwhile, the May 2003 edition of Nature Medicine reported that five Parkinson’s disease patients, who received injections of a natural body chemical known as glial-cell-line-derived neurotrophic factor (GDNF), experienced significant improvement in their conditions. Three of the patients even regained their sense of taste and smell.

I could write pages about such successes. Adult-stem-cell and related therapeutic approaches are in current clinical trials or use for the treatment of cancers, autoimmune diseases, anemias, bone and cartilage deformities, corneal scarring, stroke, and skin grafts. Researchers have successfully restored some eye functions by extracting stem cells from human eyes, growing them in culture, and transplanting them into mice. Human trials are showing similar successes. Optimistic researchers hope that the technique could provide a cure for blindness within five years. Cells from human fat have proven to be true adult stem cells that look to be useful in regenerative medicine. Indeed, it appears that 62% of human fat cells “could be reprogrammed into turning into at least two other different cell types,” according to Duke University researchers.

The thrust of the research now seems indisputable: While certainly not yet a sure thing, and noting that much work remains to be done in animal and controlled human studies, barring unforeseen problems adult-stem-cell and related therapies may be potent sources of new and efficacious medical treatments in the years to come. Just as significantly, these therapies are likely to be available far sooner than embryonic-stem-cell treatments, since adult and related therapies do not appear to cause tumors, would not be rejected, and do not have to be maintained indefinitely in vitro, because they would come from patients’ own bodies.

As Colorado stem-cell activist Jim Kelly — a paraplegic who believes his best hope of walking again after an auto accident lies in adult-stem-cell treatments — told me, “We have to use our limited resources efficiently. Money spent on embryonic-stem-cell research and human cloning is money that cannot be spent on [investigating] adult stem cells.” If Kelly is right, increasing funding for embryonic-stem-cell research, especially if it comes at the expense of adult experiments, could actually delay the cures that so many suffering patients hope desperately to receive from developing cellular therapies.

— Wesley J. Smith is a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute and a special consultant to the Center for Bioethics and Culture. His next book, to be published in the fall, is Consumer’s Guide to a Brave New World.

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Inflated Promise, Distorted Facts (NRO, 040525)

As senators make moves, a walk through the stem-cell fray.

A few weeks ago, 206 congressmen sent a letter to President Bush demanding increased federal funding for more embryonic-stem-cell lines, and all but accusing the president of single-handedly standing in the way of curing many terrible human diseases. A group of senators is apparently planning to send a similar missive making similar demands in the near future. These senators would be wise to check the facts before they sign, instead of getting dragged into a political campaign that seems to show little regard for the data.

Of course, the question of embryonic-stem-cell research is a puzzling and contentious one. There are many who honestly believe that the possibility of medical progress in the future outweighs any respect owed to nascent human life in the present, and that the federal government should override the moral objections of many citizens and publicly fund research that involves embryo destruction. This is a misguided view; it risks making us users of life in the very effort to be savers of life, and it undermines the ethical pluralism that presently exists, by making the nation support this practice. But it is an often heartfelt position — one that Congress and the country can debate.

The trouble is that many stem-cell advocates press for this view by distorting the facts about the policy as it now exists, the facts about the promise of embryonic-stem-cell research, and the facts about where the embryos for such research will come from. For senators on the fence — especially Republicans and pro-lifers — a sober review seems in order to clear away some of the confusion.

Origins of the Current Policy

In accordance with the “Dickey Amendment,” passed each year since 1995, research involving the destruction of human embryos cannot be funded with taxpayer dollars. This is not Bush’s policy; it is the law of the land, passed annually by Congress and signed by both Presidents Clinton and Bush. This law does not ban embryo research, and it does not fund embryo research. It is a policy of public silence.

In 2000, the Clinton administration discovered a loophole that would allow the NIH to provide some federal funding for embryonic-stem-cell research without asking Congress to overturn the Dickey amendment. By law, the government could not fund research “in which” embryos were destroyed. But if the destruction itself were funded privately, the government could offer funds for subsequent research on embryonic-stem-cell lines derived from the destroyed embryos. In other words: A researcher could destroy endless numbers of embryos in his private lab, and then use the fruits of such destruction to get public funding. This would not violate the letter of the law, but surely the spirit.

When he took office in 2001, President Bush put implementation of the Clinton guidelines on hold. He wanted a way to support potentially promising research, but he also did not believe the federal government should create an ongoing incentive for the destruction of human embryos. On August 9, 2001, President Bush announced his new guidelines: federal funding for research using stem-cell lines that existed before the announcement, but not for those created after. In this way, federal money would not act as an incentive for destroying human embryos in the future, but stem cells derived from embryos already destroyed in the past could be used with federal money to explore the basic science.

This was the fundamental bargain of the policy: no limits on embryonic-stem-cell research in the private sector (unlike much of the world, which regulates this practice), but no public subsidies to encourage a limitless industry of embryo destruction.

The latest campaign by proponents of more federal funding rejects this basic bargain, and thus rejects the very pluralism that liberalism so often claims is its highest value. Although hundreds of millions of dollars in private funds support embryonic-stem-cell research, and tens of millions in public dollars are spent on it each year under the Bush policy, the scientists and their advocates in Congress want more public money with fewer ethical limits, even if it means forcing those who believe embryo research is wrong to pay for embryo destruction.

Confusion and Distortion

To get those subsidies, stem-cell advocates have pulled out all the stops: distorting the facts, exaggerating the promise of the research, and confusing the public debate. The letter sent by 206 House members to President Bush last month is just the latest example. It is worth dissecting in some detail, lest senators make a similar error.

First, the letter exaggerates the state of embryonic-stem-cell science. “As you know,” begins the House letter to President Bush, “embryonic stem cells have the potential to be used to treat and better understand deadly and disabling diseases that affect more than 100 million Americans, such as cancer, heart disease, diabetes, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, multiple sclerosis, spinal cord injury, and many others.” But these claims are irresponsible given the preliminary nature of the research, offering false hope to whole classes of patients now suffering under the burden of these diseases. The promise of embryonic-stem-cell research is very real but wholly speculative. No human therapies of any kind have yet been developed or tested, and none are on the horizon. And the notion that embryonic stem cells will cure “cancer” and “heart disease,” broad categories of disease that encompass a complex array of particular ailments, is unsupported by even informed conjectures. The use of a hard number — 100 million — is pandering of a sort that no good scientist should tolerate.

At a May 11 hearing of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Subcommittee on Aging, for example, Johns Hopkins Alzheimer’s Disease expert Peter Rabins and Washington University Alzheimer’s researcher John Morris both told the senators that they do not expect embryonic stem cells to play a role in Alzheimer’s treatment. Experts on other diseases speak with similar restraint. In the end, the research may bear therapeutic fruit and it may not — we cannot know in advance. It may cure some diseases and not others. But by seeming to promise medical salvation without limits, stem-cell advocates risk blurring the difficult ethical questions that surround this new science.

Second, the letter distorts the facts surrounding the availability of human embryos for research. “The IVF process results in more embryos than are needed by the couple,” the House members wrote to the president. “There are estimated to be more than 400,000 IVF embryos, which are currently frozen and will likely be destroyed if not donated, with informed consent of the couple, for research.” This implies that while the Bush policy funds research on only a few dozen lines, hundreds of thousands of embryos are out there for scientific use. But this is simply false. The same 2003 study that arrived at the 400,000 number made it clear that only about three percent of these frozen embryos are actually available for research — the others remain in the custody of the parents who created them, and are specifically designated for future use in initiating a pregnancy. Whether the parents really plan to implant them or not — some parents simply cannot bear to let them go — these embryos are not public property. The study further did the math, and concluded that if all available frozen embryos were used only for embryonic-stem-cell research, they would yield about 275 lines of stem cells. Not thousands, let alone hundreds of thousands, but 275 is all scientists can expect to get from frozen IVF embryos.

This points to a serious question about the intentions of embryonic-stem-cell advocates. In the May issue of Scientific American, prominent embryonic-stem-cell researchers Robert Lanza and Nadia Rosenthal wrote that the actual therapeutic use of embryonic stem cells would be hampered by immune-rejection problems that could only be overcome by cell treatments compatible with the immune system of patients. “Hundreds of thousands of ES-cell lines might be needed to establish a bank of cells with immune matches for most potential patients,” they wrote, and “creating that many lines could require millions of discarded embryos from IVF clinics.”

We will likely never have “millions of discarded embryos,” and nothing the president can do could change that. Moreover, the article suggests how far we might be from any workable treatments using embryonic stem cells. Does the House letter mean to call for a national project whose end is millions of embryos created for research? How many of the 206 signers understood that this might be necessary? And while it is true that many scientists believe we can find cures with fewer embryos, what will they do if Lanza and Rosenthal are right? Will they declare that “left-over” embryos are likewise “not enough”? Will they demand, for example, that the federal government also support the creation of cloned embryos solely for research? What limits, if any, will they accept as absolute, even if it means forgoing promising areas of research?

When the letter turns to the Bush policy itself, the House members do no better. “While it originally appeared that 78 embryonic stem cell lines would be available for research under the federal policy,” they wrote to the president, “now, more than two years after August 9, 2001, only 19 are available to researchers.” In fact, the number of available stem-cell lines has been increasing as more of the 78 eligible lines are developed to the point that they can be distributed to scientists. Just days before the congressional letter went out, the number of lines had been 18, three weeks earlier it had been 17, in January there were 15, and a year ago there were less than 10. The number of lines has been growing so quickly that an earlier version of the letter, stating that only 15 lines were available, is still posted on the websites of some of the signers. It is true that not all 78 existing stem-cell lines will develop successfully and become available. But the claim that only 19 can ever be expected to exist is disingenuous. At least for now, the number continues steadily to increase.

Next, the congressmen’s letter says that, “All available stem cell lines are contaminated with mouse feeder cells, making their therapeutic use for humans uncertain.” But the fact is that almost all currently available human-embryonic-stem-cell lines (including those that are not eligible for federal funding) were created with mouse feeder layers, and there is no clear evidence that this means they are “contaminated” in any way that would affect their usefulness. Perhaps more important, and unmentioned in the congressional letter, is the fact that a number of the Bush-approved stem-cell lines have not been developed with mouse feeder cells. These lines have so far not been developed at all — they are frozen in an undeveloped form, for use when techniques that do not rely on mouse cells are perfected. As NIH director Elias Zerhouni said last fall, “there are at least those, which is about 16 lines, I believe, that have not been exposed to either mouse or human cell — human feeder cells.” These lines are not included among the 19 currently available.

Finally, the letter offers no evidence that the number of available lines has already proven to be a barrier to any particular researcher’s specific work at this point. No other advocate or scientist has offered such evidence either. It is certainly true that more money for more lines could mean more work would get done. But that is not the same as saying that ongoing work has hit a wall because of the limited number of lines now available for federal funding, or that it will soon hit such a wall.

Stepping back, a pattern of facts emerges. Embryonic-stem-cell research is promising but so far purely speculative; the federal government in no way limits such research in the private sector; supporters of the research believe they can obtain hundreds of millions of dollars in private funding in the next few years, as the creation of new stem-cell institutes at Harvard, Stanford, and the University of Wisconsin demonstrates; and yet, despite the ethical objections of a very substantial portion of the public, stem-cell advocates insist that Congress should compel every American to support the research with tax dollars, and to make that happen they inflate the promise and distort the facts surrounding the research.

For those who believe advancing stem-cell research is the only human good at issue in this debate, the Bush policy obviously makes no sense. But for those who see the ethical and political complexity of the stem-cell question — involving the possibility of curing terrible diseases, the ethical perils of turning nascent human life into a resource, and the need to balance and respect the deeply held moral views of a diverse country — the Bush policy continues to make great sense. And whatever the nation decides to do about embryo research over the long term, we should do it with our eyes wide open — knowing the unavoidable ethical costs of proceeding, the potential human costs of not proceeding, and the great uncertainty that surrounds any new area of science. It is these hard questions that senators — and all Americans — should keep in mind before entering the stem-cell fray.

— Eric Cohen is editor of The New Atlantis, resident scholar at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, and a consultant to the President’s Council on Bioethics. The views expressed here are his own.

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Of Stem Cells and Fairy Tales (Weekly Standard, 040610)

Scientists who have been telling Nancy Reagan that embryonic stem cell research could cure Alzheimer’s now admit that it isn’t true.

“PEOPLE NEED A FAIRY TALE,” Ronald D.G. McKay, a stem cell researcher at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, told Washington Post reporter Rick Weiss, explaining why scientists have allowed society to believe wrongly that stem cells are likely to effectively treat Alzheimer’s disease. “Maybe that’s unfair, but they need a story line that’s relatively simple to understand.”

Or maybe Big Biotech needs access to taxpayer dollars to fund embryonic stem cell and cloning research—private investors generally give companies engaged in these endeavors a cold shoulder—and they are using famous grief stricken families like the Reagans to do their political lifting. If true, it demonstrates a depth of insincerity and disingenuousness that is as cruel as it is unjustifiable.

Here’s the story: Researchers have apparently known for some time that embryonic stem cells will not be an effective treatment for Alzheimer’s, because as two researchers told a Senate subcommittee in May, it is a “whole brain disease,” rather than a cellular disorder (such as Parkinson’s). This has generally been kept out of the news. But now, Washington Post correspondent Rick Weiss, has blown the lid off of the scam, reporting that while useful abstract information might be gleaned about Alzheimer’s through embryonic stem cell research, “stem cell experts confess . . . that of all the diseases that may be someday cured by embryonic stem cell treatments, Alzheimer’s is among the least likely to benefit.”

But people like Nancy Reagan have been allowed to believe otherwise, “a distortion”

Weiss writes that “is not being aggressively corrected by scientists.” Why? The false story line helps generate public support for the biotech political agenda. As Weiss noted, “It [Nancy Reagan’s statement in support of ESCR] is the kind of advocacy that researchers have craved for years, and none wants to slow its momentum.”

This is a scandal. Misrepresentation by omission corrupts one of the primary purposes of science, which is to provide society objective information about the state of scientific knowledge without regard to the political consequences. Such data then serves as a foundation for crucial moral analysis about whether and how controversial fields of scientific inquiry should be regulated, a debate in which all are entitled to participate. But we can’t do so intelligently if we are not told the truth.

Some scientists have become alarmed by how politicized science has become. As Roger Pielke, Jr., Director of the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research at the University of Colorado warned two years ago in the prestigious science journal Nature, “Many scientists [now] willingly adopt tactics of demagoguery and character assassination as well as, or even instead of, reasoned argument,” in promoting their views. This politicization of science, he worried, has led some scientists, “not to mention lawyers and those with commercial interests,” to “manipulate ‘facts’ to support” their advocacy, “undermining the scientific community’s ability to advise policy makers.” Consequently, he warned, science “is becoming yet another playing field for power politics, complete with the trappings of political spin and a win-at-all-costs attitude.”

Political science has gotten so bad that a few biotech advocates have resorted to outright misrepresentation. One of the most notorious of these cases occurred in Australia where Alan Trounson, a leading stem cell researcher (as reported by the Australian on August 27, 2002) admitted that he released a misleading video to “win over politicians” during that country’s Parliamentary debate over embryonic stem cell research. The video depicted a disabled rat regaining the ability to walk after being injected with embryonic stem cells—or so Trounson claimed. In actuality, the experiment used cadaveric fetal tissue from five-to-nine-week old aborted human fetuses, an altogether different approach that was irrelevant to the embryonic stem cell debate. Parliamentarians were furious, forcing a highly embarrassed Trounson to apologize abjectly.

If biotechnology advocates would allow a grieving widow to believe cruel untruths about the potential for stem cells to cure Alzheimer’s, what other fairy tales are they telling us—or allowing us to believe—to win the political debate? This is a crucial question, given that the decisions we make today will have a tremendous impact on the morality of the twenty-first century. The time has more than passed for the media to do some serious digging.

Wesley J. Smith, is a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute and a special consultant to the Center for Bioethics and Culture. His next book, Consumer’s Guide to a Brave New World will be published in the fall.

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Cloning Con (NRO, 040615)

More education on cloning is a good thing. This conference didn’t provide it.

“Landmark Conference for United Nations on Human Cloning and Stem Cell Research,” declared the press release from a group called the Genetics Policy Institute. It went on to say that “leading scientists from four continents” would explain the issue to U.N. delegates on June 2 at the U.N.’s New York City headquarters.

More education on human cloning sounds like a good idea. The U.N. narrowly decided last year to delay a decision on an international covenant against human cloning until this fall, in part because many delegates seemed confused on the issue. The key confusion was over whether to ban the use of the cloning procedure itself (known as somatic-cell nuclear transfer) in humans, or only to ban the use of the embryos thus produced to attempt a pregnancy and live birth. Belgium and over 20 other countries are sponsoring a proposal to ban only the latter, so cloning could still be used to mass-produce human embryos for research (misleadingly called, by some, “therapeutic cloning”). Costa Rica, the United States, and over 65 other countries are sponsoring a complete ban on human cloning (whether for “therapeutic” or “reproductive” purposes).

A good scientific conference on the issue could carefully explain that the human-cloning procedure is exactly the same regardless of how the cloned embryos are used later on. It would review the challenge of trying to stop rogue scientists from putting these embryos in wombs if we allow them to conduct cloning research and perfect the (now horribly wasteful) cloning procedure. And it would throw a cold bucket of reality on the hyped claims that human cloning will produce “therapeutic” benefits anytime soon, as even many supporters have done of late.

No such luck here. The GPI conference was more a political power grab than a science seminar. Its moderator and featured speakers were the same cheerleaders who have exaggerated the therapeutic “promise” of cloning to stall effective action against the practice in the U.S. And its chief underwriters — Democratic National Committee treasurer Andrew Tobias and his life partner, fashion designer Charles Nolan — are not scientists but political activists. Other funding sources included venture capitalist Brook Byers, who has raised $3 million for John Kerry’s presidential campaign, and prominent law firms active in biotechnology patent litigation.

There was more politics and economics than science on display. Biotech companies (and their patent lawyers, and the researchers who depend on corporate support) tend to favor embryonic over adult stem cells, because there’s more potential profit in the former: It’s easier to take out a patent on a cell line than on cells that reside in people’s own bodies, and the embryo can’t sue to defend its property rights. For that matter, if a simple surgical procedure using a patient’s own stem cells could cure most devastating diseases, this would be a big yawn for biotech: You can’t own other people’s bodies (at least if they’re legal “persons”) and you can’t patent surgical procedures. They need something you can harvest, isolate, quantify, and market — even if it is not necessarily the best road to cures.

The conference flyer from the Genetics Policy Institute (formerly called the Human Cloning Policy Institute) endorses “therapeutic cloning,” claiming “a clear distinction between unethical reproductive cloning and this lifesaving science.” GPI executive director Bernard Siegel says a ban on cloning embryos for research purposes would “destroy the hopes of millions suffering from Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, diabetes, cancer, spinal cord injuries, heart disease, ALS and other devastating conditions for which no cure is known.”

The irony is that each of GPI’s claims has been rebutted by the very scientists who serve on its advisory board and spoke at the conference to promote cloning for research.

What about the assertion that there is “a clear distinction” between reproductive and therapeutic cloning? That claim is denied by the very scientist who first succeeded in creating a cloned embryo and destroying it for stem cells. Dr. Woo Suk Hwang of South Korea has said that the cloning technique he developed “cannot be separated from reproductive cloning,” and is exactly the same technique except for what is done with the cloned embryo afterward. Now, Siegel says, Dr. Hwang is “dispel[ling] the confusion and myths” on this issue — presumably not Siegel’s own myth that “therapeutic” and “reproductive” cloning are totally separate beasts.

A further irony is that this conference, supposedly promoting a ban on “reproductive” cloning, is endorsed by individuals and organizations open to the practice. Conference speaker and GPI adviser Ian Wilmut, creator of “Dolly” the cloned sheep, recently said: “I do envisage that producing cloned babies could be desirable under certain circumstances, such as preventing genetic disease.” And the American Society for Reproductive Medicine (endorsing the conference as part of the Coalition for the Advancement of Medical Research) wants to keep open the option of supporting “reproductive cloning” if it becomes safer for mother and child. The chair of the ethics committee that drafted ASRM’s policy, Professor John Robertson, maintains that reproductive cloning should be constitutionally protected as a form of procreative liberty. The ASRM’s policy paper, echoing Dr. Hwang, also admits that allowing human cloning by somatic-cell nuclear transfer for “therapeutic” purposes “is likely to produce knowledge that could be used to achieve reproductive SCNT.”

Why would these people who don’t oppose “reproductive” cloning endorse and take part in a conference ostensibly geared toward banning it? Perhaps it’s because the conference’s central purpose is not really to ban anything but rather to protect cloning for research purposes. (After all, biotech companies, venture capitalists, and patent lawyers hardly have any clear professional interest in defending the dignity of human procreation.) Perhaps some of these people also know that a policy allowing research cloning is the very thing needed to make the cloning procedure “safer” and more efficient, so it can later be deemed ready for reproductive use. To scare people by announcing you will start making cloned babies right now, as the Raelian UFO cult has done, is the stupid way to set the stage for “reproductive” cloning; to support a partial “ban” now, until the method is perfected, is the smart way. Ultimately you get the same result, you allow public opinion to support your agenda gradually, and in the meantime you eliminate the maverick competition.

What about GPI’s claims that cloning offers the only hope for curing a long list of diseases? On this point, too, GPI science adviser Ian Wilmut has been embarrassingly candid in other forums. In a recent issue of the British Medical Journal, Wilmut discussed the idea of making cloned embryos in order to obtain genetically matched stem cells that will not be rejected by patients’ immune systems. He conceded, though, that this is not needed for treating diseases of the nervous system, because “fetal cells in the central nervous system appear not to be subject to rejection.” (Actually the studies he cites show that the nervous system does not reject unmatched adult cells either.) He added that cloning is probably useless for treating juvenile diabetes, lupus, and other autoimmune diseases, where the body’s immune system attacks its own cells as though they were foreign: “In such cases,” he wrote, “transfer of immunologically identical cells to a patient is expected to induce the same rejection.”

Suddenly GPI’s list of cures requiring human cloning becomes very short indeed. Cloning is largely useless or irrelevant for all the conditions over which celebrity spokespersons have brought the most attention to: Parkinson’s (Michael J. Fox), Alzheimer’s (Nancy Reagan), spinal-cord injury (Christopher Reeve), and juvenile diabetes (Mary Tyler Moore). And cancer never should have been on the list, because there is no evidence in the laboratory or in animals that embryonic stem cells have a therapeutic effect on cancer — on the contrary, they themselves cause tumors with disturbing frequency when placed in animals.

Completing the case against GPI’s “therapeutic” claims is another GPI science adviser, Australian stem-cell expert Alan Trounson. Trounson was a conference speaker and his home institution, Monash University, a sponsor. Yet two years ago Trounson announced that “therapeutic cloning” had become unnecessary to stem-cell progress. Citing the difficulty of obtaining large numbers of donor eggs for the procedure, as well as its time-consuming and expensive nature, he said there were “a number of good alternatives” for producing stem cells that are not rejected by patients’ bodies. “I think the time for therapeutic cloning is probably past,” he said. Some months later, reassured by these remarks, the Australian parliament gave final approval to a national ban on all human cloning.

The evidence against the “therapeutic” use of cloning is even stronger today than it was in 2002. Yet now, as part of the GPI’s lobbying campaign at the U.N., Trounson obediently says that “the benefits of therapeutic cloning are really quite enormous.”

Why would Trounson and Monash help persuade ambivalent nations to pursue “therapeutic cloning,” an approach they abandoned and even played some part in making illegal in their own country? Could they be cynical enough to send other nations down this road, knowing it is a dead end, so they can corner the market on real medical advances?

It turns out that the best-kept secret in this field is the remarkable clinical progress arising from non-embryonic stem cells that pose no moral problem. The recent PBS show “Miracle Cell” highlighted successes in using adult stem cells to treat patients with heart damage and spinal-cord injury. With so many U.S. scientists fixated on the hypothetical “promise” of cloning, however, it is perhaps no accident that Portugal provided this groundbreaking treatment for spinal-cord injury, Germany and Brazil pioneered adult-stem-cell treatments for heart damage, and Canadian researchers developed a new adult-pancreatic-islet-cell treatment that has allowed over 200 diabetes patients to throw away their insulin needles. Incidentally, Germany and Canada have passed complete bans on human cloning and Brazil is in the process of doing so.

U.N. delegates attending the Genetics Policy Institute were told that human cloning must be protected if we are to have any hope of curing devastating diseases. Yet the conference’s own speakers have said that this claim simply isn’t true. They were told that “therapeutic” and “reproductive” cloning can be kept completely separate — but again, conference speakers and endorsing organizations have said this isn’t true. They were probably even told that the Bush administration’s stance against all human cloning subordinates scientific truth to politics. That will be a stone thrown by people living in some very fragile glass houses of their own.

— Richard M. Doerflinger is deputy director of the Secretariat for Pro-Life Activities, U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

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Clone the French! Don’t worry: Just their cloning law (NRO, 040715)

Big News! The French parliament just passed the Brownback-Landrieu Bill outlawing all human cloning. Well, not the exact bill: Sam Brownback (R., Kan.) and Mary Landrieu (D., La.) are not French legislators. But France has accomplished an important feat that a filibuster in the U.S. Senate has frustrated in our own country: making both reproductive and therapeutic cloning against the law.

Most people favor banning reproductive cloning out of safety concerns. But many in the science and bioethics establishments fervently seek a legal license to clone human life for use in medical experiments or as a source of embryonic stem cells for medical treatments. These advocates often demonize therapeutic-cloning opponents as “anti-science” religionists. But that demagoguery is becoming increasingly difficult to maintain: France is the free world’s most secular nation, and it keeps religious concerns completely out of public policy. Moreover, other distinctly secular and “progressive” countries have also recently outlawed all human cloning, including Norway, Australia, and Canada.

Unfortunately, the fact that most of the world’s cloning opponents aren’t Taliban types hasn’t penetrated the iron-plated skulls of the mainstream American media, which continue to happily chant the mindless mantra that therapeutic-cloning opponents want to impose their religious views on the country. Such two-dimensional reportage does the country a disservice by obfuscating the substantial arguments being made against human cloning — arguments that are increasingly resonating overseas.

In a nutshell, the anti-cloning case can be divided into four general categories: morality, practicality, consequences, and priorities.

Morality: Most proposals to legalize therapeutic cloning require the cloned embryos to be destroyed, generally at about 14 days of development. Such laws are extremely radical in that they establish categories of human life that must be killed. Moreover, creating human life for the purpose of being harvested reduces cloned embryos to the moral status of soybeans.

Widespread use of therapeutic cloning would also lead to the exploitation of poor women. Each attempt at human cloning requires an egg, preferably a human egg. As we will see below, making therapeutic cloning a widespread medical therapy would require billions of human eggs! The only way to obtain even a fraction of that mind-boggling number is to scour poverty-stricken countries for destitute women willing to be paid for egg extraction, a potentially dangerous procedure that can result in infection, infertility, or death. (Some suggest animal eggs as an alternative. But using animal eggs in human cloning would result in human-animal hybrid embryos, which many also see as immoral and unnatural. Moreover, using stem cells extracted from such hybrids to treat patients might not be safe.)

Practicality: The human “egg dearth” also illustrates the utter impracticality of therapeutic cloning. Last year, the National Academy of Sciences published an article by a researcher who investigates therapeutic cloning techniques in mice. Despite several years of effort, Peter Mombaerts reported, the “the lack of efficiency [of therapeutic cloning in mice] is remarkably consistent,” taking about 100 tries merely to obtain one viable cloned-mouse embryonic-stem-cell line. Mombaerts further reported that human cloning is unlikely to be any easier. If it would take 100 eggs just to make one cloned embryonic stem-cell line per patient, ten billion eggs would be needed to treat the 100 million American patients the National Academy of Sciences has stated are likely to benefit from therapeutic cloning — meaning that therapeutic cloning would almost surely have to be strictly rationed or available only to the super-rich.

Consequences: Proponents of therapeutic cloning almost always assure a wary public that their research is not aimed at bringing cloned children into the world. But cloning is a dual-use technology. Much of the research needed to learn how to reliably create human cloned embryos for medical uses is the same information needed by would-be reproductive cloners — a point admitted by the South Korean researcher who created the first human cloned embryos.

Beyond this concern, as biotechnological knowledge advances, it seems likely that therapeutic cloners will want to conduct research on cloned human life far beyond the early embryonic stages of development being discussed today. For example, Proposition 71 will be on California’s November ballot, and, if it passes, it will create a state constitutional “right” to conduct human cloning research. The initiative states that the time limit for maintaining cloned human embryos would “initially be 12 days.” Like a Freudian slip, the modifier “initially” betrays the true agenda, hinting that the time will eventually be extended. More explicitly, New Jersey law already permits human cloning, implantation of cloned embryos, and their gestation through the ninth month, only making it illegal to allow a cloned baby to enter the “newborn” stage.

Priorities: Conducting the experiments that will be needed to transform cloned human embryos into commercially viable medical products will be arduous, time consuming — and very expensive. With venture capitalists generally avoiding the field, cloning proponents are on the hunt for taxpayer money. But before we commit billions of public dollars over many years to human-cloning research, shouldn’t we triage public spending? After all, there are other urgent health-related areas competing for public funding, such as AIDS, cancer, adult stem-cell research, etc. We also have to fund the war on terror, and reform Social Security. In a time of increasing financial strain, paying for cloning research should be put at the back of the line.

The outlawing of human cloning by progressive countries shatters the smug stereotype that cloning opponents are religious Luddites seeking to impose their theological beliefs on the rest of the world. There are substantial reasons for outlawing human cloning and they deserve a fair airing. The time has come for the biotechnology boosters in the United States to stop their religion baiting and enter into an honest debate.

— Wesley J. Smith is a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute and a special consultant to the Center for Bioethics and Culture. His next book will be Consumer’s Guide to a Brave New World.

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Big Biotech’s Voracious Appetite (Weekly Standard, 041116)

Forget the old stem-cell research debate—laws in New Jersey, Illinois, Delaware, and California have moved the goal posts into brave new territory.

EVER SINCE President Bush limited federal funding of embryonic stem-cell research to existing cell lines, the mainstream media has obsessed about the perpetual political campaign to overturn his policy. But this is a mere dustup, a tempest in a teapot compared to the far more consequential story begging to be told of the radical and ambitious political agenda being pursued furiously by Big Biotech at the state level.

Back in those quaint old days of 2001, biotechnologists told us repeatedly that all they wanted for use in stem-cell research was access to leftover IVF embryos that were destined to be destroyed anyway. That gambit succeeded in getting a majority of Americans to support “embryonic stem-cell research.”

But now, in a classic bait and switch, Big Biotech has dramatically upped its demands. No longer willing restrict researchers to using one-week-old leftover IVF embryos in stem-cell research, biotechnologists now demand a legal license to conduct human cloning research virtually without limit.

Recently enacted state laws and proposed legislation demonstrates this alarming trend:

New Jersey. This year New Jersey explicitly legalized the cloning of human embryos through somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT), the same technology used to make Dolly the sheep. The law casts all moderation aside by failing to prohibit implantation of these cloned embryos into wombs. This is important since that which is not illegal is, by definition, legal. The law then purports to prohibit the “cloning of a human being.” That sounds meaningful, but, in legislation the devil is in the definitions. Here is how the term is defined:

As used in this section, “cloning a human being,” means the replication of a human individual by cultivating a cell with genetic material [the SCNT cloning process] through the egg, embryo, fetal and newborn stages into a new human individual. [emphasis added]

Notice that the law only prohibits cloned babies from being born and becoming a “new human individual.” Anything short of the newborn stage is thus permitted, meaning that biotechnologists are free to gestate cloned embryos and fetuses in real or artificial wombs for use in research—and even maintain them up to the very moment of birth.

Illinois. Legislation pending in Illinois is just as radical, intending to authorize an almost unlimited license to create natural and cloned embryos for stem-cell research and, like New Jersey, gestate them into fetuses. The legislation states:

That research involving the derivation and use of human embryonic stem cells, human embryonic germ cells, and human adult stem cells from any source, including somatic cell nuclear transplantation [cloning], shall be permitted. . . .” [emphasis added]

“Any source” is an extremely broad term that could mean natural embryos—including those made explicitly for use in research—cloned embryos, perhaps even genetically modified animal/human embryo hybrids, for example, such as those that biotechnologists in China have made using somatic cell nuclear transfer by inserting human DNA into animal eggs.

Gestation of embryos for research is also clearly permitted. Like New Jersey, the proposal does not prohibit implantation of experimental embryos into wombs. Moreover, the explicit mention of “embryonic germ cells” anticipates gestation, since these cells cannot be derived from embryos in a Petri dish but are harvestable from embryos/fetuses through the ninth week. More sneakily, the use of the term “adult stem cells” in the context of this bill also provides a completely open-ended research/gestation license since these cells are found not only in adults, but also in fetuses, newborn’s, and children’s bodies.

Delaware. Last year’s failed Delaware Senate Bill-55, disingenuously entitled the “Cloning Prohibition and Research Protection Bill,” purported to prohibit human cloning. But this was subterfuge. Yes, the legislation provided that “No person shall create or attempt to create a human being using somatic cell nuclear transfer or other cloning technologies.” But the legislation then defined such cloning to mean, “implanting” a cloned embryo “for gestation and subsequent birth” [emphasis added]. Thus, had the legislation passed, biotechnologists could have created an embryo using SCNT, implanted and gestated it through the ninth month—so long as their purpose in doing so was not the birth of a cloned baby.

California. California’s just passed Proposition 71 appears moderate by comparison. After all, it established a 12-day time limit for maintenance of SCNT cloned embryos that biotechnologists now have a state constitutional right to manufacture. But then again, California’s biotechnologists should not let their hearts be troubled: The authors of Proposition 71 cleverly provided an escape hatch to this seemingly firm restriction by providing that the time period to conduct research “shall initially be 8-12 days after cell division begins” [emphasis added]. The word “initially” clearly implies that time limit will be extended once the billions of dollars of borrowed money that Proposition 71 will pour into SCNT research advances the science to the point that researchers are ready to move beyond experimenting with cloned embryos in Petri dishes.

The old assurance that only leftover IVF embryos will be used in stem-cell research is as dead as Yasser Arafat: The mainstream media just haven’t printed the obituary. But people have the right to know that Big Biotech’s ambitions now accept no reasonable limits.

Wesley J. Smith is a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute and a special consultant to the Center for Bioethics and Culture. His current book is Consumer’s Guide to a Brave New World.

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Compromising Bioethics (American Spectator, 041207)

In philosophy courses, liberal intellectuals, oozing thoughtful apprehension, used to ask, “If we could guarantee the happiness of the world by torturing and killing just one child, would it be worth it?” They don’t ask this question anymore now that the “happiness” of modern life depends upon killing unborn children and treating embryos as scientific fodder. To secure “choice,” to cure disease, to satisfy a modern “right to a child” (which means creating thousands upon thousands of frozen embryos through hit-and-miss research during In Vitro fertilization trials), liberals decided that society’s pursuit of happiness could begin on the unmarked graves of dead children and laboratory rejects.

“Scientific progress” at this point means the empowerment of the born over the unborn — one group of humans mistreating the most vulnerable group of humans and congratulating themselves for it. Usually it follows a lot of “agonizing debate,” which amounts to a conscience-consoling search for reasons to justify what’s already been decided. The demise of moral scruples always begins with a “debate.” Should we clone humans? Well, let’s debate that for a second — once you hear that, you know the moral scruple has already been lost. What’s debatable is doable.

The President’s Council on Bioethics is a creature of this culture of “debate.” Consequently, even the “good news” that comes out of it is dubious if not depressing. Take its two new stem cell proposals. This last weekend the Washington Post reported the commission’s chairman Leon Kass praising the proposals for providing “an opportunity to get through the political impasse,” as if resolving the debate is a greater imperative for the council than defending moral truth and stopping an obviously impious and immoral scientific culture.

One proposal is to treat embryos like “brain-dead accident victims,” with scientists harvesting still-usable cells the moment the embryo dies (death in this case is defined as the “irreversible arrest of cell division”); the other proposal is to try and develop pre-embryonic freaks that can somehow generate embryonic stem cells without actually becoming embryos. Both proposals, said chairman Leon Kass, mean that “the partisans of scientific progress and the defenders of the dignity of nascent human life can go forward in partnership without anyone having to violate things they hold dear.” Diana Schaub, also on the council, said, “It seems to me almost too good to be true — that scientific advance would solve a moral dilemma.”

A dilemma is defined as a choice between alternatives that are equally undesirable. Adding more undesirable choices doesn’t solve a dilemma; it deepens it. One gets the sense that the conservatives on this commission wouldn’t be proposing these ideas if the “political impasse” hadn’t stimulated such straining. Why, first of all, does the council treat a traditional scruple — science should not treat embryos as material for manipulation — as one horn of the dilemma? Once bioethicists treat adherence to traditional morality as just one more undesirable choice among many the debate is over. And why do they assume these novel proposals would arrest a scientific culture that regards human embryos as expendable? The first proposal would expand, not eliminate, the IVF limbo of hundreds of thousands of frozen embryos, since it completely depends on it.

Perhaps under the proposal scientists wouldn’t be collecting embryos for destruction. But they would be collecting them to die. They would just wait until they are “organismically dead” to seize the cells. (Though it is hard to believe that scientists who have no moral problems with creating multiple embryos in IVF treatments would be so deferential in waiting for them to die.) Were we serious about treating embryos with respect, we would try to save the frozen embryos that do exist and stop scientists from creating new ones. Moving reproduction from marriage to science tore the door off the dignity of embryonic life. The first proposal would guarantee that it’s never repaired.

What about the second proposal? The commission stressed that the second proposal — forming freaks of nature through “altered nuclear transfer,” what commission member James Q. Wilson calls a “weed,” what Leon Kass calls a “reengineered entity,” and what commission member Paul McHugh calls a “weird genetic hybrid” — would not compromise the dignity of nascent human life. No embryo would exist, goes the reasoning, so no embryo would have any dignity to be violated.

But does that answer all moral questions? Forming reengineered entities is playing God without the wisdom of God, a certain way to lose a sense of one’s own dignity. The commission seemed to say, no embryo, no indignity. The commission never considered the question of its own dignity. Science can not only degrade the dignity of its subjects. It can also degrade the dignity of scientists and the culture supporting them. If modern man must commit freakish acts to achieve a “normal” life, what dignity is left by the end of it?

George Neumayr is executive editor of The American Spectator.

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The Case of the Cloned Kitten—An Ethical Challenge (Christian Post, 050112)

Just before the end of the year, headlines across the nation announced that a Texas woman had received delivery of a newly cloned kitten—an exact replica of the pet she had cherished for 17 years. The woman, identified only by her first name in press reports, declared herself ecstatic about the kitten and pleased to have paid the $50,000 required for the carbon copy of her beloved dead cat, “Nicky.”

The new kitten, dubbed “Little Nicky,” was declared by a spokesman for Genetic Savings and Clone, Inc. to be “the world’s first commercial pet clone.”

Most readers saw the story as something of a curiosity. From a human interest angle, many must have wondered why any person would pay $50,000 just to clone a cat. A good many seemed to think that the woman should be free to do whatever she wants with her money, and some observers were even quick to defend the $50,000 cost of the cloned kitten as a legitimate response to the death of a beloved pet. Nevertheless, the cloned kitten pushes significant ethical issues onto the nation’s agenda. Are we now to accept the cloning of pets as an acceptable use of scientific technology?

Of course, Little Nicky has a history. The company that produced the cloned kitten, Genetic Savings and Clone, based in Sausalito, California, was founded by John Sperling, an eccentric billionaire who attempted to influence the 2004 presidential campaign and years ago founded the University of Phoenix, the nation’s most lucrative and successful for-profit university.

Sperling is no stranger to cloning technology. Several years ago, Sperling and his associates attempted to clone a dog. That unsuccessful attempt prompted him to fund research at Texas A&M University in 1998 that eventually produced a cloned kitten, known as “Carbon Copy” or “C.C.” Over time, Sperling grew frustrated at the slow pace of progress at the university and established Genetic Savings and Clone in 2000. Little Nicky is the first product of a project the company is now undertaking. Last year, GSC launched its “Nine Lives Extravaganza,” a cat cloning service intended to produce up to 50 cloned kittens over the next several months.

“For the first time in history, pet cloning is being offered to the public,” the company’s Web site declares. “Our gene banking clients have welcomed the announcement with great interest and enthusiasm.” This last statement refers to the service the company offers which allows for genetic material to be “banked” for future use.

The company is not above sales hype, of course. “Our production capacity for 2004 is limited, so if you want to clone your cat this year, please contact us promptly for further details.” The company promises “that the clones we produce for our clients will be consistently healthy and bear striking resemblance to their genetic donors.” An official with the company indicated that a money-back guarantee would assure clients of satisfaction.

The “Nine Lives Extravaganza” package comes complete with a video documenting the cloning process, a “presentation party and dinner,” and the opportunity to allow the company to publicize the event. Dog lovers should not feel left out, because the company “is actively engaged in the development of technology to clone dogs,” expecting to offer the dog cloning services as early as this year.

“Julie,” as Little Nicky’s owner has been identified, declared that her cloned kitten is virtually an exact replica of her dead pet. “He is identical. I have not been able to see one difference,” she said. She later explained, “When Little Nicky yawned, I even saw two spots inside his mouth—just like Nicky had. Little Nicky loves water, like Nicky did, and he’s already jumped into the bathtub like Nicky used to do.” Yet, while Julie excitedly tells of Little Nicky’s exploits in the bathtub, those more concerned with the ethical dimensions of this development are troubled by the use of cloning technology to reproduce pets.

David Magnus, co-director of the Center for Biomedical Ethics at Stanford University in California, told the press, “The whole premise of this operation is morally highly problematic. There is no good reason to do this when millions of pets have to be euthanized each year because they do not have homes and when this process carries unknown health risks to the animal.” Furthermore, Magnus insisted that clients like Julie are “not getting what they think they’re getting” when they pay to have their pets cloned. “These people are really having trouble accepting that death is a natural part of life and want an animal just like the one that died, but animals, just like humans, are more than just their genes.”

Commenting on the prospect of cloned pets, Lawrence M. Hinman, director of the Values Institute and a professor of philosophy at the University of San Diego admitted that, since pet cloning is not dealing with human beings, “it has fewer of the moral issues associated with human cloning.” Nevertheless, “pet cloning requires us to address the question of whether there is something morally objectionable about such cloning apart from the standard arguments about respect for life.”

In the end, Hinman argued that the cloning of pets is ethically indefensible. “We can produce a genetically identical copy of our pet, but we delude ourselves if we think we have somehow accomplished something by this substitution. If I buy a clone of my dog, I get only a replica of the unique animal I loved. Isn’t it more honest to move on, to build a new relationship with a new, unique animal rather than try to duplicate something from the past?”

As Hinman went on to explain, “The loves of our lives are not interchangeable or replaceable, and the attempt to treat them as such will harm both them and us. We, and our pets, are more than the sum of our genes. To fail to understand this is to fail to understand ourselves and our relationships to those we love.”

American ethicists were not the only authorities to raise ethical concerns. In Great Britain, the practice of cloning animals as pets is banned. Britain’s Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals [RSPCA] has declared the practice “grossly immoral,” pointing out that cloned animals stand a good chance of early death.

In Scotland, an official study released by the Church of Scotland responded to the cloning of “C.C.” by denouncing the project. “The creation of a cloned cat at a university in Texas is an experiment which should not have been attempted—on animal welfare grounds and because it trivializes scientific research.”

Making its point clearly, the church’s statement went to the heart of the matter. “Just because a millionaire is prepared to fund such research, and potential pet owners are prepared to pay, does not justify doing it. It must also be justified ethically. Against this overall background, cloning pets seems ethically unacceptable. It is too trivial an intervention in one of our fellow creatures. This represents a waste of scientific skills and resources, which could be put to far better uses, like addressing human or animal disease.” Furthermore, “Cloning is also a misplaced reaction to the loss of a beloved pet, because it would not re-create the same animal.”

These ethical concerns are well established in the scientific literature. An article in the scientific journal Nature, published shortly after the first successful cloning of a cat, acknowledged, “We can only roughly evaluate the efficiency of cloning cats by nuclear transfer,” because “87 cloned embryos were transferred into eight recipients, resulting in one failed pregnancy and one live clone.”

In other words, this first effort to produce a successfully cloned kitten required the creation of 87 cloned embryos which resulted in only two pregnancies—one that ended in failure.

The financial argument also has relevance, though it often betrays a rather contorted set of values. Some observers suggested that the $50,000 would have been better spent supporting animal shelters for abandoned pets. What about the very real needs of human beings?

The most significant ethical problem presented by the case of the cloned kitten is the use of clonal technology to reproduce a conscious being. In this case, the technology was used to create a cat. Next year, the company may be able to apply its commercial cloning service to dogs. What comes next?

The most sinister aspect of this development is a likelihood that emotional, cultural, and ethical barriers to human cloning will be weakened by public acceptance of animal cloning. Once we become accustomed to cloning Fido and Felix, we can be assured that someone will soon argue that humans should have the right to clone relatives, friends, or heroes.

Furthermore, the entire project smacks of biological reductionism. We—and our pets—are more than our genes. This is true of animals, whose personalities are not merely the product of genetic determination. This is infinitely more significant in the case of human beings, made in the image of God, who are far more than genetically-determined organisms living out a genetically-determined script.

The cloning of Little Nicky, celebrated in the media and greeted with enthusiasm by some animal lovers, should trouble the nation’s ethical conscience. At every level, this is an indefensible use of a dangerous technology. Regardless of this pet owner’s emotional satisfaction in possessing a genetic replica of her dead pet, the greater danger is that this society will be left with unbridled technologies unhindered by this civilization’s abandoned ethic.

Kittens today, dogs tomorrow . . . what comes next? Regrettably, we are likely to find out all too soon.

____________________________________________

R. Albert Mohler, Jr. is president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky.

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Christian Doctors Slam “Dolly” Creator’s Human Cloning License (Christian Post, 050208)

The nation’s largest association of faith-based physicians slammed “Dolly” creator Ian Wilmut’s plan to clone human beings for medical research, calling his effort a “wolf in sheep’s clothing,” on Tuesday, February 08, 2005.

“It’s dressing a wolf in sheep’s clothing to claim that you’re somehow helping humanity when in fact you’re killing living human beings,” noted David Stevens, M.D., Executive Director of the 17,000-member Christian Medical Association. “So-called ‘therapeutic cloning’ is hardly therapeutic for the living human subjects destroyed in the process.”

The CMA’s comments were made in light of Tuesday’s announcement that British regulators granted Wilmut, who led the team that created the first cloned mammal, Dolly, at Scotland’s Roslin Institute in 1996, the permission to experiment with stem cells and clone human embryos.

Although Wilmut does not intend to clone full grown human babies, he plans to extract stem cells from patients with such diseases and implant them in unfertilized eggs to clone embryos. Wilmut and his group will then harvest stem cells from the embryo to grow the specific motor neurones (long nerves that connect to the brain) for study, and will then toss out embryos involved in the research. According to the Associated Press, this technique will not be used to correct the diseases, which is caused by the death of motor neurons, but will only be used as a study of the cells that could help develop future treatments.

The cloning technique, called cell nuclear replacement, was the same kind he used to “create” Dolly in 1996.

Not surprisingly, news of Wilmut’s newly acquired license provoked harsh criticism from Pro-life and pro-family groups around the world.

“Are we supposed to be appeased by Professor Wilmut’s declarations that the human embryos will be destroyed after experimentation and that his team has no intention of producing cloned babies?” asked Julia Millington of the London-based ProLife Alliance.

“All human cloning is intrinsically wrong and should be outlawed. However, the creation of cloned human embryos destined for experimentation and subsequent destruction is particularly abhorrent.”

According to the Associated Press, Wilmut defended his move after the announcement in Edinburgh, Scotland.

“We all take for granted the very much healthier life that we have now compared with people 100 years ago,” he said. “I think that the majority of people support this type of research and hope it will be successful in helping to bring useful treatment for diseases like motor neuron disease.”

Wilmut’s license is the second one approved since Britain became the first country to legalize research cloning in 2001. The first was granted in August to scientists that hope to use cloning to create insulin-producing cells for transplant into diabetics.

In the United States, embryonic stem-cell research and human cloning has been some of the decisive “moral values” factors that helped bring millions of Christian conservatives out to the polls. During his 2005 State of the Union Address, President Bush pushed for a “culture of life” that does not support medical research on embryonic stem-cells.

Currently, California is the only state that has passed a state-wide initiative to fund embryonic stem cell research. And while there is no ban on embryonic stem cell research in the nation, government funding for cloning is strictly prohibited; federal funding for embryonic stem-cell research is also reserved to a limited number of embryonic stem cell lines.

Supporters of embryonic stem-cell research contend such studies have the potential to cure a wide variety of neuron disease, including Parkinson’s and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.

“It’s about 135 years since (motor neuron disease) was first characterized and here we are, more than a century later, and we still don’t know the cause of over 95% of cases. We haven’t got a diagnostic test for the disease and we’ve made very modest inroads in slowing the disease progression,” said Dr. Brian Dickie, director of research at the London-based Motor Neuron Disease Association and avid proponent of embryonic stem cell research.

“This opens up opportunities on three fronts: to understand how motor neurons become sick and die, to identify genetic causes of the disease and to rapidly screen new drugs,” he said to the Associated Press.

However, Opponents say embryonic stem-cell research and is an unnecessary and amoral addition to adult stem-cell research – a process that requires neither the disposal of hundreds of embryos nor the destruction of human life. Adult stem-cell research has proven many times to be a promising and effective field that has yet to be fully explored.

CMA’s Associate Director Gene Rudd explained that the issue goes beyond the ethics of killing embryos.

“Even apart from the overriding moral concern about destroying living human beings in a utilitarian approach to medicine, no scientist can guarantee that a cloned human embryo will not eventually be implanted to be born,” said Rudd, on Tuesday. “A cloned human embryo would look exactly like a normally conceived human embryo, and the technology to implant that human embryo is already commonplace.

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Stealth Cloning: Washington state tries legalizing cloning on the sly (National Review Online, 050215)

Let’s call it “stealth human-cloning legalization.” It’s easy to do: First, write a proposed law that you claim outlaws human cloning. But then, engage in a little slight of hand here, some redefining of a few crucial terms there, and voila! — your supposed cloning ban actually authorizes human cloning, implantation, and gestation through the ninth month.

That is what New Jersey legislators did when they passed and then Governor James McGreevey signed S-1909 last year, a law that was sold to the public as outlawing human cloning but which actually permits the creation of cloned human life, and its implantation and gestation up to and including the very moment prior to the emergence of the cloned baby from the birth canal.

Other state legislators have tried the same shell game without success, specifically in Texas, Delaware, Maryland, and Illinois. And now Washington joins the infamous list with Senate Bill 5594, a thoroughly disingenuous piece of legislation that purports to outlaw the cloning of human beings, but by manipulating language and redefining terms, actually permits human cloning and gestation of the resulting cloned embryos through the ninth month.

Before we begin to blow away the smoke and shatter the mirrors of S-5594, let’s recap exactly what cloning is. There are now two ways to create new mammalian life, including humans. The first is that great old standard, “sexual” reproduction, in which sperm meets egg. The second way to reproduce is a strictly human invention — known as “asexual” reproduction — or more commonly, cloning.

The primary cloning technique is called “somatic cell nuclear transfer” (SCNT). This is the technology used to create Dolly the sheep.

SCNT is easy to describe, albeit hard to accomplish. In the case of asexually creating a human, the biotechnologist removes the nucleus from a mature human egg (an oocyte). The nucleus of a body cell from the DNA donor is removed, and put into the place formerly occupied by the egg’s nucleus. The genetically modified egg now has 46 chromosomes, the full human compliment. Meanwhile, the ability of the mature egg to transform and begin embryonic development remains fully potent.

A little shot of electricity comes next, and if all goes well, a new human cloned embryo comes into being and begins to develop in the same way as a sexually created embryo. At that point — and this is important to understand — there is no more cloning to be done since a new human organism now exists.

The only question remaining is what to do with it. If the cloned human organism is to be experimented upon and destroyed, the process is often called “therapeutic cloning.” If it is to be brought to birth, the process is usually called “reproductive cloning.” But it is important to understand these are not different types of cloning. They are different uses for the cloned human lives created via cloning.

Keeping these biotechnological facts firmly in mind, let’s return to Washington’s disingenuous S-5594. The bill purports to promote stem-cell research, while outlawing the cloning of a human being. Thus, the legislation provides:

While stem-cell research holds enormous potential for treating or even curing some diseases, the cloning of a human being is morally and ethically unacceptable...Any attempt to clone a human being is in direct conflict with the public policies of this state.

If the authors of this bill really meant what they appear to have written, their legislation would ban all human cloning, since as we have seen, biologically, a new human organism, that is, a new human being, comes into existence with the completion of SCNT. But the legislation is sneaky. It defines the term “cloning of a human being” inaccurately. Instead of referring to the act of asexual reproduction, the bill instead redefines cloning of a human being to mean:

“Cloning of a human being” means asexual reproduction by implanting or attempting to implant the product of nuclear transplantation [e.g., an embryo] into a uterus or substitute for a uterus with the purpose of producing a human being.

This is junk biology since implanting isn’t the act of asexual reproduction: SCNT cloning is. Or to put it the other way around, cloning, not implantation, is what produces a new and distinct human organism.

Moreover, while the term “human being” is not defined in the legislation, in this context, it can only mean the birth of a cloned baby. Otherwise, human SCNT itself would be outlawed by the bill when it is explicitly authorized, to wit:

It is the policy of Washington state that research involving the derivation and use of human embryonic stem cells, human embryonic germ cells, and human adult stem cells from any source, including somatic cell nuclear transplantation, is permitted upon full consideration of the ethical and medical implications of this research.

(Emphasis added.)

So, if human cloning would be permitted explicitly by S-5594, and only the act of implanting a cloned embryo for the purpose of it being brought to birth would be outlawed, what then, would be permitted if the legislation ever becomes law?

A good deal would be allowed. It would be legal to create a human embryo asexually and implant it in a womb for experimental purposes — such as for use in drug studies or to obtaining cloned fetal organs for transplantation — since gestation in those examples would not be undertaken “with the purpose of producing a human being.” Indeed, embryonic germ cells — which are specifically mentioned as usable for stem-cell research — are obtained from embryos that have developed in wombs for six-eight weeks. For that matter, “adult stem cells” are found in fetuses as well as in born people. Thus, the legislation not only would explicitly legalize human cloning but would also permit implantation of cloned embryos into wombs, and their gestation through the ninth month, so long as the intention for doing so was not to bring a cloned human baby to birth.

The mainstream media still discusses these issues as if scientists only want to use embryos left over from IVF procedures in stem-cell research. But those days are long, gone. Indeed, it is now undeniable that Big Biotech and its politician and university allies do not even intend to restrict biotechnological research to early embryos situated in petri dishes. As Washington’s S-5594 clearly demonstrates, the ground is being plowed already to allow cloned fetal farming, the next, but certainly not last, step intended to lead us to a Brave New World.

— Wesley J. Smith is a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute and a special consultant to the Center for Bioethics and Culture. He is the author most recently of Consumer’s Guide to a Brave New World.

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Embryonic stem cell research as an obsession (Townhall.com, 050214)

Donald R. May

“I will work with Congress to ensure that human embryos are not created for experimentation or grown for body parts, and that human life is never bought and sold as a commodity.”

— President George W. Bush, State of the Union address, February 02, 2005.

Twenty-first century society was not prepared for the fact that human life could be produced for the purpose of harvesting cells or body parts for the benefit of others. Only a few years ago we thought this was still science fiction from some futuristic Star Trek age.

Rapid scientific advancements have made it possible to produce new human life in the laboratory. We can no longer put off the ethical questions surrounding the use of embryos and clones.

President Bush was correct to address the embryonic stem cell controversy and to provide money to fund it with appropriate limitations and safeguards. His courage to address problems quickly and definitively, and not defer them to future administrations, may well be his greatest legacy.

Bone marrow stem cell transplants save the lives of thousands each year and have been performed for more than four decades. The medical therapies developed from stem cell research (SCR) have produced successful results far beyond our expectations.

With all this scientific success and with more than 15,000 patients benefiting from SCR each year, why are some people apoplectic? The answer is both simple and perplexing. The scientific breakthroughs and the medical therapies have all come from adult stem cells and none as yet have come from embryonic stem cells. Rather than welcoming the results and pursuing support for what works, there are paradoxically increasing demands for the recognition and funding of embryonic SCR.

A dangerous combination of political and social ideology is determined to make embryonic SCR succeed. The problem is an apparent obsession with destroying human life to provide medical therapies. Looking from the outside, one might imagine that embryonic SCR supporters are advocating a pagan ritual of human sacrifice to treat disease?

It appears there is also a need to prove President Bush wrong. Do they believe that if embryonic SCR were to produce useful results, President Bush and his supporters would somehow be discredited?

Embryonic SCR supporters have resorted to political action to force its funding. As it has not been successful, and private funding is drying up, public subsidies from the National Institutes of Health and other government sources appear to be the only way to keep embryonic SCR viable.

It is of concern that government funding is apparently being directed preferentially to research based on embryonic SCR. Researchers such as Dr. Kathy Mitchell of the University of Kansas have reported that their grant applications to the National Institutes of Health are being turned down specifically because her stem cells are adult stem cells harvested from umbilical cords. Dr. Mitchell’s research is directed at repairing kidney damage resulting from diseases such as leukemia and diabetes.

As Lynde Langdon reported in “Miracle cells” (World, February 5, 2005):

The National Institutes of Health has shunned her grant applications three times. In one grant review, a fellow scientist commented that her stem cells come from tissue inside umbilical cords, not days-old embryos. ‘We already have a good source of stem cells,’ the grant reviewer wrote, ‘Why do we need another?’

Ms. Langdon further writes:

The NIH . . . has funded only 30 projects involving stem cells from umbilical cords. In contrast, it has funded 634 projects involving embryonic stem cells.

California voters, some led by ideology and others by emotion and guilt, passed Proposition 71. It will provide $3 billion in embryonic SCR funding over the next 10 years and take $6 billion in taxpayer money to pay off the bonds issued for its support. Going into debt to subsidize political ideology is of serious concern. Other state governments are pushing to enact similar publicly funded mandates for embryonic SCR. It appears the logic is similar to that of fighting poverty or supporting failing schools — provide more money and eventually it might work.

Politics, science, religion, morals, and ethics all meet head on in embryonic SCR. Adult stem cell research has shown significant success. As it is not politically correct research, it does not receive the credit and the funding that it deserves. As a result, future productive research will be slowed, and people will suffer and die from diseases that might have otherwise been treated earlier. The positive results from adult SCR are minimized and even disparaged. We have seen little news of the South Korean woman who was paraplegic for 20 years and is now starting to walk, or the leukemia patients who have survived, after adult stem cell therapy.

The supporters of embryonic SCR are apparently not as concerned about meaningful scientific results as they are about political and ideological success. They do not give the impression of being interested in curing illness or saving lives unless it is the result of embryonic stem cell therapy. Ignoring research that is working and supporting research that is not working plays into the hands of those who oppose scientific thought and factual evidence.

For the present, ethics, scientific integrity, honest scientific competition, and the free economic marketplace are best suited to determine which research to pursue and to fund. As embryonic SCR is producing no useful results, the alternative of adult SCR appears to be the better choice.

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Ian Wilmut: Human Cloner (Weekly Standard, 050216)

How the man who created Dolly the sheep slid down the slippery slope to human reproductive cloning.

IAN WILMUT, the co-creator of Dolly the Sheep, now intends to clone human life. This is quite a shift for Wilmut. When he and Keith Campbell entered the science pantheon with their announcement of the birth of Dolly, they forced the world to grapple with the question of whether it is moral to clone human life. But Wilmut claimed not to be interested in cloning humans. As described in his book, The Second Creation: Dolly and the Age of Biological Control, Wilmut wanted to use cloning technology to create genetically altered animals for use in deriving human medicines.

Thus, Dolly was a mere precursor to Polly, a “transgenic” sheep bio-engineered to possess a human gene. The hope for Polly was that she would lead to the creation of a herd whose milk could be “pharmed” for use in the manufacture of human medicines.

But Wilmut’s institute went broke. So now, he has changed his tune about pursuing human cloning research. True, he won’t be attempting reproductive cloning. But if he succeeds in creating cloned human embryos, his work could result directly in the birth of the first cloned baby. Here’s why:

It is often stated that there are two different types of cloning—reproductive cloning, that is, cloning that results in the birth of a baby, and “therapeutic cloning,” e.g., the creation of cloned human embryos for use and destruction in medical research. But this is a misnomer. Cloning is cloning is cloning. Once cloning creates a new embryo, there are no further acts of

cloning. At that point, all that remains is deciding what to do with the new human life that has been created.

This means that if Wilmut learns how to reliably create cloned human embryos—even if he only uses the knowledge strictly for research—others will be able to use his techniques to create cloned embryos and then implant them in wombs to see if they can be gestated into babies.

One would think this might worry Wilmut. But becoming a direct participant in human cloning research isn’t the first time Wilmut has adjusted his views. In The Second Creation, while supporting “therapeutic” human cloning, he wrote that he hoped no one ever attempts reproductive cloning because creating cloned babies was “repugnant in general” and without “medical justification.”

This seemed to establish a firm ethical line. But only three years after the initial announcement of Dolly, Wilmut (writing with bioethicist and human cloning enthusiast Glenn McGee), suggested that reproductive cloning be treated as we now do applications to adopt children. In other words, bureaucrats would investigate cloning requests and turn thumbs up or down based on their findings.

Presumably, these applications would all be refused initially because of the great likelihood of miscarriage and birth defects. But should cloning become “safe,”—the very outcome that Wilmut’s current research could help bring about—reproductive cloning could well be approved. Indeed, in later advocacy, Wilmut has suggested that reproductive cloning be allowed as a potential way for parents to avoid genetic disease.

Nor would reproductive cloning be the end of the trail. Rather, it would become a mere staging area for learning how to redesign the human race. Wilmut himself acknowledged in The New Creation that the ultimate point of cloning is to use the technology in learning how to genetically engineer mammalian genomes. Indeed, that was the very reason he and Campbell manufactured Dolly and Polly.

So, does Wilmut support conducting similar genetic engineering experiments in humans? In The Second Creation, he appeared, again, to give a firm “no,” writing that “it is difficult to imagine a greater imposition” than adding “genes to future generations that changes the nature of future people.”

But wait: A mere page later, Wilmut admitted, “I see nothing wrong ethically with the idea of correcting single gene defects” through genetic engineering. “But I am concerned about any other kind of intervention, for anything else would be an experiment,” which would “impose our will on future generations” and take unreasonable chances “with their welfare.” Thus, he concluded, “such intervention is beyond the scope of consideration.”

But why should we believe him? It took Wilmut a few brief years to move from being an implacable foe of reproductive cloning to approving of it in some cases. And, since he has already told us that genetic engineering of humans through the wonders of cloning can be acceptable theoretically, we should not be surprised if a few more years down the line he has also become a vocal supporter of human germ line engineering.

This slip-sliding away is what happens when our ethical views actually amount to mere moral equivocation. To be sure, there are times when nuance is called for and when we must work through gray areas. For example, there is nothing inherently wrong with creating transgenic animals from which we can pharm useful medical substances. Our task with regard to that issue is to decide how much

human in animals is too much human in animals. But there are also times when the only course to prevent profound wrongs is to establish firm ethical and legal barriers beyond which we will not tread.

Human cloning is such an issue. As Wilmut’s ever-loosening ethical standards demonstrate, attempting to be partially for human cloning and partially against it creates an inherent intellectual instability which cannot long be maintained. Indeed, the very nature of the technology, to borrow Lincoln’s wisdom about the inability of our nation remain half free and half slave, eventually forces us to decide to become all one thing or all the other.

Wesley J. Smith is a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute and a special consultant to the Center for Bioethics and Culture. His current book is Consumer’s Guide to a Brave New World.

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The Revolt Against Human Nature (Christian Post, 050223)

Are you ready for the posthuman future? That is the frightening question posed by Wesley J. Smith in his new book, Consumer’s Guide to a Brave New World. Smith, Senior Fellow at the Discovery Institute and special consultant to the Center for Bioethics and Culture, has written another book that demands the attention of every thoughtful Christian.

We are living in an age of radical transformations in science, technology, and worldview. Standing at the center of the worldview now dominant in our society is an affirmation that human beings have the right, if not the responsibility, to “improve” themselves in every way. In a culture that celebrates youth, attractiveness, and achievement, the idea of personal improvement is now being stretched beyond what previous generations could have imagined.

“It is a natural human desire to manipulate our bodies to look better, feel better, and age better,” Smith explains. “We not only wish to be free of disease, but also deeply desire to remain youthful in appearance and physical vigor.”

With “Botox parties” and cosmetic surgery now becoming routine, many Americans simply assume that personal enhancement is a basic right. Now, some want to push beyond natural biological barriers in order to achieve even greater “enhancements” in the future. We now face the undeniable truth that at least some of our fellow citizens are ready to use genetic enhancements, cloning technologies, and germ line engineering to achieve what some now call a posthuman future.

Genetic modifications and germ line therapies differ from previous technologies of personal enhancement, Smith explains. Plastic surgery—even something as radical as what are called sex change procedures—affect only one individual’s body. Nothing from those surgeries impacts the genetic inheritance passed down to subsequent generations.

All this changes when genetic modifications and germ line technologies enter the picture.

“What if a father could insert a gene to transform his daughter into the concert pianist he always wanted to be, or an atheist do likewise to ensure that his children would be genetically predisposed (if it proves possible) to shun religious belief?” Smith asks, adding, “And what if these modifications passed down the generations?”

Existing medical technologies would not yet allow these developments. Nevertheless, with the successful cloning of other mammals, the completion of the Human Genome Project, and the creation of transgenic human-animal hybrids, science fiction is likely soon to become science fact.

Smith warns that all this could lead to what some now call a posthuman race. Others are now pushing for what they call transhumanism, which Smith warns is now “organizing with the intensity of a religious revival.”

Once confined to academic debate and the literary world of science fiction, these proposals are now taken seriously by scientists, medical doctors, and ethical observers. As Smith notes, “While transhumanism is relatively new, the idea that we should apply the full array of new technologies to remake the natural human order has been bubbling up in radical bioethics and academic philosophical discourse for decades.”

The late Joseph Fletcher, infamously known as the father of situational ethics, was, Smith reminds, “a devoted believer in an anything-goes approach to Brave New World innovations.” Believing that no natural limits were sacred, Fletcher became a prophet for a new social revolution that would redefine humanity with the goal, Smith warns, of creating a race of “superior people.”

Taken alone, that one comment should be sufficient to prove that we are entering a new age of eugenics. Some of the greatest moral horrors experienced by humanity during the twentieth century came in the form of eugenic arguments, experiments, and procedures. Determined to create a new master race, the doctors of Nazi Germany invented new and diabolical forms of eugenic engineering and eventually participated in efforts to eliminate inferior races by genocide.

Less well remembered is the fact that many Americans also supported eugenic movements. Following Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger’s dictum, “more children from the fit, less from the unfit,” American eugenics advocates generally limited their proposals to the use of contraception for those considered unfit to reproduce and incentives for the “fit” to breed.

Given the calamitous landscape of the twentieth century, one might think that the ideology of eugenics would have been thoroughly discredited and socially discarded. To the contrary, a new form of eugenic ideology has now emerged. As Wesley J. Smith explains, this new form of eugenic advocacy “can be summarized in that word that trumps all others: Choice.”

Smith cites Philip Kitcher, author of The Lives to Come: The Genetic Revolution and Human Possibilities, as arguing for a “laissez-faire eugenics” which would allow persons to “create their own versions of optimal human life—a prospect that Kitcher naively assures us will work out just fine because there will be a ‘universally shared respect for difference’.”

When the ideology of choice is translated into momentum for a new eugenics movement, we are in big trouble. Reckless confidence in new scientific technologies is often translated into a sense that every new technology shifts from what is possible to what is necessary. As Smith warns, some now argue that America should begin experimenting with new eugenic technologies simply to counter any similar move made by a foreign nation.

Many of the proposals now taken seriously by the scientific establishment are simply breathtaking. Gregory E. Pence promotes human cloning as a means to allow parents to pass down a “wonderful genetic legacy” to future generations. Gregory Stock, director of the Program on Medicine, Technology and Society at the UCLA School of Medicine, argues that human beings should be free to redefine themselves and their offspring. As Smith explains, “This could include inserting animal DNA into human embryos, inserting or removing chromosomes, inserting artificial chromosomes into a genetically engineered embryo, or perhaps altering human capacities through nanotechnology.”

As Stock sees it, this may mean that the human species will branch off in different directions. Reproduction would take place in laboratories, since biological reproduction through human sex would lead to unpredictable outcomes. In this new posthuman age, parents would order their children like designer products and would, like all informed and demanding consumers, insist upon the latest chromosomal enhancements.

Gregory Pence goes so far as to argue that children will one day be chosen as we now choose pets. “When it comes to non-human animals we think nothing of trying to match the breed to the needs of the owner,” Pence asserts. “Could people be chosen the same way? Would it be so terrible to allow parents to at least aim for a certain type, in the same way that great breeders . . . try to match a breed of dog to the needs of a family?”

Wouldn’t all this lead to a deep unfairness in terms of competition among human beings? Some advocate a form of “egalitarian eugenics” that would require government support, Smith explains, “to ensure that all parents have an equal choice to participate in the coming genetic arms race.”

This is nothing less than an audacious attempt to redefine what it means to be human. As Smith understands, “The deeper one delves into the posthuman agenda, the clearer it becomes that dissatisfaction with natural humanity lies at its heart.”

Behind the eugenics movement stands a fundamental hatred of humanity. “These people and kindred would-be enhancers think that human life has no special meaning in itself,” Smith explains, “but that the value of any life—animal, human, posthuman, machine, space alien—depends upon the individual’s measurable capacities, particularly his or her level of cognition.”

Inescapably, vital worldview issues are at stake. “Transhumanists embrace extreme materialism and scientism,” Smith understands. “Driven by an ethos of radical individualism that countenances no restraints and disdains moral limits on personal behavior, believing that they possess the wisdom to improve the human species, longing desperately for corporeal immortality, transhumanists expect to mount a rebellion against nature that will, in the movement’s eschatology, result in the literal re-creation of human life.”

East of Eden, human beings have been frustrated with the limitations of our nature. The first sin was, after all, an attempt to defy God’s authority by claiming for human beings what had been forbidden. That first sin has spawned a legacy of continuing and accelerating efforts to transcend the human condition. Dissatisfied with our bodies, we want to defy aging and turn ourselves into beautiful machines that will never age, fail, or die. Pushing the limits of cognitive ambition, some demand the right to enhance human consciousness—whatever the cost—in an effort to maximize human performance. In this age of radical and revolutionary technological advancements, many of our fellow citizens would gladly trade the long-term risks of germ line engineering for the immediate gratification of genetic enhancement.

Wesley J. Smith is profoundly correct when he identifies the root problem as a basic hatred of humanity. The prophets of these new technologies point to a utopian vision of posthumanity. As advertised, their vision would include no one who is, in their eyes, genetically substandard, or even unenhanced. Some go far as to predict a new two-class structure for human society, with the genetically superior ruling over a genetically inferior class of workers and servants.

All this represents a Promethean effort to transcend human nature, redefine humanity, and be as gods. We have heard all this before, of course. This is the ancient song of human moral disaster set to a new technological tune.

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R. Albert Mohler, Jr. is president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky.

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The World’s Oldest Mother—Too Old? (Christian Post, 050127)

The announcement immediately incited controversy around the world, with many observers quickly calculating that this mother will be 82 when her daughter is 16.

As usual, there is much more to this story than the initial press reports indicated. Adriana Iliescu is a retired history professor and author of children’s books who had sought hormonal treatments for nine years, attempting to delay the onset of menopause. Later, she approached medical authorities about her desire for an IVF [in vitro fertilization] treatment in order to bear a child. She found a willing clinic and announced her decision in an interview published last December. The announcement by her doctors informed the world that Ms. Iliescu had given birth to a three pound one ounce baby girl, promptly named “Eliza Maria.”

The case of Adriana Iliescu’s baby raises a host of questions about new reproductive technologies, personal autonomy, and the “right” of individuals to demand access to advanced fertility technologies.

According to Ms. Iliescu, she simply couldn’t stand the thought that she would die without giving birth to a child. As a matter of fact, she claims an absolute right to bear a child, regardless of other considerations. “I believed all my life that a woman has a right to give birth and that is why I had to follow my dream, no matter how old I was,” Iliescu told the press.

Her doctors also defended the use of IVF technology in this case. “She was in the right condition to carry a pregnancy,” said Dr. Bogdan Marinescu, chief of the Giulesti Maternity Hospital in Bucharest. “From a biological point of view, Ms. Iliescu proved that she can carry a pregnancy to the end,” he said. “We managed to solve a case which made us all very nervous.”

That state of nervousness extends far beyond Ms. Iliescu’s medical team. In the first place, the most sensational element of this case is the age of the mother. In subsequent interviews, Ms. Iliescu admitted to having secured two abortions earlier in life, during normal childbearing years. “I got married when I was only 20—still a student,” she explained. “My husband was also still a student at the Atomic Physics University back then, and the marriage didn’t last long. We divorced four years later.” She went on to explain, “In that time I had two pregnancy terminations—it was the normal thing back then and the accepted form of contraception. If there’s anything I regret then it is those terminations, not having a baby now. Religion was not a big part of many people’s lives, and I had never had any religious education. I believed the party line that a fetus is only considered life when it is older than three months. In those days I would never have thought of a termination as murder, as I do now.”

Ms. Iliescu’s radical change of mind on the question of abortion is to be applauded and welcomed. In the years after her marriage dissolved, she became an active participant in the Romanian Orthodox Church, and came to believe that all human life is sacred. In some sense, this apparently fueled her desire for a child of her own.

Nevertheless, regardless of Ms. Iliescu’s pro-life convictions, her demand for and use of IVF technology in this case violates a comprehensive pro-life worldview. IVF technology is problematic in any case, but the moral problems escalate when donor gametes (eggs or sperm) are used in the IVF process, or when not all of the fertilized eggs are transferred to the woman’s uterus. In other words, the use of donor sperm or eggs complicates the situation from one perspective, while at the same time, the creation of fertilized eggs that will remain in the laboratory or be destroyed also violates the sanctity of human life.

In Ms. Iliescu’s case, we face the reality that an unmarried 66-year-old woman sought to bear a child using IVF technology. Initial press reports indicated that Ms. Iliescu achieved pregnancy with the use of donor sperm and artificial insemination. Later press reports clarified that both the eggs and the sperm used in this case were donated “from healthy young people.” This caught the attention of Wired.com, a technologically savvy Web site that is inclined to promote just about any technology and demonstrates a rather libertarian worldview. “What is often overlooked in stories like Adriana Iliescu’s is the fact that the woman’s own eggs were not used in the procedure,” the site noted. “Both the eggs and the sperm used were donated. Iliescu was essentially a surrogate for strangers’ DNA.”

After the medical authorities celebrated Eliza Maria’s birth, they also clarified that the birth came by Caesarean procedure in the 33rd week of Ms. Iliescu’s pregnancy. Furthermore, the Caesarean procedure gave birth to two babies, but one was stillborn. Later, doctors acknowledged that a third baby had died by miscarriage during her pregnancy. All together, this means that Eliza Maria was the only surviving baby of a three-baby pregnancy produced by IVF technology.

Arthur Caplan, director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania, argued that Ms. Iliescu’s case did indeed lead to a pregnancy, but was not the case of “a woman giving birth to a biological [that is, biologically related] child.” Caplan insisted that a further question must be asked: “Why would anyone put a 66-year-old woman through pregnancy?”

Several medical authorities agreed, and questioned the entire procedure based not only on the risk to the babies, but to Ms. Iliescu herself. Put simply, a 66-year-old woman is not in prime physical condition for pregnancy.

Medical authorities believe that a woman’s body is best suited for conception and childbearing during the 20s and early 30s. As Jessica Brown of American Baby explains, “In 1970, American women typically had their first child at 21—today, most of us are just shy of 25 on the big day. And as you’ve likely heard, the younger you are, the smoother your pregnancy will be.” Jennifer N. Niebyl, M.D., professor and head of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinic, went on to assert that this is because a younger woman’s eggs are young and more likely to be healthy. This means a much lower risk of birth defects and a much greater chance of a successful pregnancy.

According to the National Center for Health Statistics, birth rates for women between the ages of 35 to 39 doubled between 1978 and 2000. Though the risk of complications and greater fatigue rise once a woman enters her late 30s, births to women in their 40s are now considered common, though some may be classified at higher risk. By age 42, the risk of miscarriage stands at more than 50%. The risk of chromosomal defects also rises significantly once a woman enters her 40s.

Of course, Ms. Iliescu sought to go around this problem with the use of IVF technology. Her doctors used eggs and sperm from young donors and, with the use of hormonal drugs, doctors were able to trick Ms. Iliescu’s body into responding with the effects of pregnancy.

To some observers, this is simply a matter of reproductive autonomy. “Reproductive rights or reproductive autonomy has a pretty strong precedent in this country,” argued Richard Paulson, director of the University of Southern California’s fertility clinic. “You don’t have to be pregnant if you don’t want to. Conversely, if you cannot be pregnant, we will help you.”

This projection of “reproductive autonomy” is a logical extension of the ethos of sexual liberation and personal autonomy that has transformed America since the 1960s. Nevertheless, we can legitimately object that the assertion of a dubious “right” to reproduction bears only slightly, if at all, on a case dealing with a 66-year-old woman who had to use donor gametes and extensive technology in order to achieve a pregnancy which produced a child that is not genetically her own.

The Romanian Orthodox Church appeared puzzled by the case. The press office of Patriarch Bogdan Teleanu first responded with a statement that seemed to celebrate the birth: “The Bible preaches love and procreation at whatever age.” As further details became clear, the church clarified its position with a comprehensive denunciation of the IVF technology. “The technique used by this woman runs counter to Christian morality,” asserted Bishop Ciprian Campineanul. “Life is a gift of God and a child is the fruit of a love relationship between a man and a woman. I daresay the desire of this woman to have a child at the age of 67 shows her selfishness. The Orthodox Church encourages couples to resort to adoption rather than to in-vitro fertilization.”

Putting Ms. Iliescu’s unmarried state and the use of IVF technology aside, we are still left with the reality that a 66- (about to turn 67-) year-old woman has now given birth to a baby she may never have the opportunity to raise. While some have defended her, arguing that this factor is unimportant, the stubborn fact of this age difference remains. Throughout history, many courageous and committed grandmothers have proved that older women can indeed bear the responsibilities of changing diapers and taking care of infant needs. Nevertheless, this is still far from a realistic expectation that Ms. Iliescu will be able to teach her daughter to ride a bicycle, take her to ballet lessons, see her graduate from high school, and help her reach full adulthood.

Our society’s headlong push to affirm virtually any personal choice as protected by a right to personal autonomy is now assisted by technologies that allow us to vault over natural barriers and attempt to redefine the human species. Christians must be concerned about this development at many levels, and the case of Adriana Iliescu raises a host of complexities and difficult issues. We must certainly pray that little Eliza Maria will gain weight, be able to leave the hospital, and grow into a healthy childhood. We must also hope that Ms. Iliescu will be given extraordinary strength and stamina in order to fulfill her new responsibilities as a mother. Beyond this, we must provide leadership in defining the critical issues at stake and helping to forge a medical ethic that will truly honor human life, human dignity, and human responsibility.

Oddly enough, this report also reminds us that Adriana Iliescu is not likely to remain the world’s oldest mother very long. Just a few years ago, the oldest mother was an Indian woman who gave birth at 65. The last edition of the Guinness Book of World Records lists two 63-year-old women as oldest mothers. What’s next?

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R. Albert Mohler, Jr. is president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky.

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U.N. Approves Ban on Human Cloning (Christian Post, 050219)

A United Nations (U.N) committee on Friday approved a resolution to ban all forms of human cloning incompatible with human dignity and the protection of human life, drawing criticism from nations that already legalized some forms of human cloning but prompting praise from the United States and millions of pro-lifers around the world.

The bitterly divided committee voted 71-35 to accept the resolution; there were 43 abstentions, including many Islamic countries who refused to vote lest there be a consensus. The resolution now goes to the U.N. General Assembly for the final vote, where if approved, the resolution will become a recommendation – not a legal requirement - that applies to all 191 members.

The resolution calls on its member states to implement legislation “to prohibit all forms of human cloning in as much as they are incompatible with human dignity and the protection of human life.”

It also calls demands that countries “adopt the measures necessary to prohibit the application of genetic engineering techniques that may be contrary to human dignity.”

Member states are also asked to “take measures to prevent the exploitation of women in the application of life sciences.”

The United States, one of the most avid supporters of the ban since the topic arose on the table two years ago, said the resolution was a victory for life.

“We’re obviously very pleased,” said Richard Grenell, spokesman for the U.S. mission to the United Nations. “This means that the United Nations is stating very clearly that member states should adopt legislation outlining all cloning practices.”

Austin Ruse, president of the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute, one of the main NGOs involved in the negotiation, agreed that the resolution sent a powerful and pleasing message.

“This is a powerful message to the world community that this morally questionable procedure is outside the bounds of acceptable experimentation,” said Austin Ruse, president o the Institute.

However, nations already performing some forms of human cloning, such as stem-cell research, said they will not abide by the resolution, even if it should pass.

“Belgium doesn’t feel bound by this declaration and doesn’t intend to call into question its legislation in this area,” said Marc Pecsteen, Belgium representative to the U.N.

South Korea’s representative, part of a 20-nation block in favor of stem-cell research and therapeutic cloning, also said each member state should decide their own laws on therapeutic cloning since “Human life means different things to different cultures and religions.”

He added that stem cell research, an endeavor already undertaken by South Korean scientists, did respect human dignity because it helped relieve people from suffering.

Britain’s U.N. Ambassador Emyr Jones Parry also said his nation will continue to permit stem cell research and therapeutic cloning research “because of the hope it offers of new treatments to benefit millions of people and their families.”

“This is a weak, non-binding political statement.” he said. “The number of states that failed to support it is greater than the number that backed it.”

Great Britain earlier this month gave the green light to allow the cloned sheep Dolly’s creator to begin cloning human embryos for the sake of medical research. The decision prompted an outcry from pro-lifers around the world, who pointed out that the creation of human embryos solely for the purpose of destroying it was an abhorrent act that should be banned.

In therapeutic cloning, cloned embryos are grown in a lab so scientists could harvest stem cells – master cells that form into all the other cells of the body – for research. The scientists, who claim stem cells are the key to finding the cure for dozens of nerve-related diseases such as Alzheimer’s, then discard the remaining parts of the embryo.

Last year, the UN abandoned efforts to draw up a legally binding treaty on cloning because members could not decide on whether to ban all forms of human cloning or to allow some forms – such as stem cell research – to remain as a legal option. The General Assembly then decided in November to seek a “nonbinding political declaration,” which today passed the preliminary vote.

Despite the resolution being “nonbinding”, the 17,000-member Christian Medical Association applauded the U.N. for drafting this much-needed statement on human dignity and urged individual nations to voluntarily abide by the recommendations by passing laws in their own countries.

“We trust that the United Nations’ call to protect human dignity and human life as well as to prevent the exploitation of women will motivate lawmakers to adopt policies that follow this ethic,” noted CMA Senior Policy Analyst Jonathan Imbody. “No longer should we accept equivocation on this fundamental human life issue.

“The United Nations has recognized that there is simply no ethic, religious or otherwise, that can justify exploiting and taking the lives of some to further the interests of others. “Now it is time for Congress to take up this principled stance and ban human cloning in America in all its forms—including so-called ‘therapeutic cloning’, SCNT and every other name devised to mask human cloning.”

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New Genetics Study Undermines Gay Gene Theory (Christian Post, 050211)

A study to be published in the March 2005 issue of the journal Human Genetics, and available online now, actually undermines the commonly held view that homosexual orientation is determined by genetic factors.

The study’s lead author Brian Mustanski from University of Illinois at Chicago said in a UIC news release that “There is no one ‘gay’ gene. Sexual orientation is a complex trait, so it’s not surprising that we found several DNA regions involved in its expression.”

However, a thorough examination of the actual report reveals no statistically significant findings for any of these DNA regions.

The authors describe in the article three non-X chromosomal “new regions of genetic interest” (7q36, 8p12, and 10q26). In the authors’ view, a noteworthy aspect of the study as follows: “Our strongest finding was on 7q36 with a combined mlod score of 3.45 and equal distribution from maternal and paternal allele transmission. This score falls just short of Lander and Kruglyak’s (1995) criteria for genomewide significance.” They go on to say “two additional regions (8p12 and 10q26) approached the criteria for suggestive linkage” - again pointing out that neither was statistically significant.

Thus, even the author’s “strongest finding” was not statistically significant by widely accepted scientific criteria.

The study also reexamined potential genetic contributions on the X chromosome from region Xq28. This is the region first identified by Dean Hamer as associated with homosexual orientation. However, this study re-analysis, to quote the authors, “did not find linkage to Xq28 in the full sample.”

The regions hypothesized as relating to sexual orientation by the research team appear to relate to developmental precursors to temperamental factors that have been associated with environmental theories of same sex attractions. For instance, one region identified is associated with hormones that impact sexual development. Another is linked to hemispheric development in the brain. Such genes may impact the temperamental traits of activity level and aggressiveness. Lower preferences for aggressive activities have been linked to the development of same sex attractions in men. However, currently there is no research evidence in the Mustanski study or any other of a direct pathway from genes to sexual attractions that does not involve environment interacting with individual temperamental differences.

Consistent with an environmental explanation of same sex attraction is the work of Daryl Bem. In a 2000 study, Dr. Bem demonstrated that there is no relationship between genotype and sexual orientation in men unless environmental interaction with the temperamental trait of gender nonconformity is taken in account. In other words, exploring individual temperamental factors lived out within certain environments may provide more precise areas for research into the action of potential genetic factors in the development of sexual attractions.

In summary, the Mustanski study finds no significant relationship between DNA regions and self-reported sexual orientation. Available evidence suggests that genes may be expressed via the interaction of temperament with certain environments. Practically, then, at present, one cannot know with any degree of certainty that a gene or combination of genes will distinguish why one man is homosexual and another is not.

Warren Throckmorton, Ph.D. is Associate Professor of Psychology and Durwood Ray, Ph.D. is Professor of Biology at Grove City College (PA).

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Assisted Reproduction Kids Healthy as Naturally Conceived (Foxnews, 050308)

Babies conceived through assisted reproduction, such as in vitro fertilization, are just as likely as babies conceived naturally to grow up healthy, says a new European study.

No developmental differences were found between 5-year-olds conceived naturally and those who got their start through in vitro fertilization (IVF) or intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI).

“The results of this study are reassuring for parents who have conceived through ICSI or IVF,” write the researchers, calling for more work on the topic.

Similar results were reported in 2003 from another European study. Of course, there are no guarantees for any child’s health, no matter how they are conceived.

Millions Born Through Assisted Reproductive Technology

It’s been more than a quarter of a century since the first “test-tube” baby was born. Louise Brown was conceived through IVF in England in 1978. Since then, millions of babies worldwide have been born with help from reproductive technology, which includes IVF and ICSI.

Some concerns have been raised about the fact that ICSI bypasses natural sperm selection, say the researchers. That could make it possible to allow a higher incidence of genetic problems. Natural sperm selection assumes that the highest quality sperm fertilizes the egg. The offspring receives high-quality genetic material. In ICSI, a sperm is selected in a lab and is injected into an egg. The fertilized egg is later placed within the mother’s uterus.

The few studies of babies conceived through ICSI have often focused on very young children, say the researchers.

Do Means of Conception Matter?

The new study tested developmental skills in 511 kids conceived through ICSI, 424 conceived through IVF, and 488 naturally conceived children. The kids lived in five European countries — Belgium, Denmark, Gre ece, Sweden, and the U.K.

All of the IVF and ICSI children were single births. No twins, triplets, or other multiple babies were included.

Thinking and motor skills were tested and found to be similar in all three groups of children.

The study comes from researchers including A.G. Sutcliffe, MD, of the pediatrics department at London’s University College Medical School. Their report appears in the March issue of Pediatrics.

In case you were wondering, Louise Brown grew up normally — except for the worldwide media attention. She had her 25th birthday in 2003, and was a postal worker in England at the time.

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The U.N. on Cloning: Ban It (Weekly Standard, 050315)

The United Nations speaks out against human cloning.

YOU PROBABLY DIDN’T HEAR ABOUT IT, since it received such little media coverage, but last week, by a nearly 3-1 vote, the United Nations General Assembly urged the world to “prohibit all forms of human cloning inasmuch as they are incompatible with human dignity and the protection of human life.”

True, “The United Nations Declaration on Human Cloning,” is not legally binding. Still, with 90 members on record as supporting the resolution and only 34 against (with the rest abstaining or absent) the lopsided vote sends a powerful message that the international community overwhelmingly opposes human cloning for any purpose.

Taken aback, supporters of therapeutic cloning are already on spin patrol. The Scientist, for example, asserted ludicrously that only “reproductive cloning” is banned under the resolution. The extremely slender reed cloning advocates have grasped to make this desperate claim was the use of the word “inasmuch” in the Declaration’s declarative statement.

This assertion forces us to hit the dictionaries, where we find that “inasmuch” means “seeing that.” The word is generally used to introduce a phrase which, according to one source, “explains why or how much something described in another part of the sentence is true.” The primary synonyms for inasmuch are “because” or “since.” Thus the clear meaning of the declarative sentence in the U.N. Declaration is to ban all forms of human cloning (reproductive and therapeutic) because (or since) they are incompatible with human dignity and the protection of human life.

However, the word “inasmuch” can occasionally be used to mean “to the degree that.” Pro-cloners grasped this less common usage as a weasely way out of the clear purpose of the declaration—much in the same way that Bill Clinton sought to declare different meanings for the word “is” during his legal difficulties. Thus, they asserted, the crucial sentence means that cloning should be banned to the degree that it violates human dignity. And, since pro-cloners do not believe that therapeutic cloning violates human dignity, they argue that only reproductive cloning is referenced in the resolution.

Baloney. The whole point of the declaration, as every delegate knew, was to ban “all forms” of human cloning. Moreover, if the sentence only castigated reproductive cloning, countries like United Kingdom, the People’s Republic of China, and Belgium, which bitterly opposed the declaration, would instead have been all for it. Indeed, the United Kingdom has angrily condemned the declaration precisely because it knows that it applies to therapeutic cloning.

Adding heft to the argument that the declaration opposes all human cloning is the recognition in the document that cloning could lead to the exploitation of women. Here’s the problem: Each act of cloning requires an egg. Obtaining eggs entails an uncomfortable and potentially dangerous procedure that can lead to infection, infertility, or even death.

Therapeutic cloning would use vastly more eggs than reproductive cloning, and hence, would have a much higher likelihood of leading to the exploitation of women. Indeed, as I have written here previously, if therapeutic cloning were ever to become widely available as a medical treatment, biotechnologists would literally require billions of eggs, creating an insatiable demand that could result in millions of women being exploited and commoditized as so many egg farms. This danger was undoubtedly a primary reason why so many poor countries such as Kenya, Sierra Leone, Ethiopia, and Equatorial Guinea, stood firm in support of a total ban on human cloning.

Put all of this together and we see that The United Nations Declaration on Human Cloning, even though non-binding, is a political document of crucial import. First, the successful four-year drive to put the United Nations on record as opposing human cloning succeeded thanks to the coming together of a broad and diverse international coalition that successfully bridged the political divide between left and right, secular and religious, East and West, developed societies and those which are developing. As this coalition gains strength and confidence, its influence to mould the world’s views on biotechnology will grow exponentially. The declaration should also positively impact our domestic debates. For example, pro-cloners frequently claim that their adversaries are merely a collection of Taliban-like religious fanatics seeking to impose their religious views on science. But the diverse and multicultural coalition which came together in the U.N. vote proves that assertion isn’t true. And with the realization here at home that it isn’t only the dreaded “pro-lifers” who oppose human cloning, the domestic coalition to ban the technology can only prosper.

Beyond the purely political, the U.N. declaration could also have an important impact on American constitutional jurisprudence. There is a quiet but growing movement within the bioethics, biotechnology, and legal establishments to have the Supreme Court declare a therapeutic cloning Roe v. Wade. With the Supreme Court increasingly applying international views in its decisions, the U.N. declaration will make it much harder to convince justices that an international consensus favoring therapeutic cloning should be read into the

text of the Constitution.

The United Nations Declaration on Human Cloning is a breakthrough document with enormous potential to lead to tremendous human good. For it is only by banning all human cloning that we can, in the words of Leon Kass, “preserve society from the soft dehumanizations of well meaning but hubristic biotechnical recreationism—and do it without undermining biomedical science or rejecting its genuine contributions to human welfare.”

Wesley J. Smith is a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute, and a special consultant to the Center for Bioethics and Culture. His current book is Consumer’s Guide to a Brave New World.

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MPs call for re-write on laws of creation (WorldNetDaily, 050324)

Human embryos to be implanted into animals?

Key quote

“Taboo subjects such as cloning, chimeras and hybrids and so-called eugenics must be tackled head-on in a rational debate leading to principled and coherent legislation” - conclusion of summary to report

MPs will today recommend giving the go-ahead to couples to create “designer babies” and allowing the experimental implantation of human embryos into animals, as part of a radical shake-up in fertility laws.

If accepted, it could allow couples, in consultation with their doctors, to select embryos on the basis of their sex, to weed out genetic imperfections, or to create a “saviour sibling” - a child that can provide life- saving treatment to an ill brother or sister.

The science and technology select committee report, which will also recommend the scrapping of regulators, the Human Fertility and Embryology Authority, has criticised the precautionary approach used up until now, instead arguing that new technologies should be used until harm is proved.

But late last night, a few hours before the study was due to be officially published, half of the committee launched a scathing attack on its findings and condemned a “rush to publish” by the other members.

In a statement, five of the ten committee members branded the long-awaited study “flawed, unbalanced, light on ethics ... too far in the direction of deregulation ... too dismissive of public opinion and much of the evidence”.

They dismissed the conclusions as unrepresentative and “extremely libertarian” and said that they could never sign up to them. The split - right down the middle of the committee - reflects a fierce public debate on the subject, which continued yesterday, with watchdogs also condemning the findings as “libertarian and unethical”.

Dr David King, director of Human Genetics Alert, said: “The kind of ethics we see in this report, which is incapable of saying a clear no to anything, is no ethics at all. Even when dealing with human genetic engineering, cloning or the creation of human-animal hybrids, the committee wants to remove existing protections.”

The report will conclude that the 1984 Warnock Report’s recognition that the embryo had a special status, deserving of respect, should be retained.

But in the light of the “changes in social attitudes” and practice of assisted reproduction, the reproductive decisions of individuals should be limited only if “there is evidence of harms or potential harms” to individuals or society.

The report will call for less regulation over human reproductive technologies and place an emphasis on “patients making decisions in consultation with their doctors”.

In an informal summary, the five MPs who voted for the study concluded that there was “little evidence that sex selection” for family-balancing “risked harm to individuals or society”.

Screening for genetic defects that can cause illness would still work within a legal and ethical framework. However, the MPs recommended that the extent of screening ought no longer to be dictated by a regulator, but agreed between patients and doctors.

The summary also concluded: “Taboo subjects such as cloning, chimeras and hybrids and so-called eugenics must be tackled head-on in a rational debate leading to principled and coherent legislation.”

Committee member Dr Evan Harris said that it was more ethical to permit research on chimeras, an embryo which is half-human half-animal, than it was to permit research on human embryos. “Currently, human embryos can be used for research up to 14 days, so a ban where you say, ‘You can use a human embryo but not an animal-human embryo’ would not be rational,” he said.

Mr Harris also said that the committee disagreed with the ban on reproductive cloning.

The report will criticise the HFEA for its “excessive use of the precautionary principle” and calls for it to be disbanded.

In its place would be a new Regulatory Agency for Fertility and Tissues, which would have much more limited powers.

Its remit would be to ensure that assisted conception clinics and research laboratories met high technical and management standards. The broader legal and ethical issues would be left to the government and parliament.

Another recommendation is the setting up of a cross-party joint parliamentary bioethics committee, drawn from both Houses of Parliament, which would vet all new fertility legislation.

The committee also recommended a reversal of a change in the law, coming into force next month, lifting the anonymity of egg and sperm donors.

Donors and patients should be free to choose to remain anonymous if they wish, said the report.

But the five dissenting members, the Labour MPs Paul Farrelly, Kate Hoey, Tony McWalter and Geraldine Smith and the Conservative MP Bob Spink, said yesterday that they could never sign up to such recommendation as “hybrid animal/human embryos, unregulated creation of embryos for research and unregulated screening out of disorders in embryos for reproduction”.

A vote accepting the conclusions was taken by the committee on March 14 and passed by four to one. But four of the five members dissenting were not present and one left early.

The five said that the committee had agreed to issue a special report recording their dissent. They were unhappy yesterday at the decision by the remaining five members of the committee to release the summary findings - without their dissenting voices.

The summary report, published yesterday, bore the names of the chairman, Dr Ian Gibson, and the four members who voted in favour - Robert Key, Dr Evan Harris, Dr Brian Iddon and Dr Des Turner.

Evan Harris, Liberal Democrat MP, dismissed the concerns of the dissenting five. He said that the report would be published, as planned, at midnight last night.

“We voted 4-1, plus the chairman, for this report on 14 March,” he said. “Those who didn’t feel strongly didn’t turn up. Five of them aren’t happy, but some of them are pro-life - they were never going to be happy. The report is a majority report.”

The committee chairman, the Labour MP Ian Gibson, used his casting vote to approve it.

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The Feminine Touch: Creative coalitioning comes to the cloning debate? (National Review Online, 050331)

Easter has brought with it a basket of eggs (or lack thereof in this case) from an unlikely source for those who oppose human cloning.

The foremost promoter of Proposition 71 in the California legislature, the referendum that passed in the Golden State in November, has called for a moratorium on egg extraction. Sen. Deborah Ortiz (D.) is concerned about the effect the procedures have on women.

The golden eggs that are necessary for “big biotech’s” dreams of cloning — whether they call it somatic-cell nuclear transfer or cloning, it’s the same thing — come from “donors” who, in some cases, get paid large sums for their “contributions” (this is how the fertility biz works). But those donations may come at a price for those women: Science doesn’t fully know the long-term effects of egg donation.

The concern here — recently voiced by feminist Judy Norsigian in the Boston Globe and in a Massachusetts statehouse hearing — is that women are being exploited in the pursuit of radical medical research that has heretofore been near impossible to oppose for fear of opposing “miracle cures.”

Norsigian wrote, “A primary concern is the substantial risks to women’s health posed by the extraction procedure and the inability to obtain true informed consent from egg donors given the current lack of adequate safety data.”

She continued, “A woman undergoing IVF stimulation in order to become pregnant (or to help another woman become pregnant) is usually informed of ‘unknown’ and potential long-term health risks, but she accepts these risks because of the demonstrated possibility that a baby will result from her efforts. The risk versus benefit calculation for a healthy woman providing her eggs for stem cell research is not the same.”

Of course, despite her key role in legalizing cloning in California, Senator Ortiz’s new call is not a new bandwagon for most of her former allies. “Shock and dismay” is how the Sacramento Bee described the reactions of her old crowd.

California is a complicated case because the law is already in place. But way to the east, Ortiz’s call is reverberating — or, at least, it should be.

This moratorium call could not have come at a more significant time for Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney. The Republican is currently in the throes of a make-or-break moment for Massachusetts. The legislature there is poised to embrace embryonic-stem-cell research and cloning, and do so with loose regulations, if the state senate gets its way. The legalize-and-fund crowd is winning the debate because it still has firm control over the terms used. As is typical, most folks don’t want to oppose it and have no reason to — it’s life-saving research, they’re told. Alex P. Keaton supports it, so who couldn’t? Or are you a Luddite who opposes medical progress?

But there are real concerns folks have about this research that state after state is embracing. And not just right-wing pro-lifers. Most politicians — right and left — talk the talk of opposing cloning. But then things get complicated. Most people, including pols, are lost somewhere in the false division between somatic-cell nuclear transfer — what was only recently referred to as “therapeutic” or “research” cloning, though the c-word has been largely dropped — and reproductive cloning, when a crying baby actually comes from the endeavor. But green-lighting that first kind of cloning does open the door to the second kind — and some of the language of the laws, in fact, makes that clear. And in both cases, as Romney has emphasized throughout the debate, new embryos — life — are being created.

The argument, though, has been largely one-sided for a while now, inasmuch as embryonic-stem-cell research and research cloning are talked about in terms that are hard to debate. Remember John Edwards and his snake-oil-salesman shtick during the recent presidential campaign? That general packaging, sadly, is not terribly uncommon. But with lefty feminists like Sen. Ortiz and Judy Norsigian concerned about what this supposedly miracle research could mean for some women, a new strange-bedfellow coalition may be developing. It might be not only an opportunity for state politicians, like the ones in Massachusetts, to take a deep breath and consider the full implications of their legislation, but a chance for the public-policy debate to expand. Why isn’t there more conversation about adult-stem-cell research and its successes? That’s a line of questioning that has the opportunity to be most fruitful — free as it is of the key ethical problems involved in embryonic-stem-cell research.

In California, outside of the courts, the Ortiz news is an opportunity to reconsider what has been started. In Massachusetts, this feminine touch may be just the ally Mitt Romney — who’s taking grief from all sides for his imperfect yet hardline-against-creating-new-life position (he’s for using frozen embryos left over from in vitro fertilization procedures) — needed.

Call Ortiz’s moratorium push a rest stop on the road to a Brave New World. U-turns still possible before getting back on the speedway.

Kathryne Jean Lopez

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Misguidelines: The National Academy of Sciences is pursuing an “anything goes” approach to biotechnological research. (Weekly Standard, 050504)

IF THERE WERE EVER any doubts that the National Academy of Sciences is pursuing an “anything” goes approach to biotechnological research, they were erased by the organization’s recently published tome, Guidelines for Human Embryonic Stem Cell Research. The purported purpose of Guidelines is to create voluntary ethical protocols to govern human embryonic stem cell and therapeutic cloning research— “to assure the public that such research is being conducted in an ethical manner.” Setting aside for the moment whether human cloning and embryonic stem cell research (ESCR) can ever be ethical—a matter that remains heatedly controversial—the NAS Guidelines clearly don’t deliver the goods.

Remember when, in 2001, proponents of federally funded embryonic stem cell research repeatedly told us that all they wanted was access to embryos leftover from in vitro fertilization treatments (IVF) that were due to be destroyed anyway? Remember when ESCR advocates repeatedly asserted that they would never countenance the making of human embryos solely for use in research? These warm assurances were intended to convince a wary public that scientists deeply respected human life in all its stages and to soothingly assure us that biotechnologists would limit their investigations to embryos that were already doomed.

Many of us suspected that restricting scientists to leftover IVF embryos was a temporary measure, a cynical political tactic intended to push the proverbial camel’s nose of unlimited human biotechnological research under the flap of the public opinion tent. And that is exactly the way things have turned out. With most polls now friendly to

ESCR, Guidelines for Human Embryonic Stem Cell Research completely drops the leftover-IVF-embryos-only pretense. Indeed, in a major expansion of policy that was either ignored or dramatically downplayed in media reports and editorials about the guidelines, the NAS explicitly opens the door to using embryos “made specifically for research” both through fertilization and nuclear transfer cloning.

This is big news: The most respected science organization in the country is now formally on record as supporting the creation of new human lives explicitly as harvestable and, perhaps, patentable commodities.

True, the Guidelines suggest that institutions engaging in ESCR and therapeutic cloning should establish self-regulating review boards to “oversee this emerging field of research.” But that protection is much less than meets the eye. Membership on these boards would, by definition, be limited to boosters of ESCR and human therapeutic cloning, and would be chosen by the institutions conducting the research; biotech skeptics need not apply. Thus, rather than providing meaningful ethical constraints, the Embryonic Stem Cell Research Oversight Committees likely would be more about providing public relations cover for controversial experiments.

So, what does Guidelines suggest prohibiting to ensure that research remains ethical? Actually, not very much:

First: Research involving “any intact human embryos, regardless of derivation method,” in which they are maintained “for longer than 14 days.” But this isn’t saying anything meaningful. At present, embryos can only be cultured in a Petri dish for about 10 days. So nothing would be prohibited by this restriction that can presently be performed. Moreover, the guidelines are silent about implanting embryos in real or artificial wombs for research purposes—as opposed to birth—an act already legal in the state of New Jersey thanks to a statute that permits human cloning, implantation, and gestation through the ninth month. (Tellingly, the NAS did not oppose the New Jersey legislation.)

Second: Introducing human embryonic stem cells into primate embryos or “any embryonic stem cells” into human embryos. This is useful since the idea is to prevent primates from being born that could develop human traits. In addition, preventing animal or human ES cells from being introduced into human embryos would prevent the creation of chimera human embryos partially consisting of animal or foreign human DNA.

Third: Animals, in which human ES cells have been introduced “at any stage of development,” should not be allowed to breed. These limitations—as scant as they are—would only be applicable “at this time,” and thus would appear to be elastic, that is, subject to future liberalization.

What about reproductive cloning? The Guidelines merely refer to the NAS’s 2002 book, Scientific and Medical Aspects of Reproductive Cloning, which opined that bringing a cloned baby into the world “is not now appropriate”—the key word clearly being “now.” In this regard, it is important to note that the NAS’s opposition to reproductive cloning is not morally founded, but primarily based upon safety concerns. Indeed, Scientific and Medical Aspects suggested that the proposed reproductive cloning ban be “reviewed within five years”—a mere two years from now. In the meantime, cloning for research—which the NAS encourages—may be used to refine the cloning process to the point where the “safety” concern can ultimately be declared obsolete.

The NAS’s position on human cloning and embryonic stem cell research can best be described as “anything goes in slow motion.” Most of what can be done today, the

NAS recommends be permitted today, while that which can’t be done, the NAS agrees to prohibit “at this time.” But these guidelines are intended to be ephemeral. When today’s permitted research expands the capacities of the biotechnological enterprise tomorrow, we can expect the NAS’s suggested “ethical guidelines” to “mature.” Thus through a cynical process of policy creep the NAS intends to take us down that long and winding road that leads from embryonic stem cell research, to human cloning, to whatever human biotechnological research scientists decide they want to do next.

Award-winning author Wesley J. Smith is a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute, and a special consultant to the Center for Bioethics and Culture. His current book is Consumer’s Guide to a Brave New World.

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The next scientific discovery: Ethics (Washington Times, 050506)

A number of scientists eager to get on with their research on human embryos are not happy with the Bush administration. They say it’s not giving them the ethical guidance they need to continue their experiments. So they’re going to figure out this ethics thing themselves.

To quote a Page One story in the New York Times last week: “Citing a lack of leadership by the federal government, the National Academy of Sciences proposed ethical guidelines yesterday for research with human embryonic stem cells.”

The good news is that the scientists realize they need some ethical guidance. The bad news is... well, where to start?

Is it the assumption scientists should look to government to supply their ethics, just as they would for any other government grant?

Is it the assumption that, if only the government or some select committee of scientists would declare research on human embryos ethical, it would be?

What these scientists seem to want from government may be beyond even Washington’s ample power to confuse the issue: an ethical defense of the unethical.

Because they’re asking for a code of ethics to justify first violating, then experimenting with and finally destroying human life. All within two weeks. That is what would happen if the Academy’s own, suggested guidelines were adopted:

Experimenters would be allowed to select a human egg, remove its nucleus, replace it with the nucleus of an adult donor cell, and then, after it has served as a subject of research, destroy it. In short, cloning. But without letting the clone develop beyond two weeks’ gestation.

Why two weeks? Because at about two weeks one can discern in the embryo formation of the central nervous system. That’s the point at which the Academy recognizes the embryo as human, or at least human enough that not even its distinguished members would want to experiment on it. But until then, its use for research purposes would be allowed.

Not the least dubious of the scientists’ assumptions is that the two-week limit on such experimentation could be effectively enforced, considering the natural curiosity of scientists and the growing demand for designer babies. In short, these guidelines could have more unintended consequences than your average Act of Congress.

Reading about the academicians’ proposal, I suddenly saw before me the clear, steady, straight gaze of the lady who taught me biology, comparative anatomy and genetics, at a small Southern college in what now seems another age. Mary Warters of Louisiana’s Centenary College was, without doubt, the finest teacher I ever had — in any subject.

Even in that pre-Double Helix age, when classical genetics still ruled, Dr. Warters was both a world class experimenter in the summers (her specialty was Drosophila melanogaster — that’s fruit flies to the rest of us) while she spent the academic year turning out entering students for the LSU and Tulane medical schools. A small woman, there was no doubting her stature, or her no-nonsense judgment. She would die in 1995 at age 93, after 44 years teaching at Centenary and attaining legendary status in the eyes of all privileged to have been her students.

I wondered what Mary Warters would have thought if someone had told her human life, or at least the only kind we need respect, didn’t begin until two weeks after the zygote is formed, when suddenly, by arbitrary decree, the creature — Zap — gets a central nervous system or beginnings thereof. Like in a comic book, or in one of those schematic, stage-by-stage drawings in a biology text, which were always neater than any real specimen you were assigned in the lab. (I soon realized how often Mother Nature was mistaken; she never quite followed the illustrator’s exact instructions.)

Human development isn’t so simple, either, or so simply divided. It is one continuum from first to last, from the first microscopic set of completed chromosomes within the cell to the last breath of a dying old man surrounded by family in a hospice. It is all part of the same journey, every bit of it uniquely human. I can imagine Mary Warters’ expression if some oh-so-scientific delegation had tried to tell her otherwise.

Dr. Warters’ response would probably have been much like the one she once gave a hapless freshman in her class — a look compounded of sadness and pity but not without amusement, when she had asked him where the human taste buds were located, and, hopelessly confused as ever, he had guessed... the lips? It’s a look I still haven’t forgotten.

If the National Academy of Scientists wants to choose an exact two weeks as the boundary between a clump of cells fit for experimentation and humanity ... well, one can fully understand why it would be in the market for ethical guidance.)

Paul Greenberg is a nationally syndicated columnist.

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No human monkeys — for now (Townhall.com, 050511)

Terence Jeffrey

It may have been providential that it was not long before Mother’s Day that the congressionally chartered National Academy of Sciences announced it had developed a set of commandments to govern cloning human embryos and that the greatest of these was that all clones must be killed by their 14th day.

To succeed in their quest for medical therapies based on cloning and killing embryos, one thing human-cloning researchers must do is annihilate motherhood — for clones at least. They must create human beings who not only lack mothers, but who in all cases are denied the love and nurturing good mothers give their children.

It is true that these researchers need women as “donors.” But instead of conceiving and bearing children in their wombs, these “donors” will be given drugs that cause them, like so many chickens on a poultry farm, to exude eggs for the convenience of the researchers who harvest them.

The researchers will take the human eggs, strip them of the donor’s DNA and fertilize them with DNA from another person. Thus, a cloned human is denied a biological mother.

By insisting — as they start out in this research at least — that all clones be killed by the 14th day, the researchers will make sure all clones are denied adoptive mothers, too.

America’s most elite laboratories will be populated with the first fully motherless members of the human race.

Aspiring clone-to-kill researchers cannot have it any other way — at least for now. The last thing they need before Americans are thoroughly conditioned to accepting their research is for someone to cherish a cloned embryo as if it were their own child. If therapies based on the mass destruction of human embryos are to become a routine (and highly profitable) medical practice, as the researchers hope, clones need to be established as a unique sub-class of humans that no one ever personally loves, and that researchers may treat at all times like mere property.

What the NAS’s “ethics” rules envision is a high-tech form of human bondage. Under this regime, the well-functioning cloning laboratory will be a little slave state, teeming with captive humans, who are easily reproduced and controlled until they are killed to benefit someone else.

If researchers who have no respect for the sanctity of life are allowed to get away with this today, we cannot expect their degradations to stop with mass cloning tomorrow.

In only three decades, we descended from abortion on demand, to partial-birth abortion on demand to court-ordered death-by-starvation for a disabled person.

Most Americans may not yet be able to imagine what might come after we commence the industrialized cloning and killing of human embryos, but the experts at NAS can. Accordingly, they have made their key “ethics” rules temporary. They are carefully qualified with the phrase “at this time.”

“(I)t continues to be the view of the National Academies,” they say, “that research aimed at the reproductive cloning of a human being should not be conducted at this time.”

Both the rule that all cloned embryos must be killed by 14 days and that researchers should not breed animals that have been altered with cells from human embryos are meant to apply only “at this time.”

Then there are those intriguing possibilities with monkeys and apes. “A second possible hazard is that the human embryonic stem cells might generate all or most of an animal’s brain, leading to the possibility of a human mind imprisoned in an animal’s body,” The New York Times dryly reports. “Though neuroscientists consider this unlikely, it cannot be ruled out, particularly with animals closely related to people, like monkeys and apes. The academy advises that human embryonic stem cells not be injected into the embryos of nonhuman primates for the time being.”

But there is always tomorrow.

If parenthood generally, and motherhood especially, are schoolrooms of human charity where people learn to put someone else’s interests above one’s own, mass-marketed medical treatments based on creating and killing motherless human embryos will be a schoolroom for just the opposite. It will teach us to treat each other worse then we treat animals — unless, of course, we make ourselves into animals first.

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Scientists Create First Customized Stem Cells (Foxnews, 050520)

WASHINGTON — South Korean scientists have dramatically sped up the creation of human embryonic stem cells, growing 11 new batches that for the first time were a genetic match for injured or sick patients.

It is a major advancement in the quest to grow patients’ own replacement tissue to treat diseases.

The same scientists last year were the first to clone a human embryo. Now they have improved, by more than tenfold, their efficiency at culling these master cells, thus making pursuit of therapeutic cloning more practical.

“I didn’t think they would be at this stage for decades, let alone within a year,” said Dr. Gerald Schatten of the University of Pittsburgh. He acted as an adviser to the Korean lab in analyzing its data, which was being published Friday in the journal Science.

“This paper will be of major impact,” said stem-cell researcher Dr. Rudolph Jaenisch of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research in Cambridge, Mass. “The argument that it will not work in humans will not be tenable after this.”

This research is not cloning to make babies. Instead, scientists create test-tube embryos to supply stem cells — the building blocks which give rise to every tissue in the body — that are a genetic match for a particular patient and thus won’t be rejected by the immune system.

If scientists could harness the regenerative power of those stem cells, they might be able to repair damage from spinal cord injuries, diabetes, Parkinson’s and other diseases.

Stem cells also can come from embryos left over in fertility clinics. But these cells would not be a genetic match for any patient.

Any potential therapy is years away from being tested in people. But the new research marks several advances:

_Last year’s cloned stem cells were from one healthy woman. This time, the Seoul scientists created stem cells that were genetic matches to each of 11 patients — male and female, as young as age 2 and as old as 56, suffering either spinal cord injuries, diabetes or a genetic immune disease.

_Last year, it took attempts with 242 donated human eggs to grow one batch of stem cells. This time, it took an average of 17 eggs per batch and 14 eggs if they were from women younger than 30.

_The researchers eliminated use of mouse “feeder cells” that, until now, have been used to nourish human stem-cell lines, easing concerns about animal contamination.

The research also will add to political sparring over whether to expand government-funded stem cell research in the United States.

Because culling stem cells destroys the days-old embryo harboring the cells, President Bush in 2001 banned federally funded research on all but a few old embryonic stem-cell lines. A vote on whether to ease those restrictions could come in the House as early as next week.

The South Korean research, funded by the South Korean government, spotlights the frustration that many U.S. scientists feel at being left behind.

“It’s just going to highlight the tragedy of our current situation in America where there are technologies that are promising that are not being pursued by talented American scientists because of ideologic constraints,” said Dr. Janet Rowley of the University of Chicago. The genetics specialist helped write recent national ethics guidelines on stem-cell research.

The lead South Korean researcher, Hwang Woo-suk of Seoul National University, said in a telephone interview, “Therapeutic cloning has tremendous, tremendous healing potential, but we have to open so many doors before human trials.”

More immediately, the research will allow scientists to watch the very earliest origins of diseases such as Alzheimer’s form inside an actual patient’s cloned, living cells, said neuroscientist Fred Gage of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in San Diego. That could point to new ways to prevent and treat illness, said Gage, who plans to perform some of that work.

The Seoul researchers collected eggs that were donated by 18 unpaid volunteers and removed the gene-containing nucleus from them.

The scientists inserted into those eggs DNA from skin cells of the 11 patients and chemically jump-started cellular division. Thirty-one blastocysts — early-stage embryos of 100 or so cells each — successfully grew. From those, the scientists harvested 11 stem cell lines.

Each is a genetic match to the patient who had donated a skin snippet, and each can form other tissues, such as brain cells or bone cells. Next, the scientists must learn how to control that cell development.

The work means there may be more demand for donated eggs for medical research. Women considering doing so must understand they get no benefit and face some risk, said Stanford University bioethicists David Magnus and Mildred Cho.

The advances do not mean it is time to try reproductive cloning, Hwang said. That, he said, “is unsafe and unethical,” noting that animal studies show more failures than successes. “Biologically, it may be impossible.”

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Stem cell debate needs moral ‘home base’ (townhall.com, 050523)

Cal Thomas

I have a new toy. It is a GPS system that takes me where I want to go and tells me how to get there. When I unpacked the device, I first had to give it the location of my “home base.” Now when I enter a destination it takes me there without any wrong turns.

That seems an apt analogy in the debate over stem cell research. Is there a fixed point - home base - in this debate, or are we to be left to our own devices without any knowledge of where to begin or where the path will lead?

Researchers in South Korea have announced the creation of 11 new stem cell lines. They made them by taking the skin cells of children and adults and injecting them into donor eggs. After fusing them with electricity, this product of biological deception divided and became cloned embryos, the cells of which carry the genes of the skin-cell donor.

Congress this week is debating several stem cell research bills. President Bush has threatened to veto any that involve the use of cloned human embryos, no matter how they are produced.

The victim lobby has been strong. Children and adults with now-incurable diseases have testified before Congress that stem cells might offer them an opportunity for a normal and healthy life.

But science and the give-them-what-they-want-so-they-will-vote-for-me politicians are racing ahead of any fixed moral position, without any kind of tracking to show where this will take us. Perhaps there are other methods that will get us to the destination - helping people without killing what remains of a moral guidance system.

Rep. Chris Smith, New Jersey Republican, believes there are other ways to get where we want to go besides cloning and using human embryos or aborted babies. He’s introducing a bill this week called the Stem Cell Therapeutic and Research Act of 2005. It would create a national program that would use cells from umbilical cords.

According to the National Cord Blood Program at the New York Blood Center and researchers at Emory University in Atlanta, umbilical cord blood transplants have proved effective for treating patients suffering from inherited immune disorders like sickle cell anemia and leukemia, even when those transplants are from unrelated donors. These are precisely the type of afflictions some believe embryonic stem cells might cure.

If we can make scientific progress toward curing maladies from paralysis to leukemia, but without the destruction of human embryos, isn’t this a win-win for everyone? We preserve at least some value for human life (already severely damaged by our tolerance of abortion on demand), while simultaneously moving ahead with our desire to find cures for various afflictions.

Some politicians like Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and President Bush are sticking to their principles, refusing to sign legislation allowing taxpayer funding of embryonic stem cell research. Last week the president said, “I made very clear to the Congress that the use of federal money, taxpayers’ money, to promote science which destroys life in order to save life - I’m against that. And therefore if the bill does that, I will veto it.”

Members of the president’s party, including Rep. Mike Castle, Delaware Republican, are pushing for embryonic stem cell research. Mr. Bush’s refusal to compromise his convictions might strengthen the backbones of any members who are wavering.

Before rushing headlong into the unknown, we should ask some basic questions: Where is our home base and what is the fixed moral point that will guide us? Who are we - evolutionary accidents upon whom any and all experiments should be tolerated for the “greater good,” or are we something else and someone else’s? Who made us - a scientist in a laboratory dish, a cosmic accident or “our Creator”?

You don’t have to be religious to embrace the notion that life and rights must come from outside of man in order for them to be protected and unalienable. To embrace anything less and to kill embryos in order to “save” older and more developed human beings is to embrace an Orwellian philosophy that “death is life.” Do we want to travel to that destination?

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Of Mice and Men: What it Means to be Human (Christian Post, 050525)

Whether it’s sheep with human organs or mice with partially human brains, the creation of human and animal hybrids is the cutting edge of biotechnology.

And the New York Times is advancing the argument (“It’s Science, Not a Freak Show,” May 11, 2005) that a growing public concern about the ethics of the scientific creation of genetic “chimeras” should be tempered. The Times, unfortunately, fails to recognize a fundamental question about the nature of the human person in its support of this very problematic field of research.

While technically any organism that has tissues or organs transplanted from a different genotype is considered a chimera, the use of animal organs in human beings has been relatively non-controversial.

But the creation of new kinds of chimeras, using manipulation at the cellular and sub-cellular level, raises the stakes considerably. These kinds of genetically-modified creatures correspond better with a much older view of chimeras.

The ancient Greeks understood chimeras very differently than we do today: they were fire-breathing, freakish monsters.

The guiding ethic of the Times’ way of thinking on chimeras is that of a scientific pragmatism, which erects technological progress and scientific advancement at the pinnacle of all human endeavors. Fears and apprehension over the possible abuses of science should not get in the way, we are assured in its editorial, of “more mundane experiments with chimeras that will be needed to advance science.”

It’s questionable whether anything involving genetic manipulation should ever be called “mundane,” especially when human genes are involved. Certainly we have not yet arrived at a state of affairs which warrants such a normative description.

The Time’s argument then moves to the “slippery slope” model of reasoning, in which previous actions are used to rationalize current or future activities. After all, “no one worries much anymore about transplanting pig valves into human hearts or human fetal tissue into mice.” And one day, hopefully soon, we are implicitly chided, no one will worry much anymore about mixing human, animal, or even plant genes. (Vanderbilt University scientists have been working on creating blue roses using a human liver enzyme.)

A key insight into the guiding ethos of the Times way of thinking is provided when it explores a possible explanation for public outcry. “The key reason” that previous steps on the slippery slope have not been troubling “may be that these manipulations don’t visibly change the fundamental nature of either the human or the animal. People become much more concerned when they think a transplant may alter the mind or appearance of the recipient.”

This preoccupation with obvious or visible effects of genetic manipulation does little to address the relevant root questions about the human person. Are human beings simply the evolutionary heirs of less developed creatures? Not at all. A true and rich anthropology evokes a comprehensive view of the human person, body and soul, mind and spirit. Humans are much more than merely material beings.

In the Christian tradition, this has often been described in terms of the “image of God,” taken from Genesis 1:26, in which God is said to make humans in his image and likeness. This concept of humans as image-bearers has had a rich history, and has contributed on many fronts to a more accurate view of who we are as human beings.

For example, within the original Ancient Near Eastern (ANE) context of this passage in Genesis, the language of “image-bearing” would have been immediately understandable. When a vassal or representative spoke or acted with the authority of the king, he was said to “bear the king’s image,” a physical representation of the king and his authority.

There are, of course, no rights or privileges without responsibility, so on the heels of the creation of human beings and their placement in dominion, we find the corresponding responsibilities and blessings in terms of “stewardship.”

Here again we run up against the political and social structure of the ANE. A steward was one who was in charge of a household or kingdom during the ruler’s absence. Humans, in exercising their exalted place of stewardship, are to be productive and creative rulers of the earth. This is a norm of human existence and the standard to which we are called.

The implications of this for scientific pursuits in general, and genetics in particular, are manifold. The pursuit of scientific or technological progress for its own sake should never be considered the highest good. A scientific pragmatism, which views humans and animals primarily in terms of utility, will always be an inadequate guide for ethical considerations. It violates the dignity of human beings as image-bearers of God and abandons the norms of responsible stewardship.

Sadly, it is just such a rationale that is in play in the New York Times editorial, which itself is an exemplar of the attitude among many scientists today. The guidelines on embryonic stem cell research recently released by the National Academies of Science address the chimera phenomenon, stating that the creation of chimeras is “valuable in understanding the etiology and progression of human disease and in testing new drugs, and will be necessary in preclinical testing of human embryonic stem cells and their derivatives.”

Human experimentation has been circumscribed by the Nuremburg Code, for example, following the atrocities committed during World War II, despite the protestations that “such experiments yield results for the good of society that are unprocurable by other methods or means of study.” So too should ethical guidelines addressing the creation of chimeras realize that there are objective norms that must be adhered to, independent of purely pragmatic concerns. Our very humanity may depend on it.

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Jordan J. Ballor is associate editor with the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion & Liberty in Grand Rapids, Mich.

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Stem cell reasoning (Townhall.com, 050527)

Mona Charen

The Kansas City Star, editorializing about the president’s threat to veto the stem cell bill passed by the House, described human embryos as the “excess products of fertility procedures.” The Los Angeles Times, contemptuous of the president’s ethical misgivings, declared: “It’s not a choice between a human life and an embryo’s life. It’s a choice between real human lives and a symbolic statement about the value of an embryo.”

The New York Times and others object that majorities in public opinion polls support this research. Is that how we should evaluate moral claims? Majorities also support the judges Bush has nominated, and yet the Times has gone gooey for the “rights” of minority senators and the sanctity of the filibuster.

Critics of the president’s position frequently charge that Bush is influenced by religious belief and that, therefore, his objections to stem cell research are illegitimate. The New York Times is the master of this argument. In an editorial titled “The President’s Stem Cell Theology,” the paper asserts that “his actions are based on strong religious beliefs on the part of some conservative Christians, and presumably the president himself. Such convictions deserve respect, but it is wrong to impose them on this pluralistic nation.”

Let’s have a show of hands: Who thinks the New York Times would object to a president who, say, endorsed unrestricted immigration on moral grounds? Would the Times chide such a president for imposing his private religious sentiments on “this pluralistic nation”? Hardly.

It isn’t moral reasoning the Times and other liberal organs dislike, it is moral reasoning that threatens to pinch. Advocates of unlimited stem cell research believe or hope that this science will bring early cures to diseases like diabetes and Parkinson’s. Everyone hopes for such breakthroughs — though level-headed scientists caution against overly optimistic expectations from this line of inquiry. Yet morally serious people cannot focus only on the imagined cures and ignore the hard facts about destroying or cloning human embryos.

The suggestion, repeated so often in the press, that only conservative Christians oppose stem cell research, is simply false. One influential voice against the practice belongs to William Kristol. As editor of The Weekly Standard, he has offered moral objections to stem cell research, euthanasia, abortion and other assaults on the sanctity of life. Kristol is Jewish, but his arguments are couched in non-sectarian — indeed, in non-religious — terms.

Steve Chapman, columnist for the Chicago Tribune, dispensed with the sectarian argument in his title: “You don’t have to be a believer to think there is something wrong with destroying human life, however immature.”

By pigeonholing the president’s position as that of a “conservative Christian,” cheerleaders for stem cell research hope to avoid grappling with the moral question altogether. The New York Times objects, “The president’s policy is based on the belief that all embryos, even the days-old, microscopic form used to derive stem cells in a laboratory dish, should be treated as emerging human life and protected from harm. This seems an extreme way to view tiny laboratory entities that are no larger than the period at the end of this sentence ...”

Yes, it’s difficult to think of human embryos (“entities”) as members of the human family. But those tiny dots, no larger than the period at the end of this sentence, if implanted in a woman’s womb, will not grow up to be paragraphs or essays, but full-term infant boys and girls.

An embryo does not look like a baby, but that is part of the miracle of creation (or reproduction, if you’re looking at it clinically). Surely the stem cell enthusiasts can recognize, if they reflect on it, that denying the humanity of others is at the root of countless atrocities in human history.

And yes, many of these potential human beings are being destroyed at fertility clinics around the nation. That is wrong. But using them for medical research does not mitigate that wrong, it compounds it. Even if destroying embryos were certain to bring a cure for grave diseases (and it is far from certain), it is never justified to use one human being — or even potential human being — as a source of spare parts for another.

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The overselling of stem cell research (Townhall.com, 050617)

Jonah Goldberg

Do human embryos have a moral status that obliges us to treat them as something a bit more sacred than tinker toys?

My personal answer is yes. But after three decades of debate on life issues, I’m pessimistic that many Americans who disagree can be persuaded otherwise.

The moral status of embryos - like the status of fetuses or teenagers - is ultimately a matter of faith, of first principles. Those who make utilitarian arguments for euthanasia, abortion or, for that matter, genocide can be perfectly “rational” in the sense that they can employ logic with the best of them. They simply start from different moral assumptions. Nazis and Communists killed millions and they could be very logical in their justifications - but logical in that whole evil genius sense. On the other side of the spectrum, pro-life, Buddhist vegans - who literally wouldn’t hurt a fly - can be very logical, too. They just follow a different set of assumptions. One could say it’s a sign of moral progress that we’ve at least shunted our debates over who has a right to life to murderers, the unborn and the very, very ill.

Or maybe not. Regardless, the moral debate often overshadows more practical arguments.

During the 2004 presidential campaign, John Kerry and his supporters complained that President Bush had “banned” embryonic stem cell research. John Kerry proclaimed, “Here in America we don’t sacrifice science for ideology” - a deeply ideological point itself, when you think about it. Ronald Reagan Jr., a very liberal former dog show announcer and ballet dancer who happens to share the name of his late father, was proclaimed a walking profile in courage for exploiting his father’s memory in order to support the Democrats on the issue of embryonic stem cell research. At the Democratic Convention, he suggested that if Democrats were in power, then perhaps in a decade or so you could have your very own “personal biological repair kit waiting for you at the hospital.” People with Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, or various other calamitous and heartbreaking diseases could simply get an injection and be “cured.” It’s not “magic,” Reagan promised, but simply the “medicine of the future.”

Another popular line of argument was that America would fall behind the rest of world as a leader in science, ceding pole position to Europe, South Korea or China.

Much of the mainstream media was so convinced by this sort of thinking that for a while political analysts - and the Kerry campaign - were claiming that the stem cell issue would decide the election for the Democrats.

All of this was suffused with bad faith. Ron Reagan’s pandering to the false hopes of desperate families was disgusting. Moreover, Bush didn’t ban embryonic stem cell research - he regulated federal funding of it. Public funding of adult stem cell research and private embryonic stem cell research were left untouched.

Meanwhile, an article in the May/June issue of Foreign Policy by Robert L. Paarlberg, reports that America is still leading the world in embryonic stem cell research. Many European countries - which were supposed to have eaten our lunch in this area - actually have vastly more restrictive laws than our own. There’s been virtually no brain drain of American scientists fleeing to more hospitable climes, while thousands of European scientists have fled their own bureaucratic and restrictive lands to work in America. Pharmaceutical and biotech R&D investment is flying into the United States. And many states, led by California, are spending billions to make up for the perceived shortfall from the feds.

This is the great irony of the whole debate. What offends some liberals is that the federal government isn’t involved - and the federal government should do whatever they think is good. Leaving this to the states and the private sector is just too unsatisfying. Meanwhile, some pro-life conservatives who would like to see a far more comprehensive ban on the practice are largely powerless to affect the course of the research at all now that it’s out of Washington’s hands.

And that’s as it should be. Federalism - sending tough issues to the lowest, most local levels possible - is the best compromise one can ask for when dealing with such issues. The alternative is to ask the federal government almost literally to split the baby. Sure, more federal funding might advance the science a bit faster. But the current system has one great advantage. It doesn’t force people who think human life is precious to pay for its destruction.

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Stem-Cell Sleight of Hand: Mario Cuomo accuses President Bush of letting religion run his stem-cell policy, but Bush isn’t the one ignoring actual science. (Weekly Standard, 050623)

FORMER NEW YORK GOVERNOR Mario Cuomo is one slick fella. Like all effective propagandists, he’s smooth, articulate, eloquent—and he doesn’t let the facts get in his way. Take for example his most recent polemic in the debate over embryonic stem cell research (ESCR). In “Not on Faith Alone,” published in the June 20 New York Times (where else?), Cuomo takes President Bush to task for limiting federal funding of embryonic stem cell research to cell lines that do not involve the current destruction of embryos. But rather than mount an honest argument against the president’s policy, he instead simply accuses the president of imposing “the dictates of religious orthodoxy” upon a pluralistic society.

To win his debating points, Cuomo puts words into the president’s mouth that Bush has never uttered, asserting that “Mr. Bush believes that destroying an embryo is murder.” This supposed religious belief forces the president into a stark inconsistency, Cuomo claims, since “he refuses to demand legislation to stop commercial interests that are busily destroying embryos in order to obtain stem cells. If their conduct amounts to murder as the president contends, it is hardly satisfactory for him to say he will do nothing to stop the evil act other than to refuse to pay for it.” This is bizarre. On one hand, Cuomo criticizes Bush of being too radical for imposing a minority view steeped in rigid religiosity upon society in limiting federal funding of embryonic stem cell research, while on the other hand he criticizes

the president for not being radical enough because he hasn’t sought to turn researchers into capital criminals for destroying embryos.

Be that as it may, for Cuomo’s argument to have a prayer of working logically, President Bush must have actually asserted that destroying embryos for use in ESCR is murder. But the president never has. (Where were the fact checkers at the New York Times?) What he has asserted repeatedly and consistently is that destroying embryos for use in research is a matter of grave moral consequence. “I believe America must pursue the tremendous possibilities of science” he stated recently, “while fostering and encouraging respect for human life in all its stages.” This is not a radical proposition, and it isn’t one accepted only by religious people. Indeed, since 1995—six years before Bush assumed office—the official public policy of the United States has been to deny federal funding for scientific research that destroys embryos. This policy, known generically as the “Dickey Amendment,” has been passed each year by strong bipartisan votes, and was signed into law by President Bill Clinton every year until the end of his term.

To be sure, when stem cells were first derived from human embryos in 1998, President Clinton wanted to fund ESCR, he had to find a way around existing federal law: He said federal funds would be used for research on stem cells obtained by destroying embryos, but would not fund the act of destruction itself.

By contrast, Bush’s “compromise” policy permits federal funding only of ESCR that uses stem cell lines already in existence as of August 9, 2001, so the offer of federal funds will not be used to promote the destruction of new embryos. It doesn’t take a theologian to see that this comports better with the spirit of the Dickey amendment. Under this policy, tens of millions of federal dollars have been spent on ESCR. As presidential spokesman Ken Lisaius told me, the Bush federal funding policy “advances stem cell science consistent with the crucial principle that government should not encourage the destruction of human life.”

Which leads us to the big question: Is a one-week-old embryo a form of human life? Cuomo asserts that the president “will have to provide more than sincere religiosity to prove human life exists as early as fertilization.” But this question has never been a religious issue, nor has Bush ever asserted that it is. Rather, the question of whether an embryo is human life involves basic biology. To learn the unvarnished scientific truth about whether an early embryo is really a form of human life, we need only turn to apolitical medical and embryology textbooks.

And guess what: According to several eminent texts, a human embryo is indeed human life, just as the president “asserts.” For example, the authors of The Developing Human: Clinically Oriented Embryology (6th Ed., 1998) assert: “Human development is a continuous process that begins when an oocyte [egg] is fertilized by a sperm.” The fertilized egg is known as a zygote, which “is the beginning of a new human being.” More to the point, the authors write: “Human development begins at fertilization” with the joining of egg and sperm, which “form a single cell called a zygote. This highly specialized . . . cell marks the beginning of each of us as a unique individual.” Similarly, the authors of Human Embryology and Teratology (Third Ed., 2001), another embryology textbook assert that upon the completion of conception, “a new, genetically distinct human organism is formed.” (all emphases added)

It is also worth noting in this regard that the prestigious British science journal Nature published an article in 2002 describing how the human body plan “starts being laid down immediately” upon fertilization. “Your world was shaped in the first 24 hours after conception,” the Nature article asserted. “Where your head and feet would sprout, and which side would form your back and which your belly, were defined in the minutes and hours after sperm and egg united.” The article goes on to note that the newly fertilized one-cell embryo is already a unique human life, not merely the “naïve sphere” or “featureless orb” as scientists once thought

In other words, based on pure biology and embryology—which is science and not religion—fertilization does indeed create a new human life. And if this is true of the one-celled embryo, it is surely true of the same embryo when it has developed for a week to the stage when embryonic stem cells can be derived.

Whether this matters morally is a different issue altogether. As the authors of Human Embryology and Teratology write, “The [moral] status of the early human embryo is an evaluation rather than a scientific question, and assessment is influenced considerably by philosophical outlook.” But if we are going to engage in proper moral analysis, we have to get the science right. Unfortunately, articles such as Cuomo’s are designed to prevent precisely this kind of informed moral analysis.

Mario Cuomo prides himself on his intellectual rigor. But in the embryonic stem cell funding debate, President Bush is the one who has based his moral position on informed scientific facts. To be sure, one can disagree with his conclusions. But it is intellectually dishonest to claim, as Cuomo does, that Bush is merely imposing his narrow religious views on a secular America by opposing federal funding for stem cell research that destroys human embryos

Wesley J. Smith is a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute and a special consultant to the Center for Bioethics and Culture. His current book is Consumer’s Guide to a Brave New World.

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A solution to the stem cell debate? (Townhall.com, 050720)

Mona Charen

Medical science may be able to settle a contentious and damaging fight between Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives, and yet few have taken any notice.

Appearing before the Senate Labor, Health, and Human Services subcommittee last week, Dr. William Hurlbut, a professor in the Human Biology program at Stanford and a member of the President’s Council on Bioethics, outlined a number of scientific methods for obtaining embryonic stem cells that would not involve destroying developing human embryos. This is big news. Yet Democratic Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, displaying a prodigious capacity for missing the point, brushed it off, declaring that “We already know how to derive stem cells.”

Well, yes, but the argument we are engaged in concerns whether it is moral or ethical to use normal, fully functioning human embryos as mere research material. If we can produce embryonic stem cells some other way, we will be able to obtain the full benefits of medical research using these cells (bearing in mind that the potential for cures has been wildly oversold by advocates) without transgressing important moral boundaries.

Not so very long ago, Democrats expressed moral qualms about harvesting human embryos for research. In 1999, President Clinton’s National Bioethics Advisory Commission issued a report on “Ethical Issues in Human Stem Cell Research” and cautioned that “In our judgment, the derivation of stem cells from embryos remaining following infertility treatments is justifiable only if no less morally problematic alternatives are available for advancing the research.” Yet today, only six years later, those who raise ethical objections to unrestricted embryonic stem cell research are dismissed as troglodytes. And those who propound alternatives to destroying human embryos must struggle to get a hearing.

The President’s Council on Bioethics has outlined the possible alternatives to destroying live embryos, and the advantages and disadvantages of each. There are at least four different possibilities, including one introduced by Dr. Hurlbut called “altered nuclear transfer.” Essentially a variant of cloning technology, ANT would transfer the nucleus of an adult cell into an enucleated egg and electrically stimulate it to induce cell division. Unlike traditional cloning however, ANT would first alter the adult nucleus or the receiving cell, or both, to ensure that an embryo would not grow. Stem cells, however, would grow, and these could then be used for medical research without any ethical concerns at all since a human embryo will not have been destroyed in order to obtain them. It would be the moral equivalent of tissue cultures.

Advocates of unrestricted embryo destruction make two principal arguments; first, that 400,000 embryos left over from fertility treatments are going to be thrown away anyway, and second, that an embryo is not a human being because it is extremely tiny.

As to the first argument, the RAND Law and Health Initiative examined the matter and found that while nearly 400,000 embryos remain frozen in fertility clinics around the nation, only about 11,000 of these have been designated for medical research. The vast majority are held for future family building. Of those 11,000, only about 65% would survive the thawing process, resulting in 7,334 embryos. Only about 25% of those would likely develop to the blastocyst stage, and even fewer would be able to produce stem cells. Honest proponents of embryonic research admit that cloning of embryos would probably be necessary to obtain the optimum number of stem cell lines.

As to the second objection: Is size morally relevant? Is a 21-year-old man three times as precious as a 7-year-old boy? We can barely see an embryo with the naked eye, yet, as Dr. Hurlbut points out, from the vantage point of space, no human is visible on the Earth’s surface. He quotes philosopher and mathematician Blaise Pascal, who noted more than 300 years ago that “human existence is located between infinities — between the infinitely large and the infinitely small.” Pascal continued, “By space the universe encompasses and swallows me up like a dot — by thought I encompass the universe.”

And by seeking to do the moral thing, we find our proper place in the universe.

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Breakthrough Reported in Stem Cell Research (Foxnews, 050822)

WASHINGTON — Harvard scientists say they have fused an adult skin cell with an embryonic stem cell in a potentially dramatic development that could lead to the creation of useful stem cells without first having to create and destroy human embryos.

Preliminary results of the groundbreaking research were disclosed Sunday evening on the Science magazine web site and the Harvard researchers arranged to discuss their findings in more detail on Monday.

They said they were able to show in their early research that the fused cell “was reprogrammed to its embryonic state.”

“If future experiments indicate that this reprogrammed state is retained after removing the embryonic stem cell DNA — currently a formidable technical hurdle — the hybrid cells could theoretically be used to produce embryonic stem cells lines that are tailored to individual patients without the need to create and destroy human embryos,” said a summary of the research reported on the Science site.

That could lead to creation of stem cells without having to use human eggs or make new human embryos in the process, thereby sidestepping much of the controversy over stem cell research.

The Harvard researchers used laboratory grown human embryonic stem cells — such as the ones that President Bush has already approved for use by federally funded researchers — to essentially covert a skin cell into an embryonic stem cell itself.

If a number of hurdles can be overcome in subsequent research, the new technique “may circumvent some of the logistical and societal concerns” that have hampered much of the research in this country, Chad A. Cowan, Kevin Eggan and colleagues from the Harvard Stem Cell Institute report in the Science article.

The hybrid cells created by the team “had the appearance, growth rate, and several key genetic characteristics of human embryonic cells,” the summary of their work said.

“They also behaved like embryonic cells, differentiating into cells from each of the three main tissue types that form in a developing embryo. The authors conclude that human embryonic cells have the ability to reprogram adult cell chromosomes following cell fusion.”

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The Genetic Revolution ? Where Will It Lead? (Christian Post, 050901)

Human knowledge is expanding across almost all fields of knowledge, but the revolution in genetic science represents one of the most incredible expansions of knowledge in human history. The last three decades have witnessed some of the most astounding discoveries in the history of science, as the human genome has been fully identified and as scientists unlock the mysteries of individual genes and their function. At the same time, a sense of foreboding accompanies this expansion of knowledge. Where will all this lead?

This is the question considered by Eric Cohen, editor of The New Atlantis, in his article “The Real Meaning of Genetics.” This article, published in the Summer 2005 edition of The New Atlantis, offers considerable wisdom—and serves as a short course in the current status of genetic knowledge.

Cohen acknowledges that the genetic revolution can be considered from several different perspectives. Our new genetic knowledge can be considered as a matter of science, social science, and even public safety. Each of these perspectives demands attention, but Cohen looks at an even deeper level—the meaning of genetics and genetic knowledge.

“The reason we care so much about the new genetics is that we sense that this area of science will touch on the deepest matters of human life—such as how we have children, how we experience freedom, and how we face sickness and death,” Cohen observes. “Like no other area of modern science and technology, genetics inspires both dreams and nightmares about the human future with equal passion: the dream of perfect babies, the nightmare of genetic tyranny.”

Our society is increasingly divided between those who are cheerleaders for the new genetic technologies and those who function as voices crying in the wilderness, warning of tragedies to come.

Eric Cohen is a careful thinker, and his approach to bioethics and the meaning of genetics is reasonable, careful, and honest. As he admits, he does not want to be seen as the “bioethics boy who cried wolf.”

Not that there isn’t plenty of reason for worry. As Cohen sees it, most of us worry too much too early and then worry too little too late. In other words, the earliest stage in the development of new genetic knowledge and applications is often met with a resounding wave of worry. On the other hand, once applications of genetic knowledge become widespread in the culture, it is too often met with an apathetic shrug.

As Cohen observes, the line between science and science-fiction has become quite blurred. The worlds of science and science-fiction include both those who champion virtually unrestricted genetic knowledge and those who fear that such knowledge will lead to disaster and dystopia. Behind all this is the fact that human beings have a nearly insatiable appetite for “perfect control and perfect happiness,” Cohen argues.

Over the last several decades, our genetic knowledge has grown by leaps and bounds. At the same time, many developments that framed nightmares just a few years ago have now become realities—or are on the verge of doing so.

In an interesting historical narrative, Cohen takes us back to the 1970s, when James Watson testified before the United States Congress and contended that the government must quickly pass laws about cloning before it was too late. Watson, who shared the Nobel Prize with Francis Crick for identifying the structure of DNA, feared the advent of what he called “clonal man.” Congress failed to act on Watson’s advice, since few legislators believed that human cloning would ever be possible. Now, Cohen argues that human cloning “is coming and probably coming soon.” Indeed, Cohen seems to believe that human cloning may be inevitable.

As he observes, the debate over human cloning allowed the issue of test-tube babies “to seem prosaic very quickly, in part because they were not clones and in part because the babies themselves were such a blessing.” Thus, a radically innovative technology—indeed a technology that redefines human reproduction—was seen as non-threatening and acceptable. “We barely paused to consider the strangeness of originating human life in the laboratory; of beholding, with human eyes, our own human origins; of suspending nascent human life in the freezer; of further separating procreation from sex.”

Cohen acknowledges that IVF has been a blessing for many infertile couples. Without minimizing the joy brought to these parents, he also observes that the development and application of IVF technologies “created strange new prospects, including the novel possibility of giving birth to another couple’s child—flesh not of my flesh, you might say—and the possibility of picking-and-choosing human embryos for life or death based on their genetic characteristics. It has also left us the tragic question of deciding what we owe the thousands of embryos now left over in freezers—a dilemma with no satisfying moral answer.”

Cohen explains that our quest for genetic knowledge is based in several ambitions. The first is a desire for genetic self-understanding. Human beings are unique in having the capacity for self-awareness and self-knowledge. Accordingly, we are not satisfied merely to experience the world—we want to understand it. The genetic revolution has allowed us to gain an extraordinary knowledge about ourselves. We hunger for genetic explanations for diseases, death, and human capacities. “We still hope that genetics is the secret of disease,” Cohen observes, “if not the secret of life.”

Humans also seek genetic knowledge in order to develop genetic therapies. “We seek to conquer human disease, and perhaps even to make death itself a series of conquerable diseases,” Cohen notes. “It is apparently part of our genetic code to revolt against our genetic fate.”

The application of genetic therapies—and the advent of new germ-line therapies—has come only in recent years. Nevertheless, this generation is driven by an intense demand for therapies that promise to reverse disease, illness, and even death.

Cohen understands that genetic therapies are likely to face significant limitations. After all, “it turns out that most diseases are more complicated that genetics alone, and that markers for identifying and predicting a given disease do not always or easily translate into usable knowledge about the disease’s causation.” Even as Cohen acknowledges that the new genetic therapies are likely to bring some promise of enhanced or elongated life, he is confident that the new genetics “will probably not be the therapeutic panacea that many once hoped.”

The desire to design our descendants also marks many proponents of genetic engineering. Cohen asserts that many in this camp are driven by a desire to design human beings with “genotypes entirely of our own creation.” He warns of the emergence of postmodern biologists who see themselves as the artists seeking to achieve artistic “trangression,” even as they attempt terrible experiments. He identifies this spectre as “the biological equivalent of postmodern art.”

Most importantly, Cohen knows that these forms of genetic knowledge are likely to lead to “the worst abuses of biotechnology.” We face the very real prospect that would-be parents would attempt to screen and then abort embryos or fetuses found to have handicaps or deformities. Cohen argues that some of the most important dimensions of human existence, such as character, are not likely to be improved by genetic technologies.

A further problem is raised by the existence of “genetic foreknowledge.” What are we to do with the knowledge that we carry a genetic predisposition for an untreatable, incurable, and fatal illness? Cohen fears that such knowledge would “make the fact of death a dominant reality in our everyday lives.”

Beyond all this, Cohen knows that many parents now demand a right ‘to decide between life worth living and life unworthy of life.” The widespread genetic testing of embryos and fetuses is likely to become standard medical practice. Cohen argues that this new development will “transform the welcoming attitude of unconditional love into a eugenic attitude of conditional acceptance.”

In the end, Cohen understands that knowledge is never neutral. This is especially true with genetic knowledge, since these new forms of knowledge—and the technologies based on this knowledge—threaten to redefine humanity itself.

Committed to a biblical worldview, Christians must understand what is at stake in the genetic revolution. We must understand that human beings are not given the authority to redefine ourselves. We also understand that death and disease will remain enemies until the very end of time. While thankful for new treatments, drugs, and technologies that can improve and enhance life, we must understand that some technologies and some forms of knowledge are simply incompatible with our knowledge of true humanity as defined by the Creator. We must be unafraid to cry wolf when there really is a wolf.

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R. Albert Mohler, Jr. is president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky.

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Have You Heard the Good News . . . about adult and umbilical cord blood stem cells? Probably not. (Weekly Standard, 050929)

WE HAVE HEARD IT STATED SO OFTEN it has become a media mantra: Embryonic stem cells (ESCs) offer the greatest hope for cures; adult and umbilical cord blood stem cells have far less potential; the Bush administration’s embryonic stem cell funding restrictions have caused America to fall behind in the great international race to develop effective ESC treatments.

Baloney, baloney, and pure baloney: The problems with harnessing embryonic stem cells as treatments appear to be growing, not shrinking. For example, ESC boosters used to claim that these cells are “immortal,” that is, they can be maintained indefinitely in culture to provide an inexhaustible source of cellular treatments. Well, not quite: Recent studies have demonstrated that over time ESC lines develop chromosomal abnormalities similar to those found in some cancers. This means that the useful shelf life of embryonic stem-cell lines is probably limited.

Moreover, the oft-heard assertion that ESCs can be used to create “any kind of cell in the body” remains poorly grounded scientifically. For such a bald assertion to be true, it would have to have been actually accomplished in repeated experiments. It hasn’t been. Few researchers have been able to differentiate an embryonic stem cell into the precise kind of cell they were seeking, and only that kind of cell. In most cases, attempts to morph ES cells into specific cell types have resulted instead in Petri dishes containing a wide variety of unwanted cells.

Animal experiments suggest that these proliferation difficulties may be the cause of the tumors so

often seen when animals are injected with ESCs. This tendency to cause tumors is only one of the many problems that prevent researchers from using ESCs in human patients—problems widely expected to take many years to overcome, if they ever can be.

By contrast, the umbilical cord blood and adult stem-cell breakthroughs keep on coming. Human trials are ongoing for heart disease, spinal cord injury, eye afflictions, and many other diseases. And here’s a bit of potentially very big news: A just-published peer-reviewed study (Cytotherapy, Vol. 7. No. 4 (2005), 368-373) reports that scientists have used umbilical cord blood stem cells to restore feeling and mobility to a spinal cord injury patient. The patient had been paraplegic (complete paraplegia of the 10th thoracic vertebra) for 19 years. The researchers report that after receiving an infusion of umbilical cord blood stem cells,

[t]he patient could move her hips and feel her hip skin on day 15 after transplantation. On day 25 after transplantation her feet responded to stimulation. On post operative day (POD) 7, motor activity was noticed and improved gradually in her lumbar paravertebral and hip muscles. She could maintain an upright position by herself on POD 13. From POD 15 she began to elevate both lower legs about 1 cm, and hip flexor muscle activity gradually improved until POD 41.

In other words, she regained feeling and some mobility after nearly 20 years of being paralyzed. (Similar results for patients with spinal-cord injuries have been reported in human trials in Portugal using the patients’ own olfactory (nasal) stem cells—these studies have not yet been published in a peer-reviewed journal, though the very promising results in the first American patients have been testified to in a Senate subcommittee hearing and featured on the PBS television series Innovation.)

It is true that we have to be cautious about this. One apparently-helped paralyzed patient does not a broad efficacious treatment make. Also, the authors note that the woman also received a laminectomy (spinal surgery to release pressure) that could have provided her some benefit. Still, they report, not only did their patient regain feeling after years of numbness, but “41 days after [stem cell] transplantation” testing “also showed regeneration of the spinal cord at the injured site.” (emphasis added)

THIS IS A WONDERFUL STORY that offers tremendous hope for paralyzed patients and their families. But as is usually the case with-non embryonic stem-cell research breakthroughs, you could hear the crickets chirping at the New York Times and in most other mainstream media outlets. Indeed, these publications are more likely to publish stories about mouse experiments using ES cells than about promising human trials using adult or umbilical cord stem cells.

THE SAME STUNNING SILENCE has met other amazing adult stem cell research successes. For example, because it was shockingly underreported, most people do not know that Harvard researchers have cured mice with advanced juvenile diabetes using adult cells taken from the spleen. The experiment has been repeated and reported in Science, in one of the most prestigious peer-reviewed journals. It has proven so safe and effective that the FDA has approved moving to human trials. Unfortunately, the researchers cannot yet proceed because they don’t have sufficient funds.

When confronted with these and many other astonishing advances in non-embryonic research, ESC boosters

defensively complain that ESC research has been stymied by President Bush’s federal funding limitations. Yet in 2003, the National Institutes of Health funded more than $20 million for ESC studies—with more funds available but not spent, due to the relative scarcity of qualified applications.

Opponents of the Bush policy counter that the Bush-approved ES cell lines aren’t good enough for effective use. But now, even this flimsy excuse is collapsing. Abundant state grant money is becoming available for embryonic stem-cell research (including research using new cell lines, and even newly created cloned embryos) in New Jersey and California. And guess what: As reported by the Newark Star Ledger, of 96 applications for state-funded stem-cell research grants in New Jersey, only one involved embryonic stem cells—and that request is for training funds, not bench science. The initial grants flowing out of Proposition 71 will also be primarily for training rather than actual research. Meanwhile, private investors generally avoid funding ESC research, primarily because they don’t see any chance of a return any time soon.

Talk about reality checks. For all the propaganda and hype boosting embryonic stem-cell research, ESCs are far from ready for prime time. Meanwhile, adult and umbilical cord blood stem-cell therapies keep quietly chugging along with continual advances in animal studies and the bringing of effective and safe treatments to a growing variety of suffering human patients. Maybe someday the media establishment will catch on to this real news, instead of focusing so myopically on the embryonic stem-cell story they want to tell.

Wesley J. Smith, is a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute and a special consultant for the Center for Bioethics and Culture. His current book is Consumer’s Guide to a Brave New World.

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Christian Morality and Test Tube Babies, Part One (Christian Post, 050929)

Questions of human reproduction inevitably define what it means to be human, and the moral issues which arise in connection with sex and reproduction are among the most divisive controversies of our time. The development of “test tube baby” technologies presents us with moral issues which demand answers, and require our most careful thought and reflection.

The German theologian Helmut Thielicke once argued that we learn more about ourselves and our most fundamental convictions by considering those “borderline” questions which resist easy answers. This is certainly true in the case of the new reproductive technologies. One of these “borderline” questions is raised by the development and spread of in vitro fertilization techniques, known as IVF. This issue cannot be understood apart from the foundational issues of human dignity, the meaning of personhood, and the integrity of marriage and the family.

The reproductive revolution is upon us. The past half-century has seen the development of reproductive technologies previous generations could not even imagine, much less consider in moral perspective. These technologies have radically expanded human control over the biological process, and have been designed both to prevent and to achieve successful pregnancy. Some legal theorists now argue for a new human right—the right to complete “procreative liberty,” ensuring an individual’s right to these new technologies.

The technological basics of in vitro fertilization technologies are easy to understand. The moral issues are far more complex. In vitro literally means “in glass,” for the actual fertilization of the egg takes place in a laboratory context [early on, in a petri dish], rather than in the woman’s reproductive system. While infants conceived by this method are often called “test tube babies,” this is a misnomer, as no test tube is generally used. The phrase does, however, underline the technological character of the conception, which takes place in the laboratory.

The moral issues are more complex. What does it mean to separate conception from the act of sexual union? To whom should these technologies be made available? What is the moral status of the fertilized embryos? Those who dismiss these questions as irrelevant or inconsequential show disrespect for human dignity and human life.

At one level, the moral and theological issues at stake in IVF are identical to those related to artificial insemination. The insemination may be done with sperm from the husband in a married couple (homologous insemination) or with sperm from a donor (heterologous insemination). Beyond this, a new set of issues emerges. In IVF, an egg is removed from a woman, and is fertilized in a laboratory setting by the insertion of sperm cells into the dish. Once the egg is fertilized and the exchange of chromosomal material takes place, the embryo is implanted in the uterus, with the hope that implantation will occur and a pregnancy will continue to healthy birth.

Due to the high cost of each implantation and IVF sequence, multiple eggs are usually fertilized, and multiple embryos are implanted, with the remaining embryos kept frozen for possible future use. This practice often leads to multiple pregnancies, and in some cases healthy implanted embryos are then removed from the womb and destroyed—a process inhumanely known as “selective reduction.”

IVF technologies were developed as a means of assisting married couples unable to achieve successful pregnancy through natural means. The technologies are now widely available, however, and some clinics direct and advertise their services especially to single women and lesbian couples. Both heterosexual couples and homosexual male partners have opted to “have” children by use of IVF with a surrogate “mother” hired to carry the baby to term.

Clearly, these practices and technologies raise the most fundamental questions about what it means to be human, and about God’s intention for marriage and the family.

In the first place, human dignity is compromised by the artificiality of the IVF technology. The absolute separation of conjugal union and the sex act from the process of conception creates a new and artificial process of human reproduction—one that demands technological intervention at virtually every stage, from the collection of the sperm and eggs, to the actual fertilization, to the implantation of the embryo in the uterus.

This puts human agents in control of human destiny in a manner that overthrows natural limits. Theologians have debated this issue with intensity. Karl Rahner, the most influential Roman Catholic theologian of the century, believed that “there is really nothing possible for man that he ought not to do.” On the other hand, Protestantism’s Karl Barth, the father of “neo-orthodoxy,” warned that this would lead to a “dreadful, godless world;” one he could foresee in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World.

Clearly, God has placed natural limits upon our creaturely power and authority. Humans seem intent upon exceeding those limits in every sphere, and the rapid developments in biotechnology threaten to transform the understanding of what it means to be human. As Barth argued, human identity has been inherently related to parenthood and the conjugal bond. What does it mean to think of humanity severed from this parental relatedness?

The new technologies of IVF underline the extent to which the modern mind has reduced human reproduction to a technology rather than a divine gift, mystery, and stewardship. As Oliver O’Donovan argues, the biblical language reminds us that we are begotten, not merely made. This is not a semantic irrelevancy. Our language betrays our understanding of the meaning of human procreation.

Children are not the products of a technological process, like common consumer commodities, but are the gifts of a loving God whose intention is that children should be born to a man and a woman united in the bond of marriage, and as the fruit of that marital bond realized in the conjugal act. They are neither by-products of the sex act nor mere “products” of our technological innovations.

Paul Ramsey warned that we would be “de-biologizing” the human race by the use of these technologies. While we sympathize with couples unable to achieve conception by means within natural limits, these limits remain. “We ought rather to live with charity amid the limits of a biological and historical existence which God created for the good and simple reason that, for all its corruption, it is now—and for the temporal future will be—the good realm in which man and his welfare are to be found and served.”

Ramsey’s warning against the “messianic positivism” of these new technologies is a corrective to those who believe that this is merely a Catholic concern. Protestants, too, have historically recognized the intrinsic relatedness of parenthood to the conjugal bond and the act of marital sex as the design of a loving and merciful Creator, who imposed limits for our good.

IVF technologies threaten those limits in others ways as well. The IVF revolution has opened unprecedented opportunities for eugenics and the genetic manipulation of the embryo. Experiments on human embryos now involve the transfer of genetic material and offer the potential for genetic manipulation both before and after fertilization.

The technologies of IVF compromise the marital bond and threaten the integrity of the family. The use of donor sperm is unacceptable, for it brings a third party into the marital bond. The same is true for the use of a donor egg. A married couple should not invite the biological contribution of a third party—known or unknown. While the fertilization of the egg occurs in a laboratory (thus avoiding adultery), the marital bond is compromised by the use of another man’s sperm or another woman’s egg.

Beyond this, the use of IVF to allow unmarried women and lesbian couples to achieve pregnancy outside marriage and heterosexual relatedness is a direct rejection of God’s intention in the creation of humanity as male and female, and the limitation of sexual relatedness and procreation to a man and a woman united within the marital covenant. IVF is welcomed by radical feminists and lesbian activists as a technological marvel which promises freedom from male involvement, except as sperm donors. This is one specter of the “godless world” against which Barth warned.

The link between IVF and surrogacy is also deeply problematic. This allows a woman (or a couple) freedom from the burden and joys of pregnancy, but it also severs the maternal bond and reduces parenthood to genetic contribution. Again, the use of surrogates in connection with IVF by homosexual males (singles or couples) violates both the conjugal bond and the integrity of the family as the basis for parenthood.

By now, we all know couples who have been able to conceive and bear children through IVF technologies. Those babies—and growing children—are to be welcomed with undiluted joy and thankfulness. The moral status of a child born through IVF technology is not in question.

Yet, the Christian worldview requires that we consider means as well as ends in a moral and theological frame, and a host of further questions arises once the larger frame is considered. What about the hundreds of thousands of human embryos destroyed—and the hundreds of thousands now frozen in laboratory freezers? Who speaks for them?

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R. Albert Mohler, Jr. is president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky.

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Christian Morality and Test Tube Babies, Part Two (Christian Post, 050930)

The usual practice in IVF calls for the fertilization of numerous embryos, which are then frozen until needed for implantation in the womb. The high costs involved in these procedures, along with the risk of embryos failing to implant and thrive, means that doctors usually insist on fertilizing and implanting several embryos at a time. Though several embryos are implanted in most procedures, several more generally remain frozen and in a state of biological suspension.

This may be the most devastating moral reality of the IVF technology. These embryos—fully human in chromosomal development—are treated as human “seedlings.” Sometimes euphemistically called “Embryo Eskimos,” these embryos are denied human dignity and are reduced to a frozen existence, awaiting either implantation, indefinite storage, or willful destruction. In recent years thousands of human embryos have been destroyed in Great Britain and the United States, as they were no longer needed or wanted for implantation. The argument for this destruction is often couched in “humane” language, implying that it is better to be destroyed than indefinitely frozen.

How does a couple (or an individual) deal with the knowledge that their genetic offspring are suspended in a state of frozen non-existence? This horrible knowledge is a reminder that violating limits always promises great gain, but it also comes at a great (and even greater) cost.

The legal status of the embryos is now the subject of legal actions and judicial determination. In the case of a divorce, who “owns” the embryos? When a genetic “parent” dies, who inherits the embryos? The case of Steven and Maureen Kass illustrates the dilemma. Five fertilized embryos remained after the couple’s divorce. Later, Maureen wanted to have the embryos implanted and to raise the children. Steven did not want to have children, especially with his ex-wife, and wanted to donate the embryos to medical research. A New York judge ruled for Maureen, declaring that fertilized embryos were the possession of the woman. An appellate court ruled that both “parents” must give consent to implantation. Other cases are pending across the nation.

These questions underline another problem with the IVF technologies. It is now possible for an embryo to be implanted years after fertilization, opening the opportunity for a woman to give birth to her aunt, or even the genetic sibling of her grandmother. For that matter, an embryo can be implanted in a woman of advanced years, pushing the limits of reproductive capacity. Do we adjust our understanding of family and generational transfer to this new reality? This further undermines the integrity of the family and God’s order of creation.

Finally, the use of embryos in medical research brings a new threat to the sanctity of human life. Restrictions on experimentation with embryos are being progressively lifted, with some arguing that the thousands of “unused” frozen embryos represent an invaluable resource for biomedical experimentation and genetic research. This is hauntingly reminiscent of Nazi medical research. These embryos are human life worthy of full legal and ethical protection. Current debates over the use of embryos in human stem cell research are often fueled by these arguments, with proponents of embryonic stem cell research arguing that it would be immoral to “waste” these human embryos that will never be implanted in any womb. This is the moral reasoning of the Culture of Death.

The embryos “produced” by IVF technologies face danger in the womb, as well as in the laboratory. Multiple implantations—done for the sake of maximum effectiveness and minimum financial cost—lead regularly to multiple pregnancies. As with the use of fertility drugs, these multiple pregnancies can result in the fertilization and implantation of several embryos.

The reality of “selective reduction” came to the attention of most Americans through the media interest in the McCaughey septuplets in 1997. Doctors and medical ethicists debated the morality of allowing so many fetuses to remain in the womb, progressing toward full development. Many doctors argued for the moral imperative of selective reduction, which means the removal and destruction of selected embryos or fetuses.

Dr. Ezekiel J. Emanuel, chairman of the department of clinical bioethics at the National Institutes of Health, explained, “Many people believe couples who agree to infertility treatments must not only be informed about—but must consent to—the potential need for selective reduction even before beginning the treatments.”

This abhorrent argument reveals the casual disrespect in which the embryo is held by so many who are ready and willing to destroy innocent life in the name of life-giving technology. IVF technologies destroy even as they claim to create, and the termination and disposal of human embryos is a reminder that the gruesome reality of the Third Reich is never far from us. A society that will destroy human life and discard unwanted frozen embryos has lost the vital sense of human dignity which is foundational to civilized society. A culture comfortable with the knowledge that fetuses are destroyed in the name of life can rationalize itself into arguments identifying some humans—born and unborn—as “life unworthy of life.” The abortion culture hangs over the IVF laboratory.

In early 1999, advertisements appeared in newspapers of the Ivy League schools and other leading national universities offering $50,000 for an egg donor. The statement stipulated that the donor must be a healthy woman who had scored at least 1400 on the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) and was at least five-foot-ten in height. The woman would be required to undergo thorough genetic screening and to offer several useable eggs for fertilization and transfer. Within a few days, over 200 women applied to be the donor.

“I think we are moving to children as consumer products,” said Lori Andrews, a Chicago law professor. Nonsense, argued Norman Fost, head of the medical ethics program at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. He asserted that “whether children are valued and how they are treated has very little to do with how they are conceived.”

Given a Christian worldview commitment, based in a biblical understanding of the integrity of the marital bond, the integrity of the family, and the sanctity of human life—from the moment of chromosomal exchange to the moment of natural death—we cannot agree that all this has little to do with how children are conceived.

The excruciating pain of a married couple unable to achieve conception is understandable, but this does not mean that all technologies are therefore allowable or morally acceptable. Christian couples must not embrace the new reproductive technologies without clear biblical and theological reflection. At a bare minimum, Christian couples must commit to the implantation of all embryos, and the selective reduction of none. But this does not alter the fundamentally artificial character of the technology or the moral status of the embryos, and thus IVF presents grave moral issues to the Christian conscience. For these reasons, it cannot be encouraged.

We must oppose the denial of human dignity to the unborn and often forgotten frozen embryos. We must oppose the use of these technologies by those who would subvert the family, the marital covenant, and the Creator’s gift of sexual union and procreation. We must deny that what is technologically possible is therefore morally acceptable. We must affirm our creaturely limits and trust our gracious Creator as the Lord of Life, who imposed those limits for our good. And we must learn to count the costs before those limitations are denied.

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R. Albert Mohler, Jr. is president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky.

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End Run: A Korean company tries to short circuit bans on cloning and stem-cells. (Weekly Standard, 051024)

LIFE IS TOUGH for the stalwart pioneers on biotechnology’s cutting edge. “U.S. scientists studying human embryonic stem cells face unprecedented political, regulatory, and financial barriers,” Dr. Susan Okie, M.D. complained last week in the New England Journal of Medicine. The “national debate over the ethics of such research” has so chilled the scientific atmosphere, she believes, that “the most promising method of making patient-specific and disease-specific stem cell lines”—meaning, human therapeutic cloning—”is not yet being performed in the United States.”

But, she reports, help is on the way. The World Stem Cell Foundation, the brainchild of Woo-Suk Hwang, the South Korean creator of the first human cloned embryos, plans to skirt legal restrictions and the public’s widespread moral disapproval of human cloning, which many scientists blame for hindering stem-cell science.

The Foundation’s plan is to identify the few places that are overtly friendly to human cloning for biomedical research, such as South Korea, the United Kingdom, and California. Then, specially trained South Korean cloning technicians would travel to these areas and clone human embryos to order, destroy them, and derive cloned embryonic stem cell lines. These would then be sent back to Korea for quality control and proliferation. The resulting tailor-made cells would be sold throughout the world, especially to scientists in countries such as France, Australia, Norway, and Canada (and states such as Michigan and Iowa) that ban all human cloning but do not explicitly prohibit research on cloned embryonic stem cells.

Such an end run around state and national policies is justified, according Gerald Schatten, a biologist at the University of Pittsburgh and a strong supporter of Hwang’s Foundation. He told Okie, “In order to move forward, we scientists need some kind of a safe haven. The ethical and legal implications are important, but the most important thing for us is just to have discoveries that are independently confirmed and extended.” In other words, scientists who want to experiment on cloned embryonic stem cells are entitled to experiment on cloned embryonic stem cells.

THIS BRINGS TO MIND Stanford University ethicist William B. Hurlbut’s warning against the “outsourcing of ethics.” After all, how is Hwang’s proposal any different in principle than if organ transplant surgeons formed a foundation to procure organs in “safe havens” allowing them to circumvent laws requiring that vital organ donors be dead? Or, if vaccine researchers sought “safe havens” to perform unethical research on primates in order to accelerate the time when their experiments could be conducted in human trials?

The presumption of some therapeutic cloning supporters that their mores dictate is in stark contrast to the scientists and ethicists on both sides of the cloning controversy who are earnestly seeking ways to gain the presumed scientific benefits of tailor-made stem cells—without also treating nascent human life like a harvestable crop. The best known of these proposals is Altered Nuclear Transfer (ANT), which seeks to bioengineer a tissue mass that generates stem cells—without creating and destroying a human embryo.

Hurlbut, a member of the President’s Council on Bioethics, has been the driving intellectual force behind ANT. He told me, “The future of science and the unity of society require that we affirm biotechnological research as playing an essential role in our national identity as a noble and progressive society, while also honoring the unique moral value and potential of all human life.” ANT, he hopes, “will be a genuine solution to the current impasse” between naked science and societal ethics.

This “compromise” may actually be within reach. As reported in the current edition of Nature, scientists achieved encouraging results in early mouse experiments using one (of many) proposed ANT techniques, although further research is required to validate ANT’s ethical and scientific merits before human attempts can begin.

The irony of Hwang’s plan is that rather than seeking to heal the growing rifts over biotechnology—as supporters of ANT are—it would further exacerbate them. Ironically, this could spark a fierce backlash leading to increased regulatory controls over biotechnology. Such laws, in turn, could trigger cultural Armageddon; a lawsuit filed by university research centers and biotechnology companies seeking a constitutional right under the First Amendment to do scientific research.

If such a “right to research” were to be declared by the Supreme Court, it would destroy society’s ability to place any meaningful moral checks and balances over scientific experimentation, leading to our domination by science. And if the suit were lost, some legislatures might be tempted to exercise too heavy a hand. At the very least, scientists would feel more alienated and unappreciated than they apparently do now.

Scientists and bioethicists often complain that society is becoming anti-science. But perhaps the real problem is that many biotechnology boosters increasingly act as if popular beliefs about the wrongness of human cloning are irrelevant, indeed, that only the views of the privileged caste of scientists should count. Defiant proposals such as the World Stem Cell Foundation only add to this perception.

Wesley J. Smith is a senior fellow for the Discovery Institute and a special consultant to the Center for Bioethics and Culture. His current book is Consumer’s Guide to a Brave New World.

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U.S. Scientist Pulls Out of Stem Cell Research Project over Ethical Concerns (Christian Post, 051115)

A U.S. scientist who had been working on controversial embryonic stem cell research with a world renowned South Korean scientific team said he would end his collaboration with the group, alleging ethical breaches over how eggs for research were obtained and lies to cover them up, according to a report.

University of Pittsburgh researcher Gerald P. Schatten had worked together with South Korean researcher Woo Suk Hwang of Seoul National University in recent years on projects involving cloned human embryos to make what some scientists referred to as major breakthroughs in “therapeutic cloning” to create stem cells that were genetically matched to patients.

The research involved creating and destroying blastocysts, early stage embryos, to harvest stem cells. The stem cells would be used to regenerate tissue that could be used to heal patients. Scientists hope that embryonic stem cell research can be used to find cures for diseases such as Parkinson’s and diabetes as well as to heal damaged spinal cords.

Some pro-life critics of embryonic stem cell research say that because embryos are destroyed to harvest stem cells, the process is tantamount to ending a life. They proposed alternatives such as adult stem cell research, which does not involve embryos.

Researchers on the South Korean team, meanwhile, said that the method employed was different from past research and did not involve generating embryos (blastocysts) because they were not made in the traditional way by fertilizing eggs with sperm cells.

The reason Schatten says he left involves not the research itself, but how the eggs were obtained.

Researchers usually obtain eggs from women in a process that involves some modest health risks and a minor but not risk-free surgical procedure. It also requires their informed consent along with other ethical requirements.

Rumors had circulated that the eggs had been obtained by illegal payments to a junior researcher on the team. Ethical standards, including those from the U.S.-based National Academy of Sciences, preclude payments to egg donors. Other concerns include the possibility that a person in a position of authority over another could, even subtly, coerce the donor.

Schatten told the Washington Post in a Saturday report that Hwang had denied the rumor repeatedly. The U.S researcher said he had believed him until Friday but now has “information that leads me to believe he had misled me.”

“My trust has been shaken. I am sick at heart. I am not going to be able to collaborate with Woo Suk,” he said.

The collaboration involved setting up two major human embryo cloning labs in the United States and Britain, with South Korean scientists providing stem cell colonies for research.

Schatten told the Washington Post that the University of Pittsburgh will announce it will pull out of the project. He said he will also announce technical mistakes in a paper that he and Hwang published together this year. He said the errors were not intentional and were not to be considered scientific misconduct. Additionally, he said that he believed the science behind the paper was sound.

Hwang had not yet commented on the allegation at the time of the report.

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South Korean cloning expert quits top spot (Washington Times, 051125)

SEOUL — South Korean scientist Hwang Woo-sok, hailed as a national hero after a pair of cloning breakthroughs, resigned yesterday from his position as head of an international stem-cell body and apologized for covering up an ethics violation.

“As of today, I am resigning from the chairmanship of the World Stem Cell Hub and all other official responsibilities,” said Dr. Hwang, 52, who in August announced the first cloning of a dog. “This is my way of seeking repentance.”

The state-run organization was established in Seoul last month to serve as a center for providing medical centers around the world with embryonic stem cells.

Dr. Hwang said he would continue research activities.

A professor at South Korea’s top university, Seoul National, Dr. Hwang, a veterinarian by training, extracted stem cells from cloned human embryos in February 2004.

His achievement was lauded internationally, as it raised the prospect that tissues could be taken from patients, then grown to replace diseased or injured tissues. Stem cells are “blank slate” cells that can be “programmed” for a variety of functions.

In August, Dr. Hwang and his team again made headlines when he revealed the world’s first cloned dog. He has since achieved iconic status in South Korea.

The ethical debate centered on charges published in the British journal Nature in May 2004 that two female researchers, junior members of Dr. Hwang’s team, had donated their own eggs for research.

This contravenes the Helsinki Declaration, an international agreement covering the ethics of medical research, which says junior researchers should not use their own bodies or body parts in research. The ruling is based on the fear that subordinates might come under pressure to do so.

Dr. Hwang denied the Nature report at the time and denounced the Korea Bioethics Association when it requested clarification.

The issue was reignited last week when Gerald Schatten, a professor at the University of Pittsburgh and a partner in Dr. Hwang’s research, said he was severing collaborative ties because he suspected that the charges of unethical egg procurement were true. One of Dr. Hwang’s two junior researchers who donated eggs now works with Mr. Schatten.

“I withheld the truth after the journal requested my confirmation on this matter,” Dr. Hwang said at a press conference yesterday.

He added that if he had been truthful at the time, the furor might not have arisen.

Last night, one of Dr. Hwang’s closest associates told journalists that the professor had felt constrained by a sense of loyalty to the researchers.

Yoon Tae-il, an adviser to Dr. Hwang’s team, said that at the time of the Nature report, a journalist from the magazine had called for confirmation or denial.

“Dr. Hwang called the two researchers into his office,” Dr. Yoon said. “When they told him they had donated their eggs, he went through an agonizing inner conflict. He did not disclose it, as the two researchers demanded their right to privacy.”

In the past 10 days, Dr. Hwang has met with the researchers three times, Dr. Yoon said, and they finally agreed to allow him to disclose the facts.

Cloning of human tissues is a sensitive subject. Scientists in the United States face a more restrictive legal and ethical environment than their South Korean colleagues do.

This is not the first time South Korean scientists have ignored ethical considerations to press forward on research.

Last year, scientists at state-run laboratories were found to have engaged in apparently unsanctioned nuclear experiments in 1982 and 2000 without reporting them to international bodies — a contravention of global treaty obligations.

The country faced International Atomic Energy Agency probes, but escaped without penalties. None of the scientists involved was punished.

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Cloning Chaos: Misrepresentations, hype, and outright lies in the name of “science.” (National Review Online, 051213)

T scandal has erupted in South Korea over human-cloning researcher Woo Suk Hwang, bringing into sharp relief some questions about the “therapeutic cloning” agenda that have been ignored for too long.

In February 2004, scientific colleagues hailed Dr. Hwang as the first researcher to prove he had used the “somatic-cell-nuclear-transfer” technique (the same technique used to clone “Dolly” the sheep) to create cloned human embryos. That first effort, starting with 242 human eggs donated by 16 women, produced 30 embryos that survived to the “blastocyst” (one-week old) stage, and yielded just one embryonic-stem-cell line. By May 2005 he had improved the “yield” of the procedure more than tenfold, starting with 185 eggs from 18 women to produce 31 blastocysts and 11 cell lines. In October he even offered to form a “World Stem Cell Hub,” making Seoul the cloning capital of the world: Western researchers could send human body cells to him, and he would use the cells’ genetic material (and yet another supply of eggs donated by Korean women) to clone genetically tailored human embryos. The embryos, or the stem-cell lines derived from them, could then be shipped back to the U.S. and elsewhere for research and, ultimately, attempted cell therapies.

The offer was welcomed by some U.S. researchers in the October 20 New England Journal of Medicine: “Given the access that they apparently have to a very willing set of egg donors,” said George Daley of Harvard, “they may be much more efficient at generating these cells than anybody else.”

All this, and especially that comment about the willing egg donors, blew up in Hwang’s face on November 12. Gerald Schatten, a University of Pittsburgh stem-cell expert who coauthored Hwang’s more recent paper, pulled out of the worldwide coalition, citing disturbing evidence that Hwang’s team had misrepresented how they obtained Korean women’s eggs. Further investigation by news media uncovered the truth, admitted by Hwang himself at a jam-packed press conference on November 24. Although Hwang’s article in Science insisted that “no financial reimbursement in any form,” not even reimbursement of expenses, had been paid to egg donors, in fact the fertility doctor accepting these donations had made cash payments (the equivalent of U.S. $1,430) to each woman; and while Hwang had insisted that no donations were accepted from female members of his research team, the donors did include junior researchers (including at least one graduate student under Hwang’s supervision).

So Hwang’s team lied about these facts, and even encouraged the egg donors to lie, by having them sign consent forms declaring that their egg donations were “free of element of any financial reward or conflict-of-interest.”

It is said that these lapses were not illegal under Korean regulations in force at the time. (A Korean ban on paying egg donors in research went into effect later.) But they raised serious ethical issues in terms of the incentives (direct financial incentives, or implied professional incentives) given to women to encourage them to endanger their own health in the name of research. And as so many politicians have learned, all this was made much worse by the denials and cover-up afterward.

Dr. Hwang has apologized for not paying closer attention to these issues and has resigned as director of the proposed Worldwide Stem Cell Hub; but he will undoubtedly continue his research. He is also receiving a great deal of public support in his home country, where he continues to be seen as a national hero.

In reality, however, this scandal is only the tip of the iceberg. The South Korean experiments, indeed the research cloning agenda in general, have long ignored legitimate concerns about women’s rights and have long been promoted by ignoring or subverting the facts.

First of all, concerns about the Koreans’ consent process are not new. When the latest study appeared in the online version of the U.S. journal Science in May, ethicists here and in Korea were alarmed that the consent form for egg donors failed to specify the nature of the medical risks these women faced. In an ethical commentary published by Science alongside Hwang’s article, David Magnus and Mildred Cho of Stanford University (who generally support embryonic-stem-cell research) observed: “Between 0.3 and 5% or up to 10% of women who undergo ovarian stimulation to procure oocytes experience severe ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome, which can cause pain, and occasionally leads to hospitalization, renal failure, potential future infertility, and even death.” Since women donating eggs for such research “are exposing themselves to risk entirely for the benefit of others,” they said, the women’s own physicians would have a “fiduciary obligation” to urge them not to participate. In Korea itself, University of Ulsan ethicist Koo Young-mo said in the May 20 Korea Times: “If some of the donors suffer from ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome and they bring Hwang to court with the dubious consent form, Hwang may be in trouble.”

These public criticisms came before the new revelations that the consent process was falsified outright and then misrepresented to the world. They didn’t stop U.S. researchers in October from welcoming the prospect of working with Dr. Hwang and his “very willing set of egg donors.”

There’s No Therapy

Magnus and Cho also raised another concern, one which indicts the way the cloning debate has been conducted and reported here and in Korea. Noting “the large gap between research and therapy,” they insisted that researchers must take every opportunity to tell potential egg donors “that it is extremely unlikely that their contributions will directly benefit themselves or their loved ones...[I]t is nearly certain that the clinical benefits of the research are years or maybe decades away. This is a message that desperate families and patients will not want to hear.” They added that researchers must not misrepresent human cloning to provide stem cells as a form of therapy, and specifically must not refer to it as “therapeutic cloning.” To do so would mislead impressionable women into donating eggs and undergoing research risks on false pretenses, since “there is currently no such thing as ‘therapeutic cloning’” and may not be for many years.

But of course Hwang and his associates, his American allies, and the mainstream Western media all routinely refer to human cloning for research purposes as “therapeutic cloning,” and blithely suggest that “lifesaving cures” are around the corner if only we will accept and support this project. In Korea, that constant public drumbeat of hucksterism and hype is what made Hwang a national hero and led thousands of women (many of them with seriously ill relatives) to declare a willingness to give him their eggs for cloning. To take just one example, the Korea Times reported on November 4 that Hwang had briefly halted his research because of ethical criticisms, but then resumed it saying that “he can no longer turn a deaf ear to the calls of tens of millions of people who are suffering from degenerative diseases.” The Australasian bioethics news service BioEdge reported on Hwang’s May 2005 study with the headline: “Korean team proves that therapeutic cloning is possible” (which of course is false, since the Korean team has only destroyed cloned embryos and grown the resulting cells in a lab).

American politics has its share of flexible truth standards. But when the issue is stem-cell research, the standards are especially lax. We recall claims during Ronald Reagan’s last days that patients with Alzheimer’s and other diseases may soon have their own little repair kits of embryonic stem cells — a contention rebutted by top researchers who said embryonic stem cells are probably of no use in treating Alzheimer’s. Then there was Senator John Edwards’s claim during the 2004 campaign that if John Kerry were elected president, “people like Christopher Reeve are going to…get up out of that wheelchair and walk again” — a claim rebutted by Reeve himself, who in his last printed interview (in the October 2004 Reader’s Digest) admitted that embryonic stem cells are “not able to do much” about chronic injuries like his own. A year ago, California taxpayers were persuaded to put themselves $6 billion in debt through a slick media campaign promising imminent cures for deadly diseases — only to find later, as the San Francisco Chronicle reported September 30, that such cures are “nowhere close, maybe decades away.” Undeterred, the biotech industry is now bankrolling a campaign to make human cloning into a constitutionally guaranteed right of Missouri researchers, led by (of course) the “Missouri Coalition for Lifesaving Cures.”

It’s one thing when it’s coming from reporters, pundits, and politicians. But it also comes from ethicists, scientists, and journal editors who supposedly value factual accuracy above all else.

An especially ludicrous example surfaced in the Albany Times-Union on November 20. Bioethicists Arthur Caplan and Glenn McGee argued that Hwang’s scandal should encourage the U.S. government to subsidize human-cloning research here, to “guarantee oversight” and prevent such ethical lapses. Apparently unwittingly, they proceeded to commit those lapses in their own article, among other things referring to the research as “therapeutic cloning.”

To emphasize the “therapeutic” value of Hwang’s work, Caplan and McGee even reported that “last April he held a news conference at which a stem cell research subject walked after having been bedridden for 19 years.” In fact that woman was treated by other researchers, not by Hwang, using umbilical cord-blood stem cells, an alternative supported by pro-life groups that oppose research cloning. The Times-Union had to print a correction. Maybe Caplan and McGee were confused by the fact that the female patient’s name happened to be Hwang? But how could they be unaware that embryonic stem cells, whether from cloning or not, have never been used to treat a human patient?

It gets worse. Self-promoting ethicists writing op-eds for the daily paper are one thing — what about publishing such bait-and-switch falsehoods in the nation’s most prestigious peer-reviewed medical journal?

On July 7, The New England Journal of Medicine reported on “progress in human somatic-cell nuclear transfer,” including a review of Hwang’s new paper. The article, by Anthony Perry, engaged in the usual evasions about the cloning process, refusing to call it “cloning” and refusing to call the product of the procedure an “embryo” — instead using the circumlocution “nuclear-transfer construct” (then switching to “embryonic” to describe the stem cells obtained by, um, deconstructing the, uh, construct). But the punchline of the article was Perry’s claim that two other recent studies (published in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and Nature Biotechnology) had used these “human nuclear-transfer embryonic stem cells” to produce neuronal cells, which integrated with nerve tissue after being transplanted into animals.

The problem is, these two journal articles were not about “nuclear-transfer” (i.e., cloned) embryonic stem cells at all. They used stem cells derived from fertilized embryos in Wisconsin and Singapore. In fact, both studies were funded in part by the National Institutes of Health, because they used cell lines created before August 9, 2001, in Wisconsin and that are eligible for funding under President Bush’s policy. Like Caplan and McGee, Perry had misrepresented evidence for the “therapeutic” promise of cloning.

“Embarrassing”

How could such an egregious error have survived the editing process at NEJM? Part of the answer may lie in the journal’s own tendentious editorial of July 17, 2003, which denounced Congress’s effort to ban human cloning and declared a change in editorial policy: In future, NEJM’s editors would be “seeking out” manuscripts on embryonic stem cells to highlight their promise — presumably meaning that such articles would get extra attention, beyond the attention due them under the previous standard of sheer scientific merit. “We want to be sure that legislative myopia does not blur scientific insight,” the editors declared. Later NEJM articles demanded reversal of President Bush’s policy of funding research only on existing embryonic-stem-cell lines, claiming that these lines are “inferior” to newer lines and useless for many applications.

How convenient that when new studies appear showing a use for those eligible lines, a NEJM article could avoid acknowledging this (and advance the journal’s pro-cloning agenda) by describing the research as using stem cells from cloning instead!

To be sure, several journal articles have now been published claiming “therapeutic” benefits in animals from stem cells derived from animal cloning. What these articles sometimes cover up is the fact that these are not embryonic stem cells, but fetal stem cells obtained by growing the cloned animal embryos in wombs and then aborting them at later fetal stages. Such “fetus farming” apparently proved necessary because cloned embryos can have chaotic patterns of gene expression when first created, requiring further development to allow these problems to resolve themselves. But when Robert Lanza of Advanced Cell Technology published a report of such “therapeutic” cloning in mice in February 2004, his news release announced it as “myocardial regeneration obtained with stem cells from cloned embryos” (emphasis added). Only the “materials and methods” data supplement to his online article reveals that the cells actually came from late-term fetuses grown in a surrogate womb for their cells. Lanza has promoted this grotesquerie as “an important new paradigm” for human treatments, while being coy about the fact that such treatments would require exploiting women for their wombs as well as their eggs, and deliberately growing cloned human embryos into the fetal stage to dissect them for their developed tissues.

In fact there is, as yet, no published evidence of “therapeutic” benefit even in animals from stem cells derived from cloned embryos. But when Congressman Dave Weldon (R., Fla.), prime sponsor of the federal cloning ban, noted this during the House’s 2003 debate on the bill, his comment was publicly attacked as “embarrassing,” “asinine” and “Luddite” by Lanza himself and Nobel laureate Paul Berg. On further examination, it turned out these pro-cloning researchers were using the now-well-established “bait and switch” technique: Every study they cited to rebut Dr. Weldon either didn’t involve cloning, or didn’t involve embryonic stem cells at all.

The Korean “egg scandal” has made international headlines. Largely unreported is the fact that the entire propaganda campaign for research cloning has been filled with misrepresentations, hype, and outright lies.

In their op-ed, Caplan and McGee worry that the Hwang scandal may lead people to ask “whether or not [embryonic] stem cell researchers are a rogue lot, not to be trusted.” It would be about time.

— Richard Doerflinger is deputy director of pro-life activities at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.)

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University Fires S. Korean Cloning Scientist (Foxnews, 051223)

SEOUL, South Korea — South Korean researcher Hwang Woo-suk resigned from his position as a university professor on Friday after his school said he had damaged the scientific community by fabricating the results of at least nine of 11 stem-cell lines he claimed to have created.

“I sincerely apologize to the people for creating a shock and disappointment,” Hwang told reporters as he was leaving his office at the university. “With an apologetic heart ... I step down as professor of Seoul National University.”

Earlier on Friday, a university panel of investigators said Hwang’s fabrication was a deliberate deception that has undermined the credibility of science.

The university’s announcement of results so far in its investigation into Hwang’s work were the first confirmation of allegations that have cast a shadow over all of his purported breakthroughs in cloning and stem-cell technology.

“This kind of error is a grave act that damages the foundation of science,” the panel said.

The South Korean government, which had strongly supported Hwang and designated him the country’s first “top scientist,” said Friday it was “miserable” over the reported results of the investigation and will start its own probe over ethics breaches.

Choi Seong-sik, vice minister of science and technology, said it is impossible to recover money already spent for Hwang, a total $39.9 million for research and facilities since 1998. But his ministry, which admitted errors in its handling of Hwang’s projects, will look at ending other funding and withdrawing the “top scientist” designation.

In a May paper published in the journal “Science,” Hwang claimed to have created 11 stem-cell lines matched to patients in an achievement that raised hopes of creating tailored therapies for hard-to-treat diseases. But one of his former collaborators last week said nine of the 11 cell lines were faked, prompting reviews by the journal and an expert panel at Seoul National University, where Hwang works as a professor.

The panel said Friday it found that “the laboratory data for 11 stem cell lines that were reported in the 2005 paper were all data made using two stem cell lines in total.”

To create fake DNA results purporting to show a match, Hwang’s team split cells from one patient into two test tubes for the analysis — rather than actually match cloned cells to a patient’s original cells, the university said.

“Based on these facts, the data in the 2005 Science paper cannot be some error from a simple mistake, but cannot be but seen as a deliberate fabrication to make it look like 11 stem-cell lines using results from just two,” the panel said.

“There is no way but that Professor Hwang has been involved,” the university’s dean of research affairs, Roe Jung-hye, told a news conference. He said Hwang “somewhat admits to this.”

However, Hwang maintained on Friday that he had still created the technology to create patient-matched stem cells as he had claimed in the May article in Science.

“I emphasize that patient-specific stem cells belong to South Korea and you are going to see this,” Hwang said.

The investigating panel said DNA tests expected to be completed within a few days would confirm if the remaining two stem-cell lines it had found were actually successfully cloned from a patient.

In light of the revelations, the panel said it would now also investigate Hwang’s other landmark papers — which include another Science article in 2004 on the world’s first cloned human embryos, and an August 2005 paper in the journal Nature on the first-ever cloned dog. The journals already are reviewing all the work.

However, he admitted last week to “fatal errors” in the May report and asked Science to withdraw the paper. He acknowledged that at the time of publication, his team had created only eight cell lines. But he said three more were created later.

Professor Alan Trounson, a top stem-cell researcher at Australia’s Monash University, said the scandal showed scientists were rigorously checking each other’s results. But he predicted the fallout would also stain any other scientists linked to Hwang’s work. He also said the South Korean’s claim to have cloned a dog was “very much in doubt now.”

“I think a lot of the community were very impressed with the cloning of a dog — and it was a delightful dog — but I actually don’t think it is a cloned dog now,” Trounson told The Associated Press in a telephone interview.

The panel said Friday that it found was no records of two of the other stem-cell lines Hwang claims to have created. Four others died from contamination, and another three were in the nurturing stage and hadn’t yet become full stem-cell lines.

Hwang’s article this year had also been viewed as significant for his efficiency in cloning the stem-cell lines, claiming to use just 185 human eggs to create custom-made embryonic stem cells for the 11 patients.

But Roe said the investigation had “found that there have been a lot more eggs used than were reported” and were investigating the exact number.

The university had said it was waiting to take action against Hwang until its investigation is complete, but Roe said: “It’s hard for Professor Hwang to escape grave responsibility.”

The government had stood by Hwang, a veterinarian, when he admitted last month to ethics violations for using eggs from female workers in his lab in research. On Friday, it said it would still support similar research despite the Hwang revelations.

“Despite the recent scandal, the government will continue supporting biotechnology research, including stem cells, so that hopes for stem-cell research by patients with incurable diseases and their families and the public are not in vain,” the Ministry of Science and Technology said.

Hwang had last month resigned as head of the World Stem Cell Hub — an international project founded in October that had planned to open centers in Britain and the United States — after admitting he used eggs from female workers at his lab in violation of ethics guidelines. Sung Sang-cheol, head of Seoul National University Hospital where the hub is located, said Friday the center would continue working but might be reorganized or renamed.

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Another Cloning “Breakthrough”: The world’s first phony stem cells (Weekly Standard, 060102)

In February 2004, Woo-Suk Hwang made world headlines when he claimed to have cloned human embryos using a technique called somatic cell nuclear transfer, and then to have derived a line of stem cells from the embryos that could be used for medical research. Enthusiasm for this first “successful” experiment in human cloning, published in the prestigious peer-reviewed journal Science, was tempered by the inefficiency of the process: It took 242 human eggs to get just one embryonic stem cell line.

That problem seemed solved when, last May, Hwang published another article in Science asserting that he had again successfully cloned human embryos, this time deriving 11 stem cell lines and, moreover, reporting an astounding 10-fold increase in egg-use efficiency. Cloning proponents were giddy, declaring that the age of therapeutic cloning was nigh. Soon, they predicted, sick patients would be able to clone embryos made of their own tissue, from which, in turn, genetically matched stem cells could be derived for use in regenerative medical treatments.

Hwang’s paper was greeted joyously by cloning advocates and their media allies in the United States for another reason: The research had been done in South Korea. Hwang’s “breakthrough” therefore proved that the United States was “falling behind” in stem cell research. Hence, they argued, President Bush’s policy limiting federal funding of embryonic stem cell research to lines created before August 9, 2001, must be overturned to permit American research to flourish.

Meanwhile, Hwang was lauded internationally as a genius and embraced by his countrymen as a national hero. The South Korean government created a postage stamp in his honor, depicting a figure leaping out of a wheelchair. (Never mind that such therapeutic benefits remained hypothetical; never mind that an unjustly neglected South Korean colleague had already restored partial mobility and feeling to a paralyzed woman using umbilical cord blood stem cells that require no cloning and no sacrificed embryos.) Hwang looked like a Nobel laureate in waiting.

Then the roof caved in. In mid-November, Hwang’s American research partner, Gerald Schatten of the University of Pittsburgh, severed ties with him, complaining that the South Korean had purchased the human eggs used in his experiments—in violation of ethical canons requiring that they be donated—and lied about it. Then came word that some of the photographs depicting the stem cell lines that had accompanied Hwang’s 2005 paper were duplicates, not originals. But this didn’t seem too serious. Science claimed it was a production error.

Shortly after that, however, came rumors, followed by open accusations, that Hwang had committed research fraud. A junior researcher said that rather than Science being to blame for publishing the wrong photos, Hwang had actually forced him to submit duplicates to make it appear that his experiments had succeeded beyond their actual merit. Another of Hwang’s colleagues claimed that the second experiment had required hundreds more eggs than reported. If true, it would mean that the egg efficiency problem with human therapeutic cloning remains unsolved.

But this was all a prelude to the real drama: On December 15, Roh Sung Il, one of Hwang’s 2005 Science coauthors, charged that 9 of their 11 stem cell lines were faked, and that the remaining two lines might not exist at all. South Korean scientists, academics, and media clamored for independent verification of all of Hwang’s work. At first, Hwang’s lab stonewalled. Then Hwang held a press conference, and matters became even more confused.

His responses were chaotic, his story continually evolving. He denied faking the research. But he also acknowledged that only three of the embryonic stem cell lines had passed a necessary test to prove their viability. Then, sounding like Captain Queeg, he claimed that he was the victim of a nefarious plot in which someone, somehow, had switched his cloned stem cell lines with embryonic stem cells derived from in vitro fertilization embryos. Finally, he asserted some of the stem cell lines had been destroyed by fungi, but that he was thawing five frozen samples to prove he had actually created cloned embryos and derived stem cells from them.

Last Friday, however, all pretense of innocence was dropped, when an investigatory panel from Hwang’s university declared that at least 9 of the 11 stem cell lines were faked. (The other two are still under investigation.) The ruse apparently involved splitting an original cell sample into different test tubes and then claiming one cell line was from the patient and one from a clone. In this way, Hwang somehow convinced one of the world’s most prestigious journals—and through it, the world—that he was a historic figure in science. Hwang resigned his university post in disgrace.

Hwang’s implosion leaves the field of human cloning research in a state of meltdown. Their poster boy is at best a liar, at worst a fraud and a charlatan who never created human clones at all.

This debacle raises several interesting questions: What does it tell us about the thoroughness of the peer review process? Why were younger South Korean scientists able to discover Hwang’s missteps when the presumably more seasoned peer reviewers for Science failed? Will the American media take a cue from their courageous counterparts in South Korea, who pursued this story until it cracked, and finally bring skepticism to their coverage of biotechnology? More to the point, will the adult/umbilical cord blood stem cell successes that have emerged one after the other in recent years finally receive the attention they deserve in the mainstream press, which has been so intoxicated with embryonic research as virtually to ignore nonembryonic breakthroughs?

Don’t count on it. The pro-cloning political forces, and their media allies, recognize the potential of the Hwang fiasco to damage their cause, so they have quickly regrouped and begun to furiously spin the story. The same voices that not long ago railed against President Bush’s stem cell funding policies for supposedly allowing America to fall behind the cutting-edge research in South Korea, now indignantly blame Bush for creating a hyper-competitive atmosphere that led to Hwang’s failures. “Ethics can get forgotten as other nations and private companies race to fill the void left by the president’s reluctance to fund stem cell research,” wrote bioethicists Arthur Caplan and Glenn McGee in the Albany Times Union. “Only a properly funded U.S. stem cell research program will guarantee oversight and the protection of all involved.”

That might possibly be true if scientific fraud were the only ethical problem associated with the human cloning agenda. But it isn’t. Indeed, the bioethicists should ponder how science’s core values of integrity and objectivity are being corroded by the passionate political pursuit of a legal license to clone.

For years, human cloning has been promoted through propaganda techniques of misrepresentation, exaggeration, and false hope for the suffering. Take the profoundly deceptive $35 million political campaign that last year convinced California voters to pass Proposition 71, authorizing the state to borrow $3 billion to subsidize research into somatic cell nuclear transfer cloning and embryonic stem cells. In order to induce wary voters to endorse billions more in debt despite the red ink flowing catastrophically out of California’s coffers, proponents promised that the state would one day garner a bounteous return from royalty and tax payments, perhaps eventually recouping all the money borrowed to fund the initial research. (Voters should have asked themselves why, if this were true, the state’s numerous venture capitalists hadn’t been clever enough to fork over the $3 billion.)

Thus Robert Klein, the driving force behind the initiative and now head of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, assured voters that universities and private firms receiving grants would share $1 billion or more in royalties with the state. But, as reported by the San Francisco Chronicle and elsewhere after the election, it now appears that little, if any, royalty money will ever be returned to the state. “What Klein knew before the election was that such royalty-sharing by the state might be hampered by federal regulations, according to an attorney who helped Klein draft the initiative,” the Chronicle reported. “Yet he didn’t tell voters.”

That wasn’t all. When opponents of Proposition 71 asserted in the official ballot arguments that the initiative would subsidize human cloning, the pro-71 campaign sued to prevent the argument from being mentioned in the state’s voter election guide—even though the initiative explicitly created a state constitutional right to conduct human somatic cell nuclear transfer, the scientific name for a human cloning technique. (The judge saw right through the ruse, and ruled that human cloning was at the heart of the initiative.)

Then there is the ongoing hype about the medical potential of cloning, which reached cruel heights in the wake of President Reagan’s death from Alzheimer’s disease. Using the widespread public mourning for Reagan as a backdrop, human cloning advocates argued that Alzheimer’s could be cured if only the impediments to federally funded embryonic stem cell research were pushed out of the way.

In fact, though, Alzheimer’s disease is extremely unlikely to be effectively treated with stem cells, whether cloned or natural. As Washington Post science reporter Rick Weiss allowed in a June 10, 2004, article, “the infrequently voiced reality, stem cell experts confess, is that, of all the diseases that may someday be cured by embryonic stem cell treatments, Alzheimer’s is among the least likely to benefit.” This is because Alzheimer’s is a whole brain disease that “involves the loss of huge numbers and varieties of the brain’s 100 billion nerve cells—and countless connections, or synapses, among them.”

If stem cells have little “practical potential to treat Alzheimer’s,” why do proponents of cloned-embryo research continue to invoke a cure for Alzheimer’s in their sales pitches? Weiss quoted Ronald D.G. McKay, a stem cell researcher at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke: “To start with, people need a fairy tale. Maybe that’s unfair, but they need a story line that’s relatively simple to understand.”

So where are we in the cloning debate? At this point, we don’t know whether human cloning has been successfully accomplished or not. We don’t know whether embryonic stem cells have been derived from cloned embryos. We don’t know to what depths the dishonesty of the seemingly most successful researcher in the field actually descended.

We do know that cloning proponents in this country are avid in their desire for billions in federal and state money to pay for morally problematic and highly speculative research that the private sector generally shuns. And we do know that some advocates of this public policy agenda are more than willing to play fast and loose with the facts in order to get their way. In short, the human cloning agenda is falling into public disrepute—and for that, proponents of the agenda have no one to blame but themselves.

Wesley J. Smith is a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute and a special consultant to the Center for Bioethics and Culture. His most recent book is the Consumer’s Guide to a Brave New World.

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South Korean University Says 2004 Cloned Stem Cell Claim Was Faked (Foxnews, 060110)

SEOUL, South Korea — The now-disgraced South Korean researcher who stunned the scientific community with his claim to have cloned human embryonic stem cells faked his results, relying on “fabricated data,” his university said Tuesday.

Hwang Woo-suk’s research team “did not have any proof to show that cloned embryonic stem cells were ever created,” an investigating panel at Seoul National University said in a report, disputing claims in Hwang’s 2004 paper in the journal Science purporting that he cloned a human embryo and extracted stem cells from it.

The panel found that Hwang’s claims last year to have created the world’s first cloned dog, however, were genuine.

The embryonic stem cell claim had raised hopes that treatments could be created for afflictions such as Alzheimer’s and paralysis.

“The 2004 paper was written on fabricated data to show that the stem cells match the DNA of the provider although they didn’t,” the report said.

Hwang’s reputation as a cloning pioneer has eroded steadily in recent months with increasing questions about his work.

Last month, a devastating report by the university concluded that Hwang fabricated another article published in Science last year. The university’s nine-member investigative panel said it could not find any of the 11 stem cell lines matched to patients, as Hwang had reported in that research.

The university made the announcements Tuesday as it released the final results into its investigation of Hwang’s cloning research.

Hwang, who said he would resign from the university after last month’s report, has yet to do so. The university condemned the fabrications and suggested it would issue a punishment.

“This conduct cannot but be seen as an act that fools the whole scientific community and the public,” it said. “Just based on the facts of the fabrications that have been disclosed, the penalty has to be severe.”

South Korean prosecutors also are preparing their own investigation, which would include Hwang’s allegation that other researchers in his lab maliciously switched some of his stem cells.

South Korean media have said Hwang, who received massive government funding for his research, may also face charges of misappropriation of funds.

Hwang has claimed that he has the technology to clone stem cells, and that he could reproduce his experiments.

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Human-Embryo Liberation: A reply to Peter Singer (National Review Online, 060125)

In a pair of highly publicized articles, the South Korean scientist Hwang Woo-Suk claimed to have produced human embryos by cloning and to have generated from them several viable stem-cell lines. Hwang’s work was heralded by supporters of embryonic-stem-cell research as a great step toward the goal of using embryonic stem cells to treat diseases and afflictions. What had them excited was Hwang’s claim to have produced stem cells that match the DNA of the somatic cell’s donor, thus defeating (or substantially diminishing) the number-one problem faced in transplant procedures, namely, the rejection by the body’s immune system of genetically foreign tissues or organs.

Right before Christmas, however, The Seoul National University panel released the first part of its report on the veracity of Dr. Hwang’s research, and concluded that his results were “intentionally fabricated.” (See the report here.) This was the most recent in a series of scandals involving Dr. Hwang that have put advocates of so-called “therapeutic” cloning on the defensive. Some are fighting back, however, not by defending Dr. Hwang, but by saying that his fraudulent and admittedly unethical actions are simply irrelevant to the question at the heart of the debate: Is it ethically legitimate to produce human embryos, by cloning or other processes, for the purpose of biomedical research in which they are deliberately destroyed?

In the vanguard is Professor Peter Singer, who has gone a step further. Noting that “few researchers doubt that what Hwang claimed to do is in principle achievable,” Singer asserts that the basic pro-life argument against killing embryos is decisively undermined by the prospect of someone actually accomplishing what Hwang and his team (fraudulently) claimed to achieve (see the Australian, December 23). The crucial premise of the pro-life argument is that human embryos are distinct and unique human beings in the earliest stage of their development and, as such, possess inherent dignity. According to Singer, “it is precisely this reasoning that is threatened by what Hwang and his team claim to have achieved.”

Embryonic Essentials

For now, let us set aside the fraudulence of Hwang’s claim, for it may well be true that some scientists in the future will actually clone human beings. However, the idea that the possibility of human cloning casts doubt on the central argument against embryo killing is groundless. Echoing an argument advanced previously by Oxford philosopher Julian Savelescu and Reason magazine writer Ronald Bailey among others, Singer contends that “[p]roving the possibility of cloning from the nucleus of an ordinary human cell would transform the debate about the value of potential human life, for we would find that potential human life was all around us, in every cell of our bodies.” This argument is doubly confused.

First, the debate is not about “potential human life” — a dubious and quite possibly incoherent notion that we and other opponents of embryo-killing reject. We contend that as a matter of basic biological fact human embryos are actual human beings in the earliest stages of their natural development. Human embryos (or fetuses, or infants) do not differ in kind from mature human beings (as carrots or alligators differ from humans); rather the difference between human embryos (fetuses, infants) and adults is a difference merely in stage or degree of development of precisely the same kind of being.

Unlike gametes (the sperm and eggs whose union might produce a new human being), and unlike somatic cells that might be used in cloning, human embryos have within themselves not only all [of] the organizational information needed but also the active disposition to use that information to develop themselves to the stage of a mature human being. If provided a suitable environment and nutrition, and barring accident, disease, or intentional violence done to them, these nascent human beings will grow by an integrated, self-directed process, through the fetal, infant, toddler, child, and adolescent stages of human maturation, and into adulthood, with their identity and distinctness intact. Thus, each one is now the same human individual, the same substantial entity, that may later crawl, then walk, then talk, then reason, make choices, and perform the actions characteristic of mature human beings.

It is wrong to kill an adult, not because he or she has achieved a certain degree of development, but because of what (i.e., the kind of entity) he or she is, namely, a human being. (That is an implication of the moral fact that human beings possess inherent dignity as entities with a rational nature — we provide support for this proposition below, the last three paragraphs). So, the human being possesses dignity and a right to life from the time he or she comes to be; and he or she comes to be either at fertilization, in the case of sexual reproduction, or with the successful completion of the process of somatic cell nuclear transfer, in the case of cloning. (Again, we are assuming for the sake of argument that the production of a human embryo by cloning will eventually prove to be technically possible. Perhaps we should here register our opinion that the production of human beings by cloning, whether to be destroyed in the embryonic stage for scientific research or implanted in the uterus of a woman or in an artificial womb and brought to birth, would be morally wrong.)

The second confusion in Singer’s argument is that it rests on a false analogy between human embryos and somatic cells. Singer contends that the pro-life case rests on the argument that human embryos have a right to life because they have the potential to become mature human beings. He claims that the argument is falsified by the possibility of human cloning, which shows that any ordinary body cell, such as a skin cell or a muscle cell, also has such a potentiality — it only needs to be placed in the right environment, an enucleated ovum, to begin growth toward maturity. Singer’s argument fails, however, because the “potentiality” in a somatic cell (due to the possibility of cloning) is radically different from the active disposition in a human embryo to develop itself toward the mature stage of what he or she (sex is determined from the beginning) already is — a human being. If one thinks of cloning as analogous to sexual reproduction, somatic cells that may be used in the process are analogous not to embryos, but to the gametes which, when united, cease to exist but whose constituents enter into the creation of a new and distinct human being. Human cloning, if successful, would produce just what is produced by the union of sperm and egg, namely, a complete human organism — a human being — in his or her initial (embryonic) developmental stage.

Fusing the nucleus of a somatic cell to an enucleated ovum (ordinarily achieved with the aid of an electrical stimulus) does more than merely place an entity in an environment suitable for its self-development. Because successful cloning generates an entirely new and distinct substantial entity (indeed, it generates an embryonic human being), it is simply false to say that a somatic cell has the potential to become a mature whole human being. In the cloning process, the somatic cell (or its nucleus), which is part of a larger organism, ceases to be, and its constituents enter into the make-up of a new and distinct organism, a new member of the species that is cloned (e.g., sheep, mouse, or human, if that should occur). By contrast, when the embryo grows, it continues to be, and simply matures. You and I once were human embryos, just as you and I once were adolescents, children, toddlers, infants, and fetuses. But a cloned animal organism, such as Dolly the sheep, never was a somatic cell, and so too a cloned human being would not come to be until the cloning process was successfully completed. Thus, a human embryo does, but a somatic cell does not, have the potentiality — in the sense of active disposition and intrinsic power — to grow (indeed, to self-develop) toward the mature stage of a human being.

Moreover, each human embryo is a distinct, whole (though obviously immature) human being. But each somatic cell is only a part of a larger whole, only a part of a human being. Should some scientists actually succeed in cloning human beings, this will show only that parts of cells (the nucleus of a somatic cell and the enucleated ovum) can be joined to each other in a way that produces a distinct, whole human being. The human embryo is a whole human being; the somatic cell is only a part of a human being. So Singer’s argument by analogy collapses.

Singer quotes President Bush, who said: “Like a snowflake, each of these embryos is unique, with the unique genetic potential of an individual human being.” Singer then replies that, “If it is the uniqueness of human embryos that makes it wrong to destroy them, then there is no compelling reason not to take one cell from an embryo and destroy the remainder of it to obtain stem cells, for the embryo’s unique genetic potential would be preserved.” But the president’s argument was not that what makes a human embryo (or any human being) valuable is its uniqueness or its unique genetic code (nor does anyone we know argue that). After all, every numerically distinct entity, such as each grain of sand, or each singular newspaper, is unique, that is, distinct from every other entity; and the genetic code by itself is preserved in the cells in a corpse.

What President Bush said was that each embryo has “the unique genetic potential of a human being” (emphasis added) — and that is why he or she is not an ethically appropriate subject for experimentation and dismemberment (including dismemberment into constituent cells or genetic materials) for the sake of others. Uniqueness by itself is not, of course, the basis of intrinsic value as a subject of rights. Rather, uniqueness can enter the argument in two ways. First, the human embryo’s genetic uniqueness shows that the embryo is not part of a larger organism. Even clones and monozygotic twins are epigenetically distinct, that is, in each the methylation of the genes, that is, the order of gene expression, is distinct. Second, each human being is uniquely valuable, in the sense that each is ethically irreplaceable: because a person is not merely good as a means to other ends, but is intrinsically good as a subject of rights, i.e., valuable for his or her own sake. A person is not like a newspaper or a candy bar, he or she cannot be replaced by another just like it without loss of value.

Finally, near the end of his article, Singer says that if arguments from potential fail then the argument against killing embryos “must be based on the nature of those entities themselves: that they are actual human beings who already possess the characteristics that make killing wrong.” However, he then claims that since embryos and fetuses have yet to develop any kind of consciousness, killing them “is much less serious than killing a normal human being.”

Singer voices here perhaps the most popular argument in favor of embryo-destructive research and abortion. Few who accept this argument have followed it to its logical conclusion, however, as Singer has: If self-awareness is the ground of general immunity of being killed right not to be killed, not only abortion but also infanticide, and the killing of many helpless adults, are morally legitimate (see Singer’s popular textbook, Practical Ethics, Chapters 2 and 4). In fact that conclusion is inescapable once one accepts Singer’s premise. But one has decisive reasons to reject that premise as fatally flawed. It is true that an embryo or fetus (or infant) lacks the immediately exercisable capacity for self-awareness, rationality, or free choice. Yet, the embryo or fetus does have the basic, natural capacity for such actions as consequent to its nature, that is, as entailed by the kind of entity it is. The embryo or fetus, precisely in virtue of the kind of entity he or she is, has the capacity to develop himself or herself to the point where he will perform such actions. And no one has been able to give an intelligible reason why we should base full moral rights on immediately exercisable capacities — which can come and go — rather than on the basic, natural capacities that a human being at any stage of development has in virtue of the kind of entity it is. (Of course, the full development of these capacities can be impeded from an early stage, as in the case of persons afflicted by certain severe congenital forms of retardation or impeded later in life by senility or other forms of dementia, none of which transforms human beings into subhuman creatures

Moreover, a person in a coma (even if it may prove to be reversible) also lacks the immediately exercisable capacities for such actions, but he surely has a right to life. This suggests that it is not the immediately exercisable capacities that count, but the nature of the entity that is important. It is wrong to kill a person in a coma because he is a being with a rational nature — that is, he is a substantial entity that is internally oriented to reasoning and shaping his own life by rational deliberation and choice. But this is true also of the human embryo or fetus.

Some entities have intrinsic value and basic rights and other entities do not. Such a radical moral difference logically must be based on a radical ontological difference (that is, a radical difference among those entities themselves). And so the basis for that moral difference (a difference in the way they should be treated) must be the natures of those entities, not their accidental characteristics which involve merely quantitative differences, or differences in degree. (By “accidental” qualities, we mean those attributes that do not help to define the nature of an entity. In humans, age, size, stage of development, state of health, and so forth are accidental qualities.) The immediately exercisable capacity to reason and make free choices is only the development of the underlying basic, natural capacity for reasoning and free choice, and there are various degrees of that development along a continuum. But one either is or is not a distinct subject with a rational nature (the traditional definition of “person”). So, Singer is correct to say that the right to life must be based on what is true of the entity now, not just what is true of its future. But it is true of the human embryo now that he or she is a distinct individual with a rational nature, even though it will take him or her several years fully to actualize his or her basic, natural capacities so [that] they are immediately exercisable.

Our conclusion: Every human being, irrespective of age, size, condition of dependency, or stage of development — or the means by which he or she is produced — is intrinsically valuable as a subject of rights and deserves full moral respect. .

Patrick Lee is a professor of philosophy at the Franciscan University of Steubenville & Robert P. George is a professor at Princeton University.

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The Big Business of Making Babies (Mohler, 060201)

The Brave New World we now experience is filled with a myriad of moral dilemmas—and none demands more urgent attention than those related to human reproduction and the massive technological advances that are related to human fertility and babies.

In one sense, these moral dilemmas directly affect only a small percentage of the American population. The vast majority of babies born in the United States are conceived through natural means—completely without the assistance of reproductive technologies. Nevertheless, a growing number of American couples find themselves facing difficulty conceiving and bearing a child. Furthermore, homosexual couples—both male and female—increasingly demand a “right” to have children, and these are joined by some unmarried individuals who have similar access to these technologies.

In any event, the field of reproductive technologies now represents a fast-growing sector of the economy—and one that produces a significant profit. All this raises a crucial moral question: is an unregulated free market in reproductive technologies and materials such as human gametes destined to undermine human dignity and the sanctity of human life?

The emergence of a free market economy in donor organs, a market now spreading around the globe, should serve as a significant warning that reproductive technologies and gametes, along with other factors involved in human reproduction, represent a lucrative market that has already caught the attention and interest of many corporations, entrepreneurs, and individuals.

This market has now caught the attention of the Harvard Business Review [HBR]. In its February 2006 issue, HBR features a “big picture” article by Harvard business professor Debora L. Spar. In “Where Babies Come From: Supply and Demand in an Infant Marketplace,” Professor Spar acknowledges that many persons would find the very notion of a “market” in the arena of human reproduction to be distasteful or worse. “There are markets in real estate, markets in used cars, markets filled with farmers selling green beans and cheese,” Spar observes. “But a market in human fertility—sperm, eggs, hormones, surrogate mothers, embryos? Babies, or the means to make them, aren’t supposed to be sold. They aren’t supposed to be bought. They aren’t supposed to have prices fixed upon them.”

Nevertheless, Spar acknowledges that “there is a market for babies, one that stretches across the globe and encompasses hundreds of thousands of people.” This may not be a conventional market in the sense of farm commodities or mortgages, but this new market in human reproduction has been created by “a deep and persistent demand from people who have been denied the blessings of reproduction, along with a wide and steadily increasing supply of ways to produce babies when nature proves inadequate.”

As Spar explains, this new market in human reproduction includes for-profit fertility clinics, drug companies, doctors, and medical firms that rake in huge profits in the baby-making business. In 2001, almost 41,000 children were born in the United States through in vitro fertilization technologies [IVF].” Beyond this, another six thousand were produced by donated eggs and approximately six hundred were carried to term by rented wombs—most often identified as surrogate mothers.

Professor Spar is no newcomer to these issues. She serves as Spangler Family Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School and Harvard Business School Press has just released her new book, The Baby Business: How Money, Science, and Politics Drive the Commerce of Conception. Professor Spar’s concern is straightforwardly related to business and economics. She raises a host of moral issues, but her most pressing concern seems to be the lack of clear legal definitions protecting property rights for all involved. In her article, she looks at the business of making babies like any other business, and raises the issue of government regulation as a means of defining rights, lowering prices, and expanding access.

In the United States, the business of human reproduction is almost totally unregulated. The federal government has taken little interest in this market and state and local governments rarely set regulations related to human reproduction. “Part of this reluctance may be rooted in America’s typical laissez-faire response to emerging markets,” Spar observes. “Unlike its European counterparts, the U. S. government historically has been loath to constrain high-growth, high-technology markets and industries.”

Thus, unlike many European countries, the United States has no national policies on the use of IVF or on the creation and destruction of human embryos. Technologies such as preimplantation genetic diagnosis [PGD] are unregulated and widely available, allowing parents to examine an embryo for fitness before deciding to implant it in the womb. Through the use of this technology, parents can effectively choose the sex of their baby, and can also choose among various genetic traits. Unwanted embryos are routinely discarded and destroyed.

Looking around the world, Professor Spar sees a very different picture. The government of Israel sees assisted reproduction as a national cause, with the nation permitting most forms of high-tech human reproduction and paying for fertility treatments until a couple has at least two children. Germany, on the other hand, is still haunted by the memory of the Nazi medical experiments and allows no human egg transfers, no surrogate mothers, and no PGD.

As a model for the United States, Professor Spar seems to look approvingly at Britain’s Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, the quasi-government agency that oversees all aspects of reproductive technology and trade in that nation. As Professor Spar reports, the HFEA “licenses and monitors all IVF clinics, sets price caps for egg donation, and assesses applications for PGD.”

In the United States, the free market rules. As one reproductive specialist told Spar, “We have been able to sail under regulatory visibility . . . If we had been under scrutiny, many steps would have been forbidden.”

That is probably an understatement. The development of these reproductive technologies has not only escaped most regulatory attention, but the awareness of most American citizens as well.

These new reproductive technologies promise huge profits and an expanding market. At present, most individuals and couples seeking advanced reproductive technologies are wealthier than the national average. A cycle of in vitro fertilization costs an average of 12,400 dollars. PGD costs 3500 dollars, and the market for human eggs and sperm is almost completely without regulation—or price ceiling.

Spar reports that enterprising companies now represent the cutting edge of this profit sector. “The global market for sperm, for example, is dominated by a small number of high-volume, high-profit firms. So is the market for the hormones that women take to induce ovulation.” Beyond this, “egg brokers” and fertility centers “seem already to be evolving along a similar course, with smaller centers consolidating into networks like Integramed America and larger centers like Boston IVF reaping the substantial profits of scale.”

Along with other markets, the market in human reproductive technologies demands opportunities for expansion. “In the absence of outside pressure, the market will try to satisfy most client desires in the interest of creating new business,” Professor Spar observes. This means that, lacking regulation by the government or other authorities, any consumer demand for reproductive technologies or human gametes is likely to be met in one way or another, by one firm or another.

Other developments loom on the horizon. In Great Britain, an increasing number of healthy women—who complain of no fertility problems of any kind—are now seeking access to reproductive technologies because they are uninterested in conceiving children through intercourse. Some of these women report that they are simply “too busy” for sex, but still desire children. Beyond these, single women and lesbian couples are now a significant segment of the consumer market for human sperm. In turn, homosexual male couples now seek children through donor eggs and surrogate wombs in increasing numbers.

“Such applications could add millions of customers to the fertility trade,” Professor Spar acknowledges, “but only if prices come down, access is widened, and rules are established.”

One of Professor Spar’s primary concerns is the lack of clear property rights in current law. Who owns human embryos? Do clinics? Do parents? What are the rights and responsibilities of sperm donors, and of the children conceived through donor sperm? These questions are only hints of an incredibly complex system of moral and legal issues that remain unanswered. In the present unregulated marketplace, demand is generally met with supply, one way or the other.

In the end, Professor Spar proposes that the baby business should be “governed by a system of property rights” that would bring regularity, clarity, and predictability to the marketplace. She acknowledges that these medical technologies come with “Solomonic choices” and moral dilemmas. She suggests that Americans should “decide, as a society, just what we consider acceptable in the baby trade.”

She asks: “Are we comfortable allowing commercial exchange in the pursuit of procreation? Are we willing to permit parents and their doctors to manipulate the embryos that will become their offspring? How will we determine which procedures push the trade too far?”

Professor Spar’s article raises a number of the most important economic and legal issues related to the marketplace of human reproduction. Nevertheless, even more significant questions and dilemmas demand our attention. The lack of a moral consensus on these crucial questions has provided an environment in which the Culture of Death has taken advantage of the free market in order to further its product lines and increase its profits. Are we willing for human dignity to be bought and sold in the marketplace?

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Christian Morality and Test Tube Babies, Part One (Mohler, 060510)

Clearly, these practices and technologies raise the most fundamental questions about what it means to be human, and about God’s intention for marriage and the family.

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Christian Morality and Test Tube Babies, Part Two (Mohler, 060512)

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The Devil’s Calculus (Christian Post, 060523)

Charles Colson

Biotechnology and the Vulnerable

On May 12, Hwang Woo-suk, the “disgraced cloning scientist,” was indicted on charges of fraud, embezzlement, and ethics violations.

The scientific community has rightly distanced itself from Hwang over his falsification of data. But there is still one thing that his efforts and much of the biotech industry share in common: a utilitarian disregard for the dignity and sanctity of human life.

Prosecutors charge that Hwang used falsified data showing cloning success to defraud investors of at least $2 million. However, the real outrage lies in how Hwang obtained the eggs for the research whose results he falsified. The media referred to “junior researchers” having “donated” their eggs. In this case donated is a euphemism, suggesting a voluntary transaction between equals — not the case here.

For starters, there are reports that Hwang and his senior associates “applied pressure to team members” to donate their eggs. One researcher reportedly told Hwang she wouldn’t do it, to which he replied, “Why not?” She then went through the procedure “out of worry” for her professional prospects.

Even without overt pressure, junior researchers are, as the New York Times put it, in a “dependent relationship” with their superiors — thus, vulnerable. Especially is this true “in the strict hierarchy of a scientific laboratory in a Confucian[-influenced] society like South Korea,” where “junior members often feel great pressure to please their superiors.”

Hwang’s taking advantage of his researchers is emblematic of efforts to do anything to clone human beings and to do embryonic stem-cell research. The physical differences between adult women and human embryos should not obscure the utilitarian calculus involved. Neither should it matter that Hwang was, by all accounts, an egomaniac, while other researchers are depicted as altruistic visionaries. The clear point is that those least able to resist — whether subordinate researchers or human embryos — are expected to sacrifice themselves for some “greater good.”

This is the issue in a measure pending in Congress to allow federally funded research on embryonic stem-cells obtained from frozen embryos. The treatment of these embryos, who were created for in vitro fertilization, represents utilitarian logic at its “finest.” They were abandoned when they no longer served their original purpose. So now we can destroy them to fulfill a new purpose. The justification for this proposal amounts to: “They shouldn’t go to waste.”

Sadly, in a culture shaped by utilitarianism such as ours, when Christians insist that human life — at any stage — is not a “waste,” we are labeled fanatics. When we argue that “progress,” however defined, should not be purchased at the expense of the most vulnerable among us, we are made out as “enemies of the future.” It does not matter that, to date, no treatments or cures have come from embryonic stem-cell research. It’s our insistence on the sanctity and dignity of the human person that offends the prophets of progress.

But that insistence is the only reliable protection against the abuses that took place in Hwang’s laboratory. In a world where some human life is expendable for the “greater good,” there is nothing that protects the weak or, for that matter, protects any of us.

This is part five in the “War on the Weak” series.

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Democrats play politics with human life (Townhall.com, 060719)

By Maggie Gallagher

The Senate on Tuesday debated three important bills: Castle-DeGette, which expands federal funding for stem-cell research that kills human embryos; Santorum-Specter, which funds new research that uses the latest techniques to obtain embryonic-like stem cells without actually destroying embryos; and Brownback-Santorum, which would ban “fetal farming” or the practice of growing human fetuses for the purpose of using their body parts.

All three of these bills ask the fundamental question: What kind of people are we?

Americans are a people whose founding document promises that we are endowed by our creator with certain unalienable rights, among these life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

In the 1970s, a great exception was made. The Supreme Court declared that abortion was a constitutional right. Because science could not tell us when human life begins (the court argued), women had a right to control their own bodies: “We need not resolve the difficult question of when life begins,” Justice Blackmun wrote for the majority. “When those trained in the respective disciplines of medicine, philosophy and theology are unable to arrive at any consensus, the judiciary, at this point in the development of man’s knowledge, is not in a position to speculate as to the answer.”

Castle-DeGette, authorizing federal funding for research that requires killing nascent human lives, marks a great culture change: Taxpayer funding means the federal government, instead of expressing agnosticism about when human life begins, as Roe did, will come firmly down on the side of those who think nascent human life is merely a clump of cells. If killing it might yield scientific progress, then human life has no moral rights at all. The once sacred right to take human life, once a decision to be made between a woman and her doctor, has morphed into the right of any scientist in consultation with his lab partner — at taxpayer expense.

If we have a choice, why not bet on techniques that don’t involve killing? For many Democrats (and some Republicans), however, establishing the right to destroy human embryos appears to be more important than bridging divisive issues in the interest of scientific progress. It’s amazing how blatantly and publicly some Democrats play politics with human life itself: “This will be one of the major issues of the campaign, and it is going to allow us to win voters we have not won before,” announced Sen. Charles E. Schumer.

Meanwhile, the science gallops onward. Virtually every week there are new reports like this one from the University of Pennsylvania: “Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine have isolated a new source of adult stem cells that appear to have the potential to differentiate into several cell types. ... It could one day provide the tissue needed by an individual for treating a host of disorders, including peripheral nerve disease, Parkinson’s disease and spinal cord injury.”

Some people tell you that we have to choose between science and humane values. President Bush (who has promised to veto) saw and said otherwise in his State of the Union Address this year:

“A hopeful society has institutions of science and medicine that do not cut ethical corners, and that recognize the matchless value of every life. Tonight I ask you to pass legislation to prohibit the most egregious abuses of medical research — human cloning in all its forms, creating or implanting embryos for experiments, creating human-animal hybrids, and buying, selling or patenting human embryos.”

This week, the president is likely to get his wish. All three bills are expected to pass the Senate. And President Bush has promised to veto federal funding for stem cell research that destroys human life — his first veto ever. “Human life is a gift from our creator,” President Bush said in January, “and that gift should never be discarded, devalued or put up for sale.”

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Stem the Tide: In the debate over stem cells, the facts on the ground have changed. (Weekly Standard, 060724)

by Eric Cohen & William Kristol

This week, the Senate will take up legislation already passed by the House (H.R. 810) to authorize federal funding for research on embryonic stem cells harvested by de stroying human embryos left over in fertility clinics. Since August 2001, under a policy established by President Bush, federally funded research has been limited to embryonic stem cell lines that already existed. If the bill passes, the president will veto it. And without the votes to override, the current policy will remain unchanged.

For five years, there has been a sustained effort to overturn the limits set by the president. Advocates of federal funding for research on new stem cell lines have made such funding a litmus test for being “pro-science.” Prestigious journals like the New England Journal of Medicine give reports on embryo research special consideration for publication. Meanwhile, advocates downplay advances that do not involve embryo destruction. Reversing the Bush policy—even forcing a veto—would be the crowning achievement of this campaign. It would create, so the thinking goes, a great election issue: Progressives are pro-cure and pro-science. Bush is not.

But as often happens in politics, when momentum builds for a cause, that cause may already be on the way to irrelevancy. The facts on the ground change. H.R. 810 would fund research on so-called “spare” human embryos. Such embryos, however, offer an inefficient and ineffectual road to medical progress: inefficient, because procuring consent to use leftover embryos is a cumbersome process, and the vast majority of couples who produced them do not want them used for research; ineffectual, because using “spare” embryos does not allow scientists to control the genetic makeup of the stem cells, which is (as they have told us) essential for building useful models of disease and developing rejection-proof therapies.

While the political fight over the “spares” has raged, some scientists seem to have found a better way forward: a way to get the genetically controlled stem cells they need without destroying human embryos. A second Senate bill (S. 2754), cosponsored by Arlen Specter and Rick Santorum (usually opponents in the embryo research debate), would fund and promote such research. These alternative methods are better ethically, because they do not treat developing human life as raw material; better scientifically, because they would provide designer stem cells; and better democratically, because they do not force those who believe embryo destruction is a grave moral wrong to fund it with taxpayer dollars.

The most important arguments for maintaining the Bush policy are moral: The federal government should not be a party to the destruction of nascent human lives. Yes, such embryos might be left over in fertility clinics, but the fact that they are unwanted does not change what they are or give us a license to destroy them. But even for those who are agnostic about the moral standing of human embryos, a policy that encourages the expanded use of federal dollars for research on “spare” embryos makes little sense when more promising alternatives apparently exist.

Of course, we cannot predict the scientific future—a fact too often ignored by those promising to cure “100 million” Americans if only we funded embryo research without limits. Even the most promising scientific alternatives are speculative. But this much we do know: Destroying more “spare” embryos is unlikely to advance stem cell science significantly. Rather, using federal dollars to fund such research will only lead to demands that further ethical lines be crossed. When using the “spares” doesn’t produce results, the demand will be to fund the creation and destruction of embryonic human clones, an even more damaging leap into the brave new world.

We should instead be establishing barriers to such a world. And fortunately, the Senate is poised to consider a third bioethics bill (S. 3504) prohibiting “fetal farming.” Such an idea is not science fiction. Scientists could plausibly say that we need to encourage the gestation of human embryos to later developmental stages, when potentially more useful stabilized stem cells could be obtained and organ primordia could be “harvested.” Establishing a preemptive moral limit on such schemes would embody an important truth: There are some things we should never do, even in the name of progress. The moral history of mankind, as Paul Ramsey once said, is more important than its medical history.

So: no funding for the destruction of “spare” embryos; generous funding of alternative methods of producing embryonic-like stem cells; and banning “fetal farming.” This outcome would hardly prevent every abuse—leaving human cloning and the new eugenics entirely unregulated. But after five years of difficult debate, we may achieve in the next weeks a decent outcome—for now.

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House Sustains Bush’s Veto of Stem Cell Bill (Foxnews, 060720)

WASHINGTON — The House on Wednesday failed to override President Bush’s first veto of his five-and-a-half-year administration, cast earlier in the day when he rejected a bill that would have provided more federal funding for embryonic stem cell research.

The vote, 235-193, was less than the two-thirds needed to forward the bill to the Senate for its consideration.

“If this bill were to become law, American taxpayers for the first time in our history would be compelled to fund the deliberate destruction of human embryos. Crossing this line would be a grave mistake and would needlessly encourage a conflict between science and ethics that can only do damage to both and harm our nation as a whole,” Bush wrote in a letter to the House explaining his decision to veto the measure.

Beginning debate on the issue, House Majority Leader John Boehner of Ohio asked his colleagues to uphold the president’s veto.

“The bill signed by the president today is a positive step forward,” Boehner said shortly after the chamber began debate.

“No just society should condone the destruction of human life, even in the name of medical research,” Boehner said.

Rep. Diana DeGette, D-Colo., criticized the president’s decision. She said the president had “snuffed out the candle of hope” for Americans suffering from a number of diseases who could benefit from the research.

Bush spoke in the East Room after vetoing the measure, saying he did so to uphold values on human life.

“In this new era, our challenge is to harness the power of science to ease human suffering without sanctioning the practices that violate the dignity of human life,” Bush said in the East Room of the White House after vetoing the measure.

Bush announced his veto surrounded by 18 families who “adopted” frozen embryos not used by other couples to have children, otherwise known as “snowflake babies.”

“Each of these children was still adopted while still an embryo and has been blessed with a chance to grow, to grow up in a loving family. These boys and girls are not spare parts,” Bush said after several interruptions of applause from supporters. “They remind us of what is lost when embryos are destroyed in the name of research. The remind us that we all begin our lives as a small collection of cells. And they remind us that in our zeal for new treatments and cures, America must never abandon our fundamental morals.”

Rep. Roscoe Bartlett, R-Md., released a statement in support of the veto, saying it is possible to study “pluripotent” stem cells, believed to be equally useful but not derived by destroying embryos. He sponsored a bill proposing such a plan, but it failed a two-thirds vote in the House. The Senate unanimously passed an identical bill.

“I’m hopeful that the House members who voted against my bill before the president’s veto will decide they want to take it up again and approve it,” Bartlett said.

With the Senate’s passage of the legislation Tuesday, the bill was put on a virtual collision course with the president’s desk. In August 2001, Bush permitted existing federal research to continue, but has fervently advocated against increased government funding. He and others argue that stem cells that come from human embryos — unlike stem cells derived from adults — can only be harvested through the loss of a human life.

“The president believes strongly that for the purpose of research, it’s inappropriate for the federal government to finance something that many people consider murder. He’s one of them,” said White House spokesman Tony Snow.

Bush argued that the bill would have crossed a line and “once crossed, we would find it impossible to turn back.”

At the same time, Bush announced he had signed another bill, passed unanimously in the House and Senate, that would pre-emptively ban “fetal farming,” the prospect of raising and aborting fetuses for scientific research.

The veto came a day after the Senate defied Bush and approved the legislation, 63-37, four votes short of the two-thirds margin needed to override. Stem cells are considered by a number of scientists to be a possible key to unlocking the secrets of, and developing cures for, many difficult diseases and medical problems such as Alzheimer’s, paralysis and other brain-function disorders. The House passed the original bill in May 2005.

Many scientists say the embryonic stem cells hold more hope than their adult-derived counterparts because they are the cells that multiply into the many types of cells that build the human body. Adult stem cells do not act the same way.

“Those lives will not begin, but many other lives will end if we do not use all the scientific resources available,” said Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., referring to the multitude of discarded embryos sitting in fertility clinics that could be plied for the favored embryonic stem cells.

Several high-ranking and conservative celebrities — including former first lady Nancy Reagan, whose husband, President Ronald Reagan, suffered from Alzheimer’s — have said they believe that embryonic stem cell science could eventually save millions of lives.

The Senate vote was preceded by two days of debate, which also involved a number of personal stories to highlight the possible impacts of the research.

The House and Senate votes reflected public opinion polls. A May Gallup poll showed that 61% of respondents found research of human embryo stem cells morally acceptable. The same poll, however, showed that only 43% believed abortion was morally acceptable.

Proponents said the bill lifting that restriction also puts strong ethical guidelines in place, requiring donors to give their informed consent for using embryos that would otherwise be discarded.

“The unfortunate part is, if the president does veto the bill, then it sets us back a year or so until we can finally pass a bill that will have the requisite supermajority to be able to become law,” said Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah. “And that sets back embryonic stem cell research another year or so.”

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., a surgeon who pushed for expanding federal funding for embryonic stem cell research, said Bush in private conversation vowed not to let any more embryos be destroyed for research with federal money on his watch.

Democrats said two other stem cell bills under debate Tuesday were designed to appease voters angry that the GOP-led government had not opened more doors to research.

“Their opposition to stem cell research is outside the American mainstream, so they want to give themselves political cover by voting for two meaningless bills,” said Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid. “It’s a playbook straight from the Republican Orwellian world of politics.”

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Sliding Down the Slope: Where Kinsley’s stem-cell illogic will take us. (National Review Online, 060720)

Michael Kinsley recently published and editorial in the Washington Post (“False Dilemma on Stem Cells ,” July 7, 2006) in which he asserts that “The vast majority of people who oppose stem cell research either haven’t thought it through, or have thought it through and don’t care.” Kinsley bases this conclusion on the following argument: Since fertility clinics routinely produce multiple embryos, select only a few for implantation and freeze the rest, those who maintain “embryos are human beings with full human rights” are forced to conclude that “fertility clinics are death camps — with a side order of cold-blooded eugenics.” Since no one is up in arms about the practice of fertility treatment, therefore no one “truly believes in the humanity of embryos” and pro-life advocates are merely exhibiting “willful ignorance and indifference to logic”.

Having thus dismissed opposition to embryonic-stem-cell research as intrinsically irrational, Kinsley asserts that in his view, embryonic-stem-cell research is morally justified because of the potential medical benefit this research may yield and because “I cannot share, or even fathom, [the pro-life] conviction that a microscopic dot — as oblivious as a rock, more primitive than a worm — has the same human rights as anyone reading this article.”

Leaving aside the numerous factual and scientific inaccuracies in Kinsley’s statements, allow me to offer the following fictional adaptation of his argument.

The year is 2036, and Mr. Smith, a spokesman for the patient-advocacy group “Citizens for Life-Saving Organs” is testifying before Congress in support of a proposed “Harvesting of useful organs act” (H.R. 8100). The legislation would allow removal of transplantable organs from patients with untreatable neurological conditions such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s, since such conditions have few systemic effects that would reduce the therapeutic utility of transplantable vital organs.

Mr. Smith’s beloved daughter Suzie is afflicted with a congenital heart malformation that will prove fatal if she does not receive a heart transplant. Mr. Smith testifies that “The U.S. government’s continuing near ban on organ harvesting is costing our society and the world too much.” Killing terminally ill patients in order to extract their organs is morally permissible, Smith argues, since such patients are “doomed anyway.” Smith thinks it is absurd for society to worry whether terminally ill patients are human beings, noting that “nothing prevents us from claiming humanity for ourselves and denying it to the human-like entities we evolve into as our physical and mental functions are degraded by terminal disease.”

While Smith acknowledges that some Americans question the morality of harvesting organs from living patients, he dismisses such concerns, saying “some people, including me, find it hard to make the necessary leap of faith to believe that a drooling, shaking, former human being in the last stages of Parkinson’s disease and, say, Nelson Mandela are equal in the eyes of God”.

Smith shows little patience for those who oppose what he believes to be the best hope for curing Suzie’s condition, stating “ No other potential therapy — including conventional organ transplant — is nearly as promising for my daughter’s ailment.” Smith indignantly accuses any so-called “pro-life” supporters who oppose H.R. 8100 of hypocrisy, because, he claims they have not objected to the use of human-like entities for fertility treatments and for human embryonic-stem-cell research, two practices that are well established in America.

Smith concludes his testimony by confidently asserting that just as society’s “alarms” against the use of human embryos for fertility treatments and embryonic-stem-cell research “have been crushed by...grateful, happy parents,” so too will fall the current objections against using former humans with terminal diseases as a source of life-saving organ transplants.

What Kinsley apparently doesn’t understand is that this is what the slippery slope of his reasoning looks like from the other side. For his benefit and for the benefit of others who would become the likely focus of future efforts to harvest “the incredible life saving power” of one class of human beings in service of another class, I sincerely hope his flawed reasoning does not prevail.

— Dr. M. L. Condic is an associate professor of neurobiology and anatomy at the University of Utah School of Medicine.

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Who’s “Anti-Science” Now? Proponents of embryonic-stem-cell research put themselves in a bad position. (National Review Online, 060720)

Proponents of embryo-destroying research lost one of their favorite knee-jerk rhetorical points on Tuesday, as they succeeded in killing a bill that would have funded alternatives to embryo-destroying research. It’s hard to dismiss your opponents as “anti-science” when you’ve voted against it yourself.

The Alternative Pluripotent Stem Cell Therapies Enhancement Act was a great constructive opportunity for Congress. Early on Tuesday, a leading pro-life senator, Pennsylvania Republican Rick Santorum (who is in a tough reelection battle and could afford to be focusing on other things right now — like, oh, saving his political life), rattled off his record of commitment to stem-cell-research advocacy, none of it destructive. He talked about his attempt at finding a “middle ground” by sponsoring a bill to fund adult-stem-cell and other non-embryo-destroying research. This “alternatives” bill was even cosponsored by his Pennsylvania colleague Arlen Specter (who supports embryo research, abortion . . . very many things a Santorum never will). The bill, in both its House and its Senate version, was an embrace of research that is free of embryonic-stem-cell research’s unavoidable ethical baggage.

But on Tuesday afternoon, Delaware Republican Mike Castle, co-sponsor of a bill that would federally fund embryonic-stem-cell research for the first time, sent around an e-mail urging colleagues to vote against Santorum’s alternatives bill. (Richard Doerflinger responds to his e-mail here.) Since they already knew the president would veto the Castle bill, and since embryonic-stem-cell research will always be a lightning rod for political and moral debate, the alternatives bill was a gift to any politician. Embryo-research stalwart Mike Castle and, say, embryo-protection stalwart (Dr.) Dave Weldon could have united behind it. Given Congress’s dismal approval ratings, it would have even been good politics. Look at what we can do when we set our minds to it! We’re pro-hope, and pro-research, and pro-consensus.

So much for that. Under a rules suspension Tuesday night, the bill failed to get the two-thirds needed for passage, thanks to Castle’s eleventh-hour work. Even in the Senate, where the alternatives bill garnered unanimous support in the final roll call, Minority Leader Harry Reid couldn’t help but dismiss it as “meaningless.”

But Tuesday’s alternatives takedown in the House is about much more than just one vote. Limits always seem to be too limiting for proponents of embryonic-stem-cell research and cloning. The Beltway battle this week has had shades of a Bay State fight last year. The governor there, Republican Mitt Romney, met proponents of cloning research halfway. He said, O.K., the state government won’t fund it, but you can use so-called surplus embryos from in vitro fertilization procedures as long as you don’t create new embryos. But there was no line of legislators outside his door waiting to work with him. All or nothing, proponents of clone-and-kill research proclaimed. We saw something similar in New Jersey in late 2003. As Wesley Smith, author of The Culture of Death: The Assault on Medical Ethics in America, put it to me at the time, “It is remarkable — and very telling — that in less then two years, we have gone from ‘only’ wanting to harvest the stem cells from embryos left over from IVF procedures, to a state senate passing legislation that would permit the implantation and gestation of cloned fetuses to the ninth month, before requiring their destruction. This is not just a slide down a slippery slope, it is a headfirst plunge into the abyss.” Like the House vote Tuesday night, the Garden State debate was instructive.

On the federal level this week we’ve seen supposed proponents of stem-cell research say, No, none of this alternatives stuff, we only want embryonic-stem-cell research. The embryo is everything. Or rather, destroying embryos is everything — that’s where they want research to be focused, and they’re happy to hold research that is free of embryonic entanglements hostage. Coming from a crowd that regularly throws the word “anti-science” at those who oppose embryo destruction and cloning, this is pretty rich. When given the option to vote for a bill that nearly no one could sensibly disagree with — to explore already successful and other less-ethically-entangled research, like a spoiled two-year-old who wants his way and only his way even if it’s impractical and Dad has already said no, so went the House.

When given the option to vote for a bill that nearly no one could sensibly disagree with, they acted like spoiled two-year-olds who want their way and only their way — even if it’s impractical and Dad has already said “no.” They’ve given opponents a great campaign ad for November, turning the “anti-science” label on them: Care more about what the bioethics lobby wants than advancing science? Talk about hopeless.

Tuesday’s House action gives an advantage to those who talk about the sanctity of human life, specifically those who voted against the federal funding of embryonic-stem-cell research and for the alternatives bill. A third of the members of House of Representatives will support stem-cell research only if it involves the destruction of embryos? Otherwise they’re against it? This is what they want their position to be? As Americans increasingly pay attention to these confusing issues, such clear Party of Death votes as we saw Tuesday night in the House should be as deadly to political careers as they are to life.

— Kathryn Jean Lopez is the editor of National Review Online.

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Ethical Alternatives: Keeping a focus on ethics in medical research. (National Review Online, 060720)

An NRO Q&A

Dr. David Prentice, senior fellow for life sciences at Family Research Council and founding member of Do No Harm, the Coalition of Americans for Research Ethics. A stem-cell expert, he’s been closely involved in the recent congressional action on stem-cell research. As President Bush prepared to veto legislation that would federally fund embryo-destroying stem-cell research for the first time, Dr. Prentice spoke to NRO editor Kathryn Lopez about the debate.

Kathryn Jean Lopez: Do adult stem cells have more promise than embryonic stem cells?

Dr. David Prentice: They certainly hold more promise for helping patients with diseases and injuries. Their normal function in the body is repair, and we’re seeing more and more examples of their utility in this respect. Embryonic stem cells are difficult to control, tending to grow out of control as tumors, or not form the necessary tissue and integrate to repair damage.

Lopez: What do you have to say about that recent letter that appeared in Science magazine on you and your work?

Dr. Prentice: It’s easy for someone to put words in your mouth and then claim that those words are false, which is exactly what the Science letter’s authors did. Do No Harm has not claimed that current adult-stem-cell treatments are “cures” or “generally available” at this time. We have consistently said these are examples where patients have been helped by adult-/cord-blood stem cells and shown some benefit and improvement, something that can’t be said to be even remotely close for embryonic stem cells.

In fact, if you look in the supplement to that letter, you find the authors repeatedly noting that the references in our list show “improved long-term survival,” “disease remission,” “extended disease-free period,” “alleviate the symptoms,” etc. They actually validate precisely what we’ve been saying.

As far as “FDA-approved clinical trials,” if people would like to see what’s out there, they should go here to see what trials are available. This is the list of all FDA-approved trials, all phases, currently recruiting patients. If they click the little box in the upper left of that page, they’ll get the list that includes trials where they’re done recruiting. As of July 19, it was 571 and 1,178, respectively. Keep in mind these are not results, these are trials under way at various phases of investigation. But they’re all adult stem cells.

Lopez: Can you stand by your list of 72 adult-stem-cell successes?

Dr. Prentice: Certainly. The Do No Harm list is based on published results where people have shown some benefit from use of adult stem cells.

Lopez: As you listen to the debate in Washington — what’s most misunderstood about stem-cell research?

Dr. Prentice: 1) The hope of stem cells vs. the reality of what’s really been shown with various types of stem cells, embryonic vs. adult.

2) The idea that current “approved” lines of embryonic stem cells are “disintegrating” and “contaminated.”

Good cell-culture technique includes saving back cells in the freezer so that you can replenish growing cells. As an example, a human cell line started in the 1960s was used for decades by researchers. It’s hard to believe NIH technicians wouldn’t be using good laboratory practices. And at least two publications, one just months ago by James Thomson (of University of Wisconsin-Madison, who first successfully cultured human embryonic stem cells in the lab) documents that any contamination can be removed from the current lines.

Lopez: Would surplus embryos get thrown away if they weren’t used for research?

Dr. Prentice: Unfortunately at this time in the U.S. some would be discarded, though the numbers are much smaller than the public claims of proponents of embryo research. The Rand survey a couple years ago showed that there are around 400,000 embryos frozen in the U.S., but it also pointed out that only a small percentage of those were discarded or available for research, and the number of potential embryonic-stem-cell lines (dishes of cells) is far less than proponents say they want for research and would not meet their “need” for genetic diversity in the cell lines.

And of course they don’t need to be discarded; there are other options such as embryo adoption (e.g., the Snowflake program).

Lopez: Are both Santorum bills that passed the Senate Tuesday — the alternatives one and the fetal farming one — necessary?

Dr. Prentice: The fetal-farming bill is definitely necessary legislation. Though there are no documented examples yet of human fetal farming, some scientists have done “proof of principle” experiments to grow cloned animal embryos to later stages for harvest of more mature cells and tissues. And legislation that could encourage that practice in humans has popped up in several states.

The alternative-pluripotent-stem-cell legislation is designed to encourage research on ethical alternatives for flexible stem cells. We do need more emphasis on ethical stem-cell research.

Lopez: Considering there is already private embryo-destroying research going on, is the fight against federal funding ultimately a losing battle?

Dr. Prentice: No, there is still an ethical and practical line to be drawn regarding use of taxpayer funds and allocation of important resources.

Lopez: Did the president’s August 2001 announcement prove to be a mistake?

Dr. Prentice: While people on both sides of this debate were upset with the decision, it drew an ethical line on use of federal funds, and provided direction, cells, and funding for the research.

Lopez: What’s most winnable in holding back a brave new world? What’s most necessary to win?

Dr. Prentice: Looking ahead and trying to channel research along ethical lines; the fetal farming legislation is a good example. It’s important to continue to hold the ethical line that no human life, at any age, should be used as raw material or be under the threat of government-sanctioned destruction.

Lopez: Some of the rhetoric is vicious, as you know. What do you say when you’re told you’re anti-science and want to stomp all over people’s hopes?

Dr. Prentice: My colleagues and I are pro-science, and that’s why we want to see the ethical science flourish.

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Science’s Stem Cell Scam (townhall.com, 060720)

By Michael Fumento

Embryonic stem cells (ESCs) receive tremendous media attention, with oft-repeated claims that they have the potential to cure virtually every disease known. Yet there are spoilsports, self included, who point out that they have yet to even make it into a human clinical trial. This is even as alternatives – adult stem cells (ASCs) from numerous places in the body as well as umbilical cord blood and placenta – are curing diseases here and now and have been doing so for decades. And that makes ESC advocates very, very angry.

How many diseases ASCs can treat or cure is debatable, with one website claiming almost 80 for umbilical cord blood alone. Dr. David Prentice of the Family Research Council, using stricter standards of evidence, has constituted a list of 72 for all types of ASCs. But now three ESC advocates have directly challenged Prentice’s list. They’ve published a letter in Science magazine, released ahead of publication obviously to influence Pres. Bush’s promise to veto legislation that would open wide the federal funding spigot for ESC research. The letter claims ASC “treatments fully tested in all required phases of clinical trials and approved by the U.S Food and Drug Administration are available to treat only nine of the conditions” on his list.

Well! One answer to that is that it’s nine more than can be claimed for ESCs. Further, there are 1175 clinical trials for ASCs, including those no longer recruiting patients, with zero for ESCs. But a better response is that the letter authors come from the Kenneth Lay School for honesty, as do the editors at Science.

In the detailed attachment to their letter, the Science magazine writers aren’t just at odds with Prentice but the medical community as a whole. For example, regarding sickle cell anemia, they claim “adult stem cell transplants from bone marrow or umbilical cord blood can provide some benefit to sickle cell patients” and “hold the potential to treat sickle cell anemia.” “Some benefit” and “potential?”

An article from the May 2006 issue of Current Opinion in Hematology notes that “there is presently no curative therapy” for sickle cell anemia other than allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation. “Hematopoietic” means from marrow or blood; “allogeneic” means the cells are from another person. Seminars in Hematology (2004) states, “. . . curative allogeneic stem cell transplantation therapy” has “been developed for sickle cell anemia.” Meanwhile, “. . . curative allogeneic stem cell transplantation therapy [has] been developed for” sickle cell anemia according to Current Opinions in Molecular Therapy (2003), while “hematopoietic stem cells for allogeneic transplantation” are “currently the only curative approach for sickle cell anemia” observes the journal Blood (2002). (All emphasis mine.)

What does everybody seem to know that the Science writers and Science editors don’t?

Words like “could” and “potential” are trick phraseology used throughout the letter attachment for ASC curative therapies that have been used routinely for years. This appears to give them no advantage over ESC therapy, all of which boasts nothing but potential.

The writers are correct about FDA approval; but that’s a trick. Some ASC therapies are approved in other countries but not yet here. More importantly, stem cell therapy is not a drug and therefore the FDA doesn’t regulate it the same way. Some have been used successfully for decades with no one seeking or receiving federal approval.

For that matter, aspirin is a drug but by their standards it only has potential use for aches and pains since it never went through the clinical trial process and the FDA has never given it formal approval.

How can Science not know all this? Simple; it does. I’ve written repeatedly of how Science has made itself a propaganda sheet for ESC research, as well as other political causes. At the least, it should change its name to Pseudoscience. Sometimes it prints easily falsifiable studies, such as this, attacking the usefulness of ASCs. Other times it falsely promotes ESCs. That culminated in January when the journal was forced to retract two groundbreaking ESC studies that proved frauds.

The journal wants to flood unpromising ESC research with taxpayer dollars because private investors know just how very unpromising it is. Now yet again Science has showcased the scientific and moral bankruptcy of the entire ESC advocacy movement.

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The veto: Should we cross the great moral divide? (townhall.com, 060720)

By Chuck Colson

Yesterday President Bush vetoed a bill that, had it become law, would have deeply eroded respect for human life. It was a courageous act because there was enormous pressure on him to agree to fund more embryo-destructive research.

After vetoing this bill, the president signed one for funding research into methods of creating pluripotent stem cells—the kind that can be turned into many types of body tissue without creating or killing human embryos.

U.S. President George W. Bush holds Trey Jones, 1, of Cypress, Texas, after speaking out against federally-funded stem-cell research during an event at the White House in Washington July 19, 2006. Bush on Wednesday used his first veto to block legislation expanding embryonic stem cell research, putting him at odds with top scientists, most Americans and some in his own Republican Party. Jones, along with many other children onstage with the President, was conceived from frozen embryos. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque (UNITED STATES)

Not surprisingly, there was an outpouring of vitriol directed not only against the president but also against conservative Christians. A full-page ad in the New York Times, funded by a liberal front group called DefConAmerica, screamed, “The religious right is imposing its will on all Americans. . . . That loud noise you hear is the wall between church and state crumbling.”

Wait a minute. Aren’t Christians allowed to have a voice in politics like everybody else, or has the First Amendment been repealed?

Other critics claim Bush is anti-science. The bill he vetoed was about funding, not banning research—billions in taxpayer money for something private companies refuse to support. Why? Because the prospects of it leading to any cures are very poor. As President Reagan said when he outlawed stem-cell research: If private companies won’t put up their money, why should the taxpayers? Good question.

Another argument we hear is that embryonic stem-cell researchers only want to use so-called “spare” embryos left over from in vitro fertilization. False: Many researchers really want to engage in so-called “therapeutic cloning”—the cloning of huge numbers of embryos in the attempt to find cures for diseases, to which the bill the president vetoed would have opened the door.

Another false claim is that we ought to proceed with this research because everybody else is doing it. That would be news in Canada, Norway, Switzerland, and Australia, where cloning research is illegal. Both Germany and France have embraced the same position President Bush has.

The supporters of embryo-destructive research want to cross a great moral divide. They are seeking not only to destroy human life made in God’s image but also to manufacture life made in man’s image. Tragically, we are losing this fight, however, because too few people understand the issues.

That’s why I recommend an excellent new book called How to Be a Christian in a Brave New World. The authors are bioethicist Nigel Cameron and Joni Eareckson Tada. Nigel and Joni grapple brilliantly with the brave new world of biotech challenges — stem-cell research, cloning, euthanasia, even the reshaping of human nature.

The authors — both good friends of mine — believe that Christians need to be well informed in order to argue the case about these new technologies and what they really mean. This book is going to help Christians sort out the arguments and see through the propaganda.

I hope you’ll read this book and share it with your church, and you can find out information about it on our website. The secular world wants us to pipe down; but as Christians and as citizens, we need to speak out when it comes to new technologies that may lead us down the seductive path to a Brave New World and killing humans.

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Real Hope for Stem-Cell Research (Christian Post, 060908)

By Rev. Mark H. Creech

Stem-cell research has been a hot-button issue for some time now. To the chagrin of pro-lifers, high-profile Hollywood celebrities have lobbied for an increase in taxpayer-funded destructive embryonic stem-cell research. Even former first lady Nancy Reagan made a pitch for the same. Just a few weeks ago, Congress approved legislation that would have succumbed to such pressure. Nevertheless, President George W. Bush – pro-life himself – wisely vetoed the legislation, saying the measure “would support the taking of innocent human life in the hope of finding medical benefits for others” and “crosses a moral boundary that our decent society needs to respect.”

But what if it were possible to harvest embryonic stem cells from human embryos without harming those embryos – wouldn’t that solve the moral dilemma? That’s what Robert Lanza, vice president of Advanced Cell Technology (ACT) of Worchester, Massachusetts, claimed two weeks ago in the journal Nature that their research had succeeded in doing. Unfortunately, ACT’s claims turned out to be a disappointment.

In an article titled Has Robert Lanza Solved the Dilemma? Dr. Barrett Duke of the Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission noted: “While we appreciate Dr. Lanza’a effort to find a way around the unacceptable destruction of human embryos to obtain embryonic stem cells, we do not consider his solution to be viable.”

Indeed, it isn’t viable – and Duke explains why, arguing that the method Lanza employs could destroy the embryo and in some cases already does. In fact, at least 16 embryos were destroyed in Lanza’s research. Duke contends the process also extracts approximately 12% of the embryo’s original genetic makeup. It’s impossible at this point to know exactly what effects this would have on the development of persons who have had that much of their genetic material removed. Moreover, the cells being used are totipotent cells. Just as a single cell can separate naturally at its earliest stages to create a twin, twinning also occurs when a single cell is removed surgically. Totipotent cells start to form an embryo, but that process is disrupted by the researcher, essentially destroying the twin, when an effort is made to manipulate them to form as stem cells.

The good news, however, seems to be that the direction of stem-cell research has turned a corner. Obviously, ACT’s research, as well as that of many others, indicates a growing interest, even discomfort with destroying human embryos for stem cells.

That’s the point of an encouraging piece penned by Robert P. George, professor of jurisprudence and director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton. In The Real Good News on Stem Cells, George contends new techniques are currently being developed from which embryonic stem cells could be derived without harming embryos. He writes:

“One possibility is ‘altered nuclear transfer.’ This research, being pursued at MIT and elsewhere, seeks to fuse ordinary body cells, obtained harmlessly from donors, with oocyte cytoplasm in such a way as to produce donor-specific pluripotent stem cells without producing or destroying a human embryo. Another possibility is ‘dedifferentiation.’ Last August, Harvard scientists showed they could ‘reprogram’ an ordinary human skin cell back to the pluripotent state. No embryo was produced in the process, yet stem cells were generated. Their experiment still has some kinks to clear away, but just a few weeks ago a group of Japanese scientists showed they could eliminate many of those and turn a skin cell into the precise equivalent of an embryonic stem cell. Their work was in mice, and perhaps that is why it did not receive the degree of attention that the ACT study grabbed, but it was if anything more promising and exciting .... Similar techniques are being explored around the world, and it now seems that a new mood is overtaking the field.”

In the conclusion of his arguments against the Lanza method, Duke sounds both a challenge and a warning:

“The promise of stem cells is vast. God has put at our discretion the ability to develop a set of tools to help us fix some of humanity’s most devastating maladies. We must remember, however, that we must not sacrifice our humanity in order to achieve these great advances. To sacrifice the most vulnerable of our species for the benefit of the rest is too high a price to pay. Today’s scientists must move forward on a sold ethical footing or they risk falling into the same pit that doomed many of Nazi Germany’s scientists to a legacy of disgust and moral outrage. We do not need to destroy, or even put at risk, human embryos in order to achieve the wonderful promise of stem-cell therapy. Stem cells derived from non-embryonic sources are already being used to treat and cure more than 70 maladies. We applaud those scientists who are determined to advance our knowledge and our ability to assist our fellow humans in a way that respects all of life ....”

Despite the way some characterize President Bush as a buffoon, America should be grateful the president has been so sagacious in holding the nation to a high standard on this issue. His firm leadership has not only protected the sanctity of human life, but motivated some to think out of the box and focus on methods that make real advances in stem-cell research. What is more, pro-lifers ought to take heart that their arguments for life are surely making headway.

When it comes to stem-cell research, any scientist, leader, or nation, for that matter, willing to honor life at every stage, can find hope in that blessed promise of Scripture: “Let us not be weary in well-doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not” (Galatians 6:9).

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The Hard Cell: Reports of a major breakthrough in the science of stem cells were premature, and wrong. (Weekly Standard, 060911)

IT HAS BEEN ABOUT two weeks since the international media excitedly declared to the world that Robert Lanza, head scientist at Massachusetts biotechnology firm Advanced Cell Technology, had derived human embryonic stem cells without destroying embryos. The story sparked a media feeding frenzy, with newspapers and television stories around the world loudly applauding the advance as a way to circumvent President Bush’s embryonic stem cell funding limitations.

But the actual paper, published in Nature, told a different story. Within a day, critics noted that this supposed “breakthrough” was actually far less substantial than was being reported. Indeed, as I wrote in The Weekly Standard, the media, relying on misleading press releases issued by ACT and Nature, had wildly exaggerated Lanza’s accomplishment. In fact, rather than creating stem cell lines without destroying embryos, Lanza had destroyed every embryo used in the experiment—just as in conventional embryonic stem cell research. (To the best of my knowledge, only The Economist and Newsweek initially reported the facts of the experiment accurately.)

In the two weeks since the initial headlines, most—but not all—of the media have reluctantly, in some cases grudgingly, walked their stories back. As usually happens in such cases, the correctives have been far more subdued than the original reporting. For example, the New York Times originally boosted the experiment in a major, 1490-word, front page story in which science reporter Nicolas Wade’s lead sentence stated, “Biologists have developed a technique for establishing colonies of human embryonic stem cells from an early human

embryo without destroying it.” Yet, even though this was unequivocally false, the Times never issued a formal correction. Instead, it published mild, inside-the-paper stories, one reporting that Nature had clarified its press release about the experiment, and the other a brief AP report about a senate subcommittee hearing at which Senators Arlen Specter and Tom Harkin chastised Lanza and ACT’s bioethics adviser Ronald Green for misrepresenting the experiment to the public.

The Washington Post was similarly less enthusiastic about correcting the record than it was about reporting the great stem cell non-breakthrough. The initial front page story, by Rick Weiss, stated that the “new work . . . shows that even a single cell plucked from an early human embryo can be coaxed to divide repeatedly in a laboratory dish and grow into a colony of stem cells.” Even though the experiment did not, in fact, demonstrate this, there has been no formal correction from the Post.

Without taking sides, Weiss later wrote something of a he said-he said story, reporting that Richard Doerflinger of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops had challenged the veracity of the claim that embryos were not destroyed, alongside Lanza’s retorts to the criticism. In a more visible story, the Post also reported Senators Specter and Harkin’s anger over ACT’s deception. Yet, the Post also editorialized about “a new method for extracting embryonic stem cells that its backers say poses no additional risk to human embryos,” and chastised President Bush for not embracing the technique, even though it was known by then that the “new method” remains purely speculative.

Meanwhile, ACT representatives continue to pretend that they actually developed a new technique for deriving stem cells without destroying embryos. Indeed, nearly two weeks after the story was shown to be overblown, ACT issued a press release touting Lanza’s appearance before Specter’s subcommittee. It quoted CEO Walter Caldwell asserting that the firm had “progressed from applying the single-cell derivation technique from the mouse [which had been accomplished last year] to the human,” which in fact has not been accomplished.

ACT ethics adviser Green similarly dissembled. Green told the Post when the story first broke: “You can honestly say this cell line is from an embryo that was in no way harmed or destroyed.” This wasn’t true. Moreover, the ACT Web site continues to carry a statement signed by Green and other members of the ethics advisory board that incorrectly states, among other things, that “[T]he researchers . . . developed a method of producing stem cell lines by extracting and biopsying single cells (blastomeres) from these embryos. This technique, which leaves the embryos developmentally viable, offers a promising new way of ethically deriving human embryonic stem cell (hESC) lines for research and clinical therapies.”

Lanza has been even more shameful in this regard. Reacting to his woodshed chastising by Specter and Harkin, Lanza whined to Reuters, “[I]t is not fair. It is not right. I know for a fact that removing the cell does not impact the embryo.” But that is a classic hide-the-ball deception. It is indeed true

that a single cell can be taken from an early-stage embryo without destroying it. But that isn’t the same thing as developing the same single cell into an embryonic stem cell line, which Lanza did not do and which has not yet been done. His experiment required taking 4-7 cells from each embryo, destroying the embryo. He then cultured the cells together, permitting them to signal each other, and, perhaps, thereby promoted differentiation into “pluripotent” stem cells.<“p>

Lanza’s deception is even more evident in a podcast interview with Nature that, as of this writing, remains on-line at Nature’s website, despite his clear misrepresentation of the facts. For example, Lanza falsely claims that “[W]hat we have done, for the first time is to actually create human embryonic stem cells, without destroying the embryo itself.” When asked by the moderator whether this technique will permit researchers to get around the funding restrictions imposed by President Bush, Lanza answers: “Well, as you know, the president objects to the fact that you would be sacrificing one life to save another, and in this instance there is no harm to the embryo that we’re biopsying.” As the world should know by now, this is pure balderdash.

The complete fallout from this fiasco is not yet known. But there are a few lessons we can learn from what has already transpired. Here are three:

1. Advanced Cell Technology has no credibility: As I wrote in the Weekly Standard, this is at least the fourth time that ACT has generated profoundly misleading media stories about its supposed scientific breakthroughs—only to have them discredited or revealed as substantially overblown. This time, however, some of the world’s most widely read journalists were deceived into writing bad stories because ACT and Nature issued misleading press releases. Journalists don’t like to be made fools. Thus, it is doubtful that ACT will ever again enjoy the kind of free publicity it has been able to generate in the past by hyping the results of its experiments.

2. The media is utterly obsessed with overturning President Bush’s embryonic stem cell federal funding policy: Why did this arcane science story receive such high-profile and ubiquitous coverage? And why have many of these same outlets been so subdued in walking the now discredited story back? One reason and one reason only: ACT’s supposed breakthrough was perceived as undermining President Bush’s embryonic stem cell funding restrictions.

Most of the Fourth Estate fervently believes that President Bush’s stem cell policy is responsible for undermining science and depriving sick people of cures. This is the prism through which all stories about stem cell research are analyzed. Thus, stories that would seem to support the wisdom of Bush’s policy—such as the many advances in adult stem cell research in human studies—are underplayed or ignored, while embryonic stem cell-boosting news is often hyped to the hilt. With this as the context, the media’s exaggerated coverage, and subsequent refusal to adequately correct the record, becomes easy to understand.

3. Science is in danger of devolving into a special interest: ACT’s deception has cast klieg lights on a cancer that is corroding the foundation of science: As Big Biotech and its politicized allies among the science intelligentsia seek desperately to destroy the Bush funding policy in order to garner hundreds of millions in taxpayer dollars, scientists are acting increasingly like special interest lobbyists who are more than willing to twist the truth to gain access to the public trough. This intense politicization of science threatens to erode the public’s trust in the entire science sector.

Ethics aside, Lanza’s published paper incrementally advanced scientific knowledge by proving that under the right circumstances, embryonic stem cells could be derived from very early embryos. This is not the same thing as generating stem cells without destroying embryos, a feat that has not yet been—and may never be—accomplished. But incremental experiments do not make international headlines or substantially undermine President Bush’s stem cell funding policy. And thus was a journalistic debacle born.

Wesley J. Smith is a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute and a special consultant to the Center for Bioethics and Culture. His current book is Consumer’s Guide to a Brave New World.

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Celebs Set to Air TV Ads in Response to Fox’s Controversial Stem Cell Campaign (Foxnews, 061026)

Actor Michael J. Fox shakes hands as he joins Tammy Duckworth, the Democratic candidate for the U.S. House Tuesday.

Missouri became the national battleground Wednesday in the embryonic stem cell research debate, as celebrity opponents of a state amendment — including a World Series starting pitcher — said they would air a commercial during the game in response to an ad in which actor Michael J. Fox graphically displays the symptoms of his Parkinson’s disease.

The minute-long ad opposing Amendment 2, a Missouri ballot initiative that would protect stem cell research, features St. Louis Cardinals pitcher Jeff Suppan, who is scheduled to start Wednesday night’s Game 4 against the Detroit Tigers.

Arizona Cardinals quarterback Kurt Warner, Kansas City Royals player Mike Sweeney and actors Patricia Heaton of TV’s “Everybody Loves Raymond,” and Jim Caviezel, who portrayed Jesus in “The Passion of the Christ” also are featured in the ad.

“Amendment 2 claims it bans human cloning, but in the 2,000 words you don’t read, it makes cloning a constitutional right,” Suppan says in the commercial. “Don’t be deceived.”

The ad comes in response to a series of controversial 30-second Fox ads, in which he asks voters to support various Democratic candidates and legislation backing embryonic stem cell research.

Those ads ignited a firestorm Tuesday when conservative talk-show commentator Rush Limbaugh told his listeners that the TV and movie star was “either off his medication or acting.”

In the ads, Fox, 45, who was diagnosed with Parkinson’s in 1991 and went public with the disease in 1998, shakes and rocks uncontrollably as he directly addresses the camera, making no effort to hide the effects of his disease.

Fox’s Missouri ad asks voters to support Democratic Senate hopeful Claire McCaskill, who is campaigning to unseat Republican incumbent Jim Talent.

McCaskill supports the Missouri embryonic stem cell research amendment, while Talent is opposed.

Limbaugh weighed in on the Fox ad during his broadcast Tuesday.

“He is exaggerating the effects of the disease,” Limbaugh told his listeners. “He’s moving all around and shaking and it’s purely an act. ... This is really shameless of Michael J. Fox. Either he didn’t take his medication or he’s acting.”

In addition to backing McCaskill, Fox’s ads have been airing in support of Rep. Benjamin L. Cardin, who is running for the Senate in Maryland, and Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle.

Fox also was planning to appear at events for Sen. Robert Menendez of New Jersey and Tammy Duckworth, a candidate for Congress from Illinois.

In the ad supporting McCaskill, which by Tuesday night had been viewed more than 1 million times on YouTube.com, Fox tells voters, “What you do in Missouri matters to millions of Americans. Americans like me.”

“All stem cell research is legal today in Missouri,” Limbaugh countered. “Jim Talent does not seek to criminalize it, as Michael J. Fox asserts in his television commercial. The truth is, Amendment 2 would put human cloning in the Missouri Constitution. Michael J. Fox is participating in this disinformation campaign.”

In addition to providing state constitutional protections for embryonic stem cell research, Amendment 2 also would ban cloning and egg harvesting for stem cell research.

Limbaugh asserts, however, that language in the bill — a reference to somatic cell nuclear transfer — is just another term for cloning.

“The fine print creates a right to do somatic cell nuclear transfer which is the scientific term for cloning, the same method used to clone Dolly the sheep!” Limbaugh charged.

Talent, the Republican incumbent, opposes the amendment on the grounds that he equates embryonic stem cell research with human cloning.

Talent’s spokesman, Rich Chrismer, told USA Today that Fox’s statements were “false,” and said Talent supports “stem cell research that doesn’t involve cloning or destroying a human embryo.”

“Democrats cannot look you in the eye and say, ‘Here’s what we’re for’ and convince you to vote for it. They have to trick you, and the Michael J. Fox commercial in Missouri and Maryland is just the latest incarnation,” Limbaugh charged.

“Ludicrous,” is how John Boockvar, a neurosurgeon and assistant professor at Weill Cornell Medical Center at New York’s Presbyterian Hospital, described Limbaugh’s claim that Fox was acting.

Parkinson’s disease is a chronic, progressive disorder of the central nervous system that leaves patients increasingly unable to control their movements.

Boockvar said those with Parkinson’s have “on” and “off” spells.

There’s no question that Fox, a popular TV and movie actor who also campaigned for John Kerry in the 2004 presidential race, is uniquely suited as a spokesman for embryonic stem cell research, which some scientists believe could aid in discovering treatments or cures to Parkinson’s and other diseases.

“I’m a one-issue guy. I’m about stem cells,” Fox told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch earlier this month during a campaign appearance for McCaskill that raised almost $200,000 for the state auditor’s senate bid.

“If there is one single disease that has the highest potential for benefit from stem cell research,” Boockvar said, “it’s Parkinson’s.”

“The reason that he’s powerful is that he’s comparatively young,” says Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director for the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg Public Policy Center. “As a result, a lot of people in that age range can look at him and say, ‘If that can happen to him, it can happen to me.’”

The risk in airing the ads is that they could appear as using Fox’s hopes for a cure for political gain, Jamieson said.

Limbaugh made a similar point on his Tuesday program.

“I don’t care what anybody says; it is unseemly, it is exploitative, and it is downright mean to mislead people who suffer from horrible diseases that there is a cure around the corner — if only Republicans could be defeated,” Limbaugh said.

Larry Sabato, director of the Centre for Politics at the University of Virginia, told the BBC that Fox’s intervention could help decide the race.

“If a tiny ad can change votes, this one ought to,” he said.

“This is real. He’s not playing a guy with Parkinson’s — he is a guy with Parkinson’s.”

In 2000, the “Spin City” and “Back to the Future” star quit full-time acting because of his symptoms and founded the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research, which has raised about $80 million for research and education.

Fox has since acted sporadically in smaller roles, such as in a several-episode guest appearance earlier this year on ABC’s “Boston Legal,” playing a business tycoon with cancer. For that role and others, Fox generally has sought to control his movements, though his illness was evident.

He told The Associated Press in January that one long scene was physically taxing and that because of Parkinson’s disease, he “can’t show up with a game plan.”

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Spin City: Michael J. Fox isn’t telling the whole truth about stem cells in those ads. (Weekly Standard, 061026)

MICHAEL J. FOX is making a splash on television sets across Missouri, appearing in a stem cell commercial attacking Senator Jim Talent during Game 1 of the World Series. According to Fox, “Senator Jim Talent opposes expanding stem cell research. Senator Talent even wanted to criminalize the science that gives us a chance for hope.” Of course Senator Talent has been a consistent supporter of increased funding for stem cell research that doesn’t involve the destruction of human embryos and has only sought to criminalize human cloning, but one needn’t let the facts get in the way. (And it is worth mention that Missouri has a bill on the State ballot that would allow the cloning of human beings and then require their destruction prior to gestation.)

Fox has also just released a similar ad attacking Michael Steele in his race for the vacant Senate seat in Maryland. The reality, however, is that the only person in that race to have voted against stem cell research is Steele’s opponent, Ben Cardin.

In four other states, ads are attacking congressional Republicans who voted against federal funding for embryonic stem cell research. The ads, paid for by the Democratic group Majority Action, attack Representatives Chris Chocola, Thelma Drake, Don Sherwood, and James Walsh. They all follow the same format: three healthy citizens tell of impending medical doom and how only embryonic stem cell research will save them. They conclude with these startling words: “Stem cell

research could save lives, maybe yours or your family’s, someone you love. Only Congressman Walsh said no. How come he thinks he gets to decide who lives and who dies; who’s he?” (Apparently the irony of those who favor embryo-destruction accusing others of deciding “who lives and who dies” was lost on the ad’s producers.)

These ads are repulsive. They play on the hopes and fears of million of Americans who are suffering from debilitating diseases, are caring for loved ones, and yearn for something, anything, to hold onto. They manipulate the public’s emotions in the worst imaginable ways, promising them cures that are, in fact, quite uncertain, and pressuring them to forgo their own ethical convictions.

When emotions have subsided and right reasoning returns, one readily grasps three solid reasons to reject appeals for governmental funding of current methods of embryonic stem cell research: First, current methods are unethical as they destroy human beings in the embryonic stage of development. Second, embryonic stem cell research—contrary to all the hype claiming otherwise—doesn’t show any signs of success in the near term, while adult stem cell research is curing diseases now. And third, methods of embryonic stem cell research may soon be available that will not require any human embryo destruction. That is, embryo destruction isn’t only unethical: it’s likely unnecessary.

The principled objection to current methods of embryonic stem cell research is that they all require the destruction of human embryos. Human embryos, as a matter of scientific fact, are human beings at a very early stage of development. For one to deny this basic biological truth isn’t simply to be wrong, but to be unreasonable. The science is clear. While sperm and egg are both genetically and functionally parts of the adult parents, when a sperm fertilizes an egg and the respective pronuclei fuse; a genetically and functionally new, distinct, and unique human organism comes into existence. This embryonic human being possesses all of the internal resources necessary to guide him through further stages of development. The term embryo is a way of classifying the early human being, just as the terms fetus, newborn, infant, child, adolescent, adult, and octogenarian all refer to human beings at other stages. And even if the embryo is brought into existence by a process of cloning (for the unspoken reality of embryonic stem cell research is the necessity of cloning human embryos from the patient in order to have a genetic match and avoid auto-immune rejection), it is still the same exact biological organism as an embryo created by fertilization (if it weren’t, the cloning procedure wouldn’t be considered successful).

Those who are willing to accept these biological realities argue that the direct and intentional killing of human embryos isn’t unethical because human embryos lack the requisite dignity to have a right to life. This argument, however, is doomed to fail. The argument typically runs that since human embryos aren’t self-aware and can’t think or even feel pleasure or pain, they don’t have a personal life that would merit protection. Animal life alone isn’t enough to warrant moral status; one needs higher mental personal life. But, if simply being a member of the human species is not enough to merit full and equal moral status, one will be hard pressed to explain why newborn babies posses a right to life that other (non-human) animals do not. Newborn babies do not exhibit any higher mental life than other animals. That is, a newborn human baby behaves in ways solely “animal” and not “personal.” In fact, it isn’t until at least age two that human babies begin to display any outward signs of a personal life. So, for someone to draw a moral line any place prior to age two would be arbitrary, as the frequent indicators all fail: why does the complete formation of a brain count, but not the incipient formation, for example? Why does incipient formation count, but not the formation of the precursor of the brain? Why does the precursor count, but not the precursor to the precursor, all the way back to the one-celled zygote that each of us began life as?

The reason we treat the one-celled human zygote as the subject of profound worth and dignity is because it does possess the radical (root) capacity for higher mental functions, even if that basic ability is unexercised and incipient. The human embryo, unlike the chimp embryo or the dog embryo or any other embryo or cellular structure, is unique in possessing the internal information and active disposition to develop himself into an animal with linguistic-intellectual powers (“personal” life). In other words, human beings possess rational capacities in virtue of the type of animal they are. A human being, as opposed to any other animal, is the type of being which has the potential for higher mental acts and a personal life, even though at various times those abilities may not be apparent for various reasons—for example, because one is asleep, ignorant, young, sick, or old. But none of these physical or mental attributes—consciousness, youth, ignorance, health, or age—can alter the intrinsic dignity of an individual human.

Besides the moral objection to embryo-destructive stem cell research, there are other reasons to be appalled by these recent ads, for there is good reason to be skeptical about the prospects of technological success for embryonic stem cell research. When an embryonic stem cell is created from a cell of the early embryo, that cell—left in the embryo of which it was a part—would have produced many different tissue types as the cells descended from it progressed through stages of higher specialization. That is, cells in the early embryo are precursors to entire biological systems, and not merely particular tissue types. And scientists are having significant difficulty forcing them to behave in other ways. When scientists try to manipulate them into embryonic stem cells (ESC), they tend to cause potentially dangerous tumors.

Dr. James Sherley, associate professor of biological engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), explained this just a few weeks ago: “When you put them [ESC] in an environment where they can grow and develop, they make lots of different kind of tissues. This tumor formation property is an inherent feature of the cells. And all you have to do is simply inject them into an animal tissue—this happens at very high efficiency.” These same conclusions were echoed just this week in a report in the journal Nature Medicine. The Washington Post summarized the conclusion aptly: “Injecting human embryonic stem cells into the brains of Parkinson’s disease patients may cause tumors to form, U.S. researchers reported on Sunday.” (Of course, Parkinson’s disease is precisely what Michael J. Fox is suffering from and claiming embryonic stem cells will cure.) Currently, there are no solutions to this problem on the horizon. As Sherley put it: “And although some might say we can solve the tumor problem down the road, that’s equivalent to saying we can solve the cancer problem, and we may, but that’s a long time coming.”

If you doubt this is the case, one need only look to the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM)—the multi-billion dollar institute dedicated to embryonic stem-cell research and paid for by California tax-payers—and their recent proposed strategic report. The report states: “it is unlikely that CIRM will be able to fully develop stem cell therapy for routine clinical use during the ten years of the plan. Within that time span, however, we will be able to advance therapies for several diseases to early stage clinical trials, and to have therapies for other diseases in the pipeline.” For the next ten years, the best they can promise is “early stage clinical trials” and therapies “in the pipeline.” The Mercury News reports that the Institute’s president, Zach Hall, “predicted it might take 15 years before the institute’s research results in a medical product.” It is probably for these reasons that private investors have been so reluctant to invest in embryonic stem cell research, thus creating the greater need for governmental funding. If embryonic stem cell research really could deliver all that it promised, one has to wonder why there isn’t a mad rush to invest now.

Meanwhile, adult stem cell therapies are healing patients now—despite the fact that they receive only a fraction of the funding. Professor Sherley argues that adult stem cells present greater promise for medicinal cures because they are already specialized into the tissue type needed, and—because they are harvested directly from the patient in need of therapy—they have the same genotype and thus avoid the risk of immune rejection (without the need for cloning or embryo-destruction). As Sherley put it: “If you have a problem with your liver, you need a liver stem cell, you don’t need an embryonic stem cell.” That is, while the best-case estimates put embryonic stem cell therapies at least 15 years away (if they ever arrive), adult stem cell therapies are here now. And they present none of the ethical dilemmas of embryonic stem cells. This is the research that should receive generous government funding.

Lastly, even if one is convinced that embryonic stem cell research is the best hope, one need not embrace human embryo destruction. If we are willing to wait just a little while longer, it appears that it may soon be possible to directly create embryonic-type (pluripotent) stem cells without creating, using, or destroying human embryos. Science itself may yet resolve this ethical impasse. There are currently two proposals on the table to accomplish just this. The first procedure, proposed by William Hurlbut, professor of Neurological Science at Stanford, is known as Altered Nuclear Transfer Oocyte Assisted Reprogramming (ANT-OAR). Garnering broad support both from the scientific community (from heavyweight stem cell researchers like Markus Grompe, director of the Oregon Stem Cell Center and a member of the board of the International Society for Stem Cell Research) and from the pro-life and Catholic communities, many see it as the best path (in addition to the highly successful adult stem cell therapies) for moving forward.

The second proposal relies upon dedifferentiation (reprogramming) of an adult somatic cell back to a state of pluripotency. As the human being matures, his cells differentiate as they become highly specialized tissue types. Scientists are now working to dedifferentiate these adult cells and return them to a state prior to specialization. This procedure is much like ANT-OAR, but seeks to reprogram a somatic cell without any nuclear transfer and thus without need for any ova. Further research into both of these procedures should be met with broad support.

It is unfortunate that our highly politicized culture has created an atmosphere where honest discussion of the prospects and ethics of various methods of stem cell research is impossible and these political ads have brought that discourse to a new low. For not only do they play on the hopes and fears of millions of suffering Americans, but they provide them with false information while attacking those who support ethical research that shows great promise.

Ryan T. Anderson is a Junior Fellow at First Things. He is also the Assistant Director of the Program on Bioethics and Human Dignity at the Witherspoon Institute of Princeton, NJ.

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Patricia Heaton: Not Everyone Loves Michael J. Fox (Foxnews, 061026)

Heaton: Not Everyone Loves Michael J. Fox

Patricia Heaton — who won an Emmy for her work on “Everyone Loves Raymond” — is taking sides in the stem-cell research debate.

She’s put herself on the opposite side of Michael J. Fox, the much-beloved actor who’s been battling Parkinson’s disease since 1991 and is a firm supporter of embryonic stem-cell research.

Heaton is now appearing in a commercial intended to persuade Missouri voters to vote against Amendment 2 on their ballot.

Fox, in his own commercial, urges voters to support the measure and Democrat Claire McCaskill, who is running for U.S. Senate against the incumbent, Jim Talent, a Republican who opposes embryonic stem-cell research.

Many scientists believe stem cell research could lead to cures for Parkinson’s and many other illnesses. Amendment 2 would constitutionally protect any embryonic stem cell research in Missouri that falls within federal law.

Heaton’s costars in the commercial are Jim Caviezel, who starred as Jesus in “The Passion of the Christ,” and three Missouri sports stars — St. Louis Cardinals pitcher Jeff Suppan, former St. Louis Rams quarterback Kurt Warner (now with the Arizona Cardinals) and Kansas City Royals designated hitter Mike Sweeney.

How ballplayers wound up in this commercial is one thing. But for Heaton, who plays on the same field as Fox — Hollywood and TV — it’s another. Suffice it to say, Fox’s many friends and supporters in Hollywood — from Steven Spielberg to the head of each network and more — know what the former “Spin City” star has been through since his diagnosis in 1991.

But it’s what Fox has done with his illness that is most impressive. Since 2001, according to federal records, his Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research has raised an astonishing $80 million for research. Unlike most celebrity charities, the Fox Foundation has a Web site that even links to its most recent federal tax filing, and the filing is current.

This is an amazing achievement, considering how young the foundation is. Fox has turned his illness into something incredibly positive; the group even runs in the black, meaning its income is greater than its expenses. Last year the group finished with $7 million in the bank after giving away $17 million.

Heaton has been a relatively unknown political ideologist to most of her fans. My guess is they will be surprised to learn about her as she attacks Fox and repudiates his claims.

Six months ago I reported that Heaton — who then was campaigning to join ABC’s talk show “The View” as a correspondent — was honorary chairwoman of the group Feminists for Life. Jane Roberts, wife of Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, is a consultant. Their slogan is “Refuse to Choose.”

Heaton has absolutely made a choice. The question now is whether her stance in Missouri will affect her standing in Hollywood.

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The Stem Cell Hard Sell: Missouri’s clone wars. (Weekly Standard, 061106)

by Duncan Currie

St. Louis

MICHAEL J. FOX was right—at least partially. “What you do in Missouri,” Fox said in his now famous TV ad, “matters to millions of Americans—Americans like me.” He never mentioned Amend ment 2. He never mentioned the word “cloning.” He merely endorsed Democratic Senate candidate Claire McCaskill, the state auditor, and spoke against GOP incumbent Jim Talent. But the subtext was clear: Vote for McCaskill—and while you’re at it, vote “yes” on Amendment 2.

“As you might know, I care deeply about stem cell research,” said Fox, a longtime and visibly suffering Parkinson’s patient, in a spot that first aired during the World Series. “In Missouri you can elect Claire McCaskill, who shares my hope for cures. Unfortunately, Senator Jim Talent opposes expanding stem cell research. Senator Talent even wanted to criminalize the science that gives us a chance for hope.”

This was misleading. Talent once cosponsored a Senate bill to ban human cloning, but then withdrew his name last February, fearing it might imperil a new form of research called “altered nuclear transfer,” which can yield embryonic stem cells without destroying human embryos. Talent supports that research—indeed, he supports any form of stem cell research that leaves embryos intact and doesn’t entail cloning. While Talent opposes Amendment 2, the failure of that amendment would not “criminalize” anything.

But Fox was correct to imply that the fate of Amendment 2 will reverberate far beyond Missouri. What is Amendment 2? Depends on whom you ask. Supporters insist it would write a ban on human cloning into the Missouri constitution and codify an ethical framework for stem cell research. Opponents claim it would actually legalize cloning despite appearing to outlaw it. Who’s right?

Donn Rubin, chairman of the amendment-backing Missouri Coalition for Lifesaving Cures, puts it bluntly: “There really is no shame among the opponents.” Last week, in a testy radio debate on Missouri’s KWMU, Rubin stressed that Amendment 2 would prevent the creation of “Dolly the human” and ensure that any form of “somatic cell nuclear transfer” (SCNT) allowed under federal law would also be permissible in Missouri. The urgency of the amendment, he added, stemmed from recent efforts in the state legislature to prohibit SCNT.

According to Rubin, the “reprehensible” and “drastic” bills being mulled in Jefferson City would penalize “doctors and patients” and “throw them in jail with drug dealers and arsonists.” Indeed, he said, by criminalizing medical research, the anti-SCNT legislation would mandate that a cured patient’s first steps “out of a wheelchair” would be “into a jail cell.”

His foil, Cathy Ruse, spokeswoman for Missourians Against Human Cloning, treated these remarks with bemused derision. “That is hysterical,” she said. “No one wants to jail doctors and patients.” Remember, said Ruse, “Embryonic stem cell research is already legal today—it’s happening across the state.” Amendment 2 would not change that. But it would carve out a constitutional right to perform SCNT—which, according to Ruse, is the same thing as cloning.

That gets to the crux of the debate: What qualifies as “cloning”? And does somatic cell nuclear transfer fall under that rubric? In SCNT, a nucleus taken from a body (somatic) cell, which contains the DNA of an organism, is transferred into an egg cell that has had its own nucleus removed, thus creating an ovum that is a genetic replica of the original body cell. This egg, if implanted and brought to term, would produce a cloned organism.

The text of Amendment 2 adds up to nearly 2,000 words. Slogging through it can be headache-inducing, given the dense biomedical jargon. But it states a few points quite plainly: “Any stem cell research permitted under federal law may be conducted in Missouri, and any stem cell therapies and cures permitted under federal law may be provided to patients in Missouri.” Also: “No person may clone or attempt to clone a human being.” So far, no disputes.

But then comes the definition of “cloning”: “to implant in a uterus or attempt to implant in a uterus anything other than the product of fertilization of an egg of a human female by a sperm of a human male for the purpose of initiating a pregnancy that could result in the creation of a human fetus, or the birth of a human being.” In other words, cloning is equated with implantation.

SCNT is in fact the first, necessary step in cloning. But as long as the egg it produces is kept in a test tube, Amendment 2 declares that it is not a clone. The embryos created with this technique are a source of human stem cells, and the right to create them is the point of Amendment 2—hence, it refers to “any scientific or medical research involving human stem cells derived from in vitro fertilization blastocysts or from somatic cell nuclear transfer.”

Most major scientific organizations strongly favor SCNT—including the National Academy of Sciences, the National Institutes of Health, the American Medical Association, and the International Society for Stem Cell Research—but also define it as “therapeutic cloning.” According to the Association of American Medical Colleges, SCNT “involves removing the nucleus of an unfertilized egg cell, replacing it with the material from the nucleus of a ‘somatic cell’ (a skin, heart, or nerve cell, for example), and stimulating this cell to begin dividing. Once the cell begins dividing, stem cells can be extracted 5-6 days later and used for research.”

“It’s not cloning a person,” Rubin told me last week. “Our initiative bans any attempt to do that.” True. But the relevant questions then become: Must a human embryo be implanted in a uterus for it to be a “clone”? Or does fusing the nucleus of an “egg cell” and the nucleus of a “somatic cell” amount to creating a “cloned” embryo? Will voters recognize the difference?

On November 7, Missourians will be able to read a brief “fair ballot” summary of Amendment 2 in the voting booth. The summary totals nearly 140 words. Among other things, it tells voters that a “yes” vote will “ban human cloning or attempted cloning.” In 2005, Missourians Against Human Cloning sued to have the ballot language changed, arguing it was deceptive. A court ruled against them, finding the summary fair, accurate, and impartial.

It has thus been an uphill battle for Amendment 2 foes. The Missouri Coalition for Lifesaving Cures has spent nearly $30 million supporting the initiative. They get succor from the state’s influential science lobby. Most Democrats favor Amendment 2. So do Governor Matt Blunt, a popular Republican, and former GOP senator John Danforth, an honorary co-chairman of the Cures coalition. Danforth has said the amendment “will save lives” but also preserve “the sanctity of life.”

By far the biggest financial backers of the coalition have been James and Virginia Stowers, two cancer survivors who used their fortune to establish the nonprofit Stowers Institute for Medical Research in Kansas City. According to a study trumpeted on the coalition’s website, “the planned ‘Phase II’ expansion of the Stowers Institute . . . will only go forward in Missouri if Amendment 2 passes and ensures that the Institute will be able to conduct any stem cell research allowed under federal law.”

Though the amendment has polled extremely well since its introduction, critics have lately narrowed the gap. Missouri is, after all, a red state with a hefty pro-life movement. After the Michael J. Fox clip aired, Missourians Against Human Clon ing rolled out their own celebrity-filled ad, which included St. Louis Cardinals pitcher Jeff Suppan, NFL quarterback Kurt Warner, actress Patricia Heaton, and Passion of the Christ star James Caviezel. This group also claims the amendment will hurt women by encouraging an exploitative market in human eggs.

On both sides, the media blitz shows no signs of abating. Amendment 2 may or may not deserve passage. But let’s hope Missourians at least understand what they’re voting for—a constitutional rubber stamp for therapeutic cloning.

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Missouri cloning industry trails in vote totals: Pro-life groups had campaigned against constitutional ‘research’ right (WorldNetDaily, 061108)

[The measure eventually was passed by a narrow margin.]

Missouri voters were giving a “thumbs-down” to a proposal that would enshrine the right to clone embryos for “research” in the state constitution in the state’s early returns.

Officials with a group campaigning against the proposal said the “no” votes were leading the “yes” votes by 50,000 early in the night.

Spokesman Sam Lee, a longtime pro-life activist and lobbyist, told WND that the coalition is pleased so far.

“We’re pleased that this represents the hard work of thousands of people to defeat this attempt to put human cloning in our constitution,” he said. “We’re hopeful enough Missouri voters were not fooled by the deception of supporters of Amendment 2.”

A television ad prepared by Missourians Against Human Cloning featured “The Passion of the Christ” star Jim Caviezel and other celebrities asking voters not to be deceived by the pro-amendment advertising.

The 2,000-word proposal was billed as a “cloning ban” by its supporters. However, the document itself shows the only human cloning it bans is the actual production of a living human being from a clone, and it actually enshrines in the state constitution the right to clone human embryos for “research” purposes.

Jaci Winship, spokeswoman for the campaign, said that besides Caviezel, Patricia Heaton, of “Everybody Loves Raymond” and Kansas City Royals’ Mike Sweeney opposed the cloning plan.

“These are people who have been wanting to be involved, wanting to know what they could to do help,” Winship told WND. “They pulled this together, and they speak about Amendment 2 in their own words.”

Actor Michael J. Fox, who suffers from Parkinson’s disease, had promoted the cloning research as a potential for phenomenal cures for many diseases, but later said he didn’t actually read the proposal and didn’t know what it did.

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Missouri Voters Narrowly Approve Stem Cell Ballot Measure (Christian Post, 061108)

ST. LOUIS (AP) - Strong support in urban areas of a state constitutional amendment protecting stem cell research offset widespread opposition in rural counties as the measure narrowly passed with just over 51% of the vote.

Preliminary results showed the amendment winning support from 51.1% of the electorate with 98% of precincts reporting, a margin of about 46,800 votes.

While majorities of voters in 90 of the state’s 114 counties rejected the measure, 13 counties and the city of St. Louis had enough votes to push the amendment over the top.

Heavy support in St. Louis, Kansas City and those two cities’ suburbs proved critical to the ballot measure’s success.

In the city of St. Louis, amendment supporters outnumbered opponents by about 31,000. In St. Louis County, the margin of victory was 55,000.

And in Jackson County, which encompasses much of Kansas City, the margin of victory nearly reached 48,000, with 99.2% of precincts reporting results.

In St. Louis, stem cell supporters in the black community mobilized 10 vans and a recreational vehicle to transport voters to the polls and encourage residents to vote, organizers said.

“Stem cell research is important to the state of Missouri as a whole, but in particular to the African-American community,” said the Rev. B.T. Rice, pastor of New Horizons Christian Church in St. Louis.

Rice noted that illnesses such as diabetes and heart disease - two of the many ailments supporters suggest might benefit from the still-experimental research technique - disproportionately affect blacks.

The amendment, known as the Missouri Stem Cell Research and Cures Initiative, guarantees that any federally allowed stem cell research and treatments can occur in Missouri, including research using human embryos.

Its significance is largely symbolic: Embryonic stem cell research is already occurring in Missouri, although on a limited basis. Supporters cited several unsuccessful attempts by some state lawmakers to criminalize the procedure as impetus for the measure.

And while jubilant supporters celebrated their victory early Wednesday at a Washington University conference center in St. Louis, they also predicted that the statewide vote won’t be the last word on the disputed research technique.

“Now we will have different battles to fight in the Legislature,” said Donn Rubin, chairman of the Missouri Coalition for Lifesaving Cures, a group of university and business leaders, scientists and patient advocates who supported the amendment.

Jaci Winship, executive director of Missourians Against Human Cloning, said early Wednesday that the group was still assessing its options. Shortly after 1 a.m. CST, amendment opponents announced they would reconvene later Wednesday morning after more vote totals become known.

The ballot measure was the only one nationally in Tuesday’s election to directly address the disputed research technique. The victory in Missouri could have implications far beyond the Show-Me State.

Stem cell supporters in Florida, Georgia and Kentucky were gearing up for similar ballot measures in the 2008 elections, depending upon the outcome in Missouri. Elsewhere, stem cell research emerged as a contentious campaign topic in the Wisconsin, Michigan, California, Maryland and Connecticut gubernatorial races.

While supporters portrayed the ballot measure as nonpartisan throughout the yearlong campaign, many backers monitoring election returns at Washington University simultaneously cheered on nationwide gains by Democrats. That includes a victory by Democratic State Auditor Claire McCaskill, who unseated incumbent Republican U.S. Sen. Jim Talent.

Though the technique is unproven, advocates of embryonic stem cell research hope it will eventually generate treatment and cures for spinal cord injuries, diabetes, Alzheimer’s and a host of other diseases.

The five-page amendment bans human cloning, but implicitly allows a technique referred to by stem cell scientists as therapeutic cloning.

Also known as somatic cell nuclear transfer, the technique involves replacing the nucleus of an unfertilized human egg with the nucleus from a skin or nerve cell. The altered egg then is stimulated to grow in a lab dish, with researchers removing the resulting stem cells - and sacrificing the donor embryo in the process.

Outspent by nearly $27 million in one of Missouri’s costliest political campaigns on record, amendment opponents relied upon a grass-roots effort led by appeals from the pulpit and anti-abortion activists.

Their message: Despite the vast promise of embryonic stem cell research, the destruction of a human embryo, like abortion, is an assault on a human life that begins at conception.

Opponents also cited what they called deceptive ballot language that purported to ban human cloning while actually allow another form of cloning - namely SCNT. They also raised questions about the methods that could be used to obtain donor eggs through payments to poor and vulnerable women.

Although the connection between Democratic supporters and amendment backers was visible Tuesday night at Washington University, the amendment also won the support of prominent Republicans such as Gov. Matt Blunt and former U.S. Sen. John Danforth.

Besides drawing a distinction between reproductive and therapeutic cloning, the two political leaders cited the considerable economic benefits Missouri might reap as a state supportive of cutting-edge research.

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Code of Silence: Another source of useful stem cells has been found—and the media and the cloning crowd are trying keep it quiet. (Weekly Standard, 070208)

by Michael Fumento

WHILE THE DEMOCRATIC-CONTROLLED House voted 253-174 to expand federal funding for embryonic stem-cell research, it fell far short of the 290 votes needed to override a virtually guaranteed presidential veto. A tragedy for victims of everything from Alzheimer’s to warts? Not at all. Each year there are stunning breakthroughs with adult stem cells, and 2007 has already brought its first.

Adult stem cells cure and treat more 70 diseases and are involved in almost 1,300 human clinical trials. Scientists also keep discovering that adult stem cells are capable of creating a wider variety of mature cells. Perhaps the most promising of these was announced in the January issue of Nature Biotechnology.

Anthony Atala, director of the Institute for Regenerative Medicine at Wake Forest University School of Medicine, reported that stem cells in the amniotic fluid that fills the sac surrounding the fetus may be just as versatile as embryonic stem cells. At the same time they maintain all the advantages that have made adult stem cells such a success.

This has caused great consternation on the part of those seeking increased taxpayer embryonic stem cell funds. The reason is that there are currently no practical applications for this type of cell. There hasn’t even been a single clinical trial involving them. Researchers admit we won’t have approved embryonic stem cell treatments for at least 10 years.

One advantage of embryonic stem cells has been that most types of adult stem cells cannot be multiplied outside of the body for very long, while embryonic ones may replicate in the lab indefinitely. But Atala’s new amniotic stem cells grow as fast outside the body as embryonic stem cells (doubling every 36 hours), and he’s now been growing the same cell line for two years, with no indication of slowing.

That leaves embryonic stem cells with only one possible advantage—potential. Embryonic stem cells can be “differentiated” into all three “germ layers,” or subtypes of cell. That means they should be able to be made into all of the 220 types of cells in humans. For a long while, adult stem cells were believed to be only capable of differentiation to a limited number of mature cells, depending on the type of adult stem cell with which you start. For example, a marrow cell could become any number of types of marrow or blood cells, but it couldn’t become a muscle cell. That’s a different germ layer.

Yet it’s been virtually a state secret that for over five years researchers, beginning with a team headed by physician Catherine Verfaillie of the University of Minnesota Stem Cell Institute, have been reporting numerous types of adult stem cells (she used those from marrow) that in the lab could form mature cells from three germ layers. Experiments around the world have clearly shown that adult stem cells from one germ layer can be converted into those of another in a living human, such as those that turned marrow cells into heart muscle and blood vessels in live humans.

That said, amniotic stem cells may be the most easily differentiated of all—as well as among the easiest to extract in large amounts. Indeed, they are routinely recovered with a hypodermic needle during amniocentesis. While it’s widely believed that this procedure slightly increases the chance of miscarriage, a sizable study last November of 35,000 women who underwent mid-trimester testing found “no significant difference in loss rates between those undergoing amniocentesis and those not undergoing amniocentesis.”

THERE ARE OVER four million births each year in the United States, yet Atala calculates that merely 100,000 amniotic stem cell specimens could supply 99% of the U.S. population’s needs for perfect matches for transplants. (That assumes a perfect match is even needed.) About 700,000 amniocentesis procedures are performed in the United States and Western Europe each year.

Some embryonic stem cell researchers have downplayed the Atala findings. The work will “still require a lot of replication from other groups before they can be conclusive,” Stephen Minger, an embryonic stem cell scientist identified only as a “lecturer in stem-cell biology” told a British newspaper. “They have only shown that these particular stem cells can turn into a couple of different types of other stem cells. I would say that a hell of a lot more work is required.” Other media outlets would say the same. Newsweek International claimed, “Many scientists are quick to emphasize that comprehensive human trials are still many years away.”

The New York Times refused even to allow people to read between the lines—they simply never reported the news about Atala’s work. When a reader complained to the “Public Editor,” an online ombudsman, about the omission, the Times responded that its genetics reporter, Nicholas Wade, “looked at the Atala paper last week and deemed it a minor development.” Wade said of the paper, “It reports finding ‘multipotent’ stem cells in amniotic fluid. Multipotent means they can’t do as much as bona fide embryonic stem cells (which are called ‘pluripotent’).”

Neither Minger nor Newsweek nor Wade could be more wrong. As Atala told PBS’s Online NewsHour, “We have been able to drive the cell to what we call all three germ layers, which basically means all three major classes of tissues available in the body, from which all cells come from.” I pointed out in a response to the New York Times posting that merely reading the online abstract of the Atala paper indicated the same. Of course, this is the same paper that told readers in 2004 that there were no cures or treatments with adult stem cells. Not 70 cures or treatments, some dating back half a century—none.

It is neither paranoia nor exaggeration to say that the New York Times is engaged in a stem-cell cover-up.

WHAT MAKES all of this worse is that Atala’s work actually is a replication of numerous studies. He’s just taken the research further and pulled his cells from amniotic fluid, whereas others have pulled the identical cells from the placenta. Amniotic and placenta stem cells are the same, as Atala himself noted. And as to human trials being “many years away,” Newsweek is correct only if “years away” means “years ago.” The New England Journal of Medicine carried one paper on a placenta stem cell trial back in 1996 and another paper two years later. There’s been one ongoing clinical trial since 2001 to treat sickle cell anemia. The Washington Post’s Rick Weiss, who has been accused of boosterism for embryonic stem cell research, tried to find a middle ground, saying that “The new [sic] cells are adding credence to an emerging consensus among experts that the popular distinction between embryonic and ‘adult’ stem cells—those isolated from adult bone marrow and other organs—is artificial.”

Actually, what’s “artificial” is the term “adult stem cell,” which worked fine not so long ago when all adult stem cells were all pulled from bone marrow, but is confusing now that they’re being extracted from placentas, amniotic fluid, and umbilical cords, which aren’t exactly “adult” sources. But for discussions both scientific and moral, stem cells can still be broken down between the embryonic and the non-embryonic.

Scientifically, all embryonic stem cells tend to become cancerous; they require permanent, dangerous, immunosuppressive drugs because the body rejects them as foreign; and they are difficult to differentiate into the needed type of mature cells. Non-embryonic stem cells, however, do not become cancerous; they are far less likely to cause rejection (especially the youngest, including umbilical cord and amniotic/placenta); and they have been used therapeutically since the late 1950s (originally for leukemia) because they have the amazing ability to form the right type of mature cell merely upon being injected into a body that needs that type of cell.

It is these biological differences that have held embryonic stem cell research back, not a lack of federal funds.

As stem-cell researcher Malcolm Alison of the University of London told the Daily Mail, the amniotic cells “appear to be at least as malleable as embryonic stem cells but without all the ethical baggage.”

For all the talk over the morality of using human embryos in medicine, perhaps there’s another moral issue at play: Non-embryonic stem cell researchers are already performing miracles, such as growing new heart and liver tissue and treating multiple sclerosis—all in living humans. Yet they struggle to get federal funds for their research. Given the growing number of state initiatives that fund embryonic stem cell, but not non-embryonic stem cell, research and given that overall National Institutes of Health funding increases are unlikely anytime soon, is it truly moral to take away funds from a technology that’s been saving lives for half a century in favor of another technology that promises nothing but “promise”?

Michael Fumento is a D.C.-based health, science, and military writer.

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Is Your Baby Gay? What If You Could Know? What If You Could Do Something About It? (Mohler, 070302)

What if you could know that your unborn baby boy is likely to be sexually attracted to other boys? Beyond that, what if hormonal treatments could change the baby’s orientation to heterosexual? Would you do it? Some scientists believe that such developments are just around the corner.

For some time now, scientists have been looking for a genetic or hormonal cause of sexual orientation. Thus far, no “gay gene” has been found — at least not in terms of incontrovertible and accepted science. Yet, it is now claimed that a growing body of evidence indicates that biological factors may at least contribute to sexual orientation.

The most interesting research along these lines relates to the study of sheep. Scientists at the U.S. Sheep Experiment Station are conducting research into the sexual orientation of sheep through “sexual partner preference testing.” As William Saletan at Slate.com explains:

A bare majority of rams turn out to be heterosexual. One in five swings both ways. About 15% are asexual, and 7% to 10% are gay.

Why so many gay rams? Is it too much socializing with ewes? Same-sex play with other lambs? Domestication? Nope. Those theories have been debunked. Gay rams don’t act girly. They’re just as gay in the wild. And a crucial part of their brains—the “sexually dimorphic nucleus”—looks more like a ewe’s than like a straight ram’s. Gay men have a similar brain resemblance to women. Charles Roselli, the project’s lead scientist, says such research “strongly suggests that sexual preference is biologically determined in animals, and possibly in humans.”

What makes the sheep “sexual partner preference testing” research so interesting is that the same scientists who are documenting the rather surprising sexual behaviors of male sheep think they can also change the sexual orientation of the animals. In other words, finding a biological causation for homosexuality may also lead to the discovery of a “cure” for the same phenomenon.

That’s where the issue gets really interesting. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals [PETA] has called for an end to the research, while tennis star Martina Navratilova called the research “homophobic and cruel” and argued that gay sheep have a “right” to be homosexual. No kidding.

Homosexual activists were among the first to call for (and fund) research into a biological cause of homosexuality. After all, they argued, the discovery of a biological cause would lead to the normalization of homosexuality simply because it would then be seen to be natural, and thus moral.

But now the picture is quite different. Many homosexual activists recognize that the discovery of a biological marker or cause for homosexual orientation could lead to efforts to eliminate the trait, or change the orientation through genetic or hormonal treatments.

Tyler Gray addresses these issues in the current issue of Radar magazine. In “Is Your Baby Gay?,” Gray sets out a fascinating scenario. A woman is told that her unborn baby boy is gay. This woman and her husband consider themselves to be liberal and tolerant of homosexuality. But this is not about homosexuality now; it is about their baby boy. The woman is then told that a hormone patch on her abdomen will “reverse the sexual orientation inscribed in his chromosomes.” The Sunday Times [London] predicts that such a patch should be available for use on humans within the decade. Will she use it?

This question stands at the intersection of so many competing interests. Feminists and political liberals have argued for decades now that a woman should have an unrestricted right to an abortion, for any cause or for no stated cause at all. How can they now complain if women decide to abort fetuses identified as homosexual? This question involves both abortion and gay rights — the perfect moral storm of our times.

Homosexual activists have claimed that sexual orientation cannot be changed. What if a hormone patch during pregnancy will do the job?

As Gray suggests:

In a culture that encourages us to customize everything from our Nikes to our venti skinny lattes, perhaps it is only a matter of time before baby-making becomes just another consumer transaction. Already have a girl? Make this one a boy! Want to impress your boho friends? Make a real statement with lesbian twins!

More to the point, Gray understands that such a development would reshape the abortion and gay-rights debates in America:

Conservatives opposed to both abortion and homosexuality will have to ask themselves whether the public shame of having a gay child outweighs the private sin of terminating a pregnancy (assuming the stigma on homosexuality survives the scientific refutation of the Right’s treasured belief that it is a “lifestyle choice.”) Pro-choice activists won’t be spared either. Will liberal moms who love their hairdressers be as tolerant when faced with the prospect of raising a little stylist of their own? And exactly how pro-choice will liberal abortion-rights activists be when thousands of potential parents are choosing to filter homosexuality right out of the gene pool?

The development of Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis [PDG] is one of the greatest threats to human dignity in our times. These tests are already leading to the abortion of fetuses identified as carrying unwanted genetic markers. The tests can now check for more than 1,300 different chromosomal abnormalities or patterns. With DNA analysis, the genetic factors could be identified right down to hair and eye color and other traits. The logic is all too simple. If you don’t like what you see on the PDG report . . . just abort and start over. Soon, genetic treatments may allow for changing the profile. Welcome to the world of designer babies.

If that happens, how many parents — even among those who consider themselves most liberal — would choose a gay child? How many parents, armed with this diagnosis, would use the patch and change the orientation?

Christians who are committed to think in genuinely Christian terms should think carefully about these points:

1. There is, as of now, no incontrovertible or widely accepted proof that any biological basis for sexual orientation exists.

2. Nevertheless, the direction of the research points in this direction. Research into the sexual orientation of sheep and other animals, as well as human studies, points to some level of biological causation for sexual orientation in at least some individuals.

3. Given the consequences of the Fall and the effects of human sin, we should not be surprised that such a causation or link is found. After all, the human genetic structure, along with every other aspect of creation, shows the pernicious effects of the Fall and of God’s judgment.

4. The biblical condemnation of all homosexual behaviors would not be compromised or mitigated in the least by such a discovery. The discovery of a biological factor would not change the Bible’s moral verdict on homosexual behavior.

5. The discovery of a biological basis for homosexuality would be of great pastoral significance, allowing for a greater understanding of why certain persons struggle with these particular sexual temptations.

6. The biblical basis for establishing the dignity of all persons — the fact that all humans are made in God’s image — reminds us that this means all persons, including those who may be marked by a predisposition toward homosexuality. For the sake of clarity, we must insist at all times that all persons — whether identified as heterosexual, homosexual, lesbian, transsexual, transgendered, bisexual, or whatever — are equally made in the image of God.

7. Thus, we will gladly contend for the right to life of all persons, born and unborn, whatever their sexual orientation. We must fight against the idea of aborting fetuses or human embryos identified as homosexual in orientation.

8. If a biological basis is found, and if a prenatal test is then developed, and if a successful treatment to reverse the sexual orientation to heterosexual is ever developed, we would support its use as we should unapologetically support the use of any appropriate means to avoid sexual temptation and the inevitable effects of sin.

9. We must stop confusing the issues of moral responsibility and moral choice. We are all responsible for our sexual orientation, but that does not mean that we freely and consciously choose that orientation. We sin against homosexuals by insisting that sexual temptation and attraction are predominately chosen. We do not always (or even generally) choose our temptations. Nevertheless, we are absolutely responsible for what we do with sinful temptations, whatever our so-called sexual orientation.

10. Christians must be very careful not to claim that science can never prove a biological basis for sexual orientation. We can and must insist that no scientific finding can change the basic sinfulness of all homosexual behavior. The general trend of the research points to at least some biological factors behind sexual attraction, gender identity, and sexual orientation. This does not alter God’s moral verdict on homosexual sin (or heterosexual sin, for that matter), but it does hold some promise that a deeper knowledge of homosexuality and its cause will allow for more effective ministries to those who struggle with this particular pattern of temptation. If such knowledge should ever be discovered, we should embrace it and use it for the greater good of humanity and for the greater glory of God.

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S. Korea OKs Human Cloning Research Despite Scandal (Christian Post, 070323)

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) - South Korea decided Friday to allow the continued use of human eggs in cloning research despite a scandal involving a prominent scientist who admitted to forging work and ethics violations in acquiring eggs.

The proposal by the National Life Ethics Commission comes after last year’s downfall of Hwang Woo-suk, a scientist once regarded as a national hero for internationally hailed work in cloning and stem cell research that was later revealed shown to be falsified.

Hwang claimed to have cloned human embryos and extracted stem cells from them, which initially raised hopes of providing new cures for previously untreatable diseases.

Some of the eggs for his research were donated by female scientists on his team, raising questions about the ethics of obtaining them.

Under the new plan Friday in a government decree, the commission said scientists should use only eggs set to be destroyed after fertility treatments or from other lawful uses.

Scientists seeking to do such work will still have to get a license from the government.

Hwang resigned from the country’s leading university, Seoul National University, and remains on trial for misappropriating private and government funds. He has maintained he was fooled by underlings who he says doctored findings.

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Bush Vetoes Stem Cell Research Bill (Foxnews, 070620)

WASHINGTON — President Bush vetoed an embryonic stem cell research funding bill Wednesday and called on Congress to put aside politics and support legislation that would advance science without crossing an ethical line.

“If this legislation became law, it would compel American taxpayers for the first time in our history to support the deliberate destruction of human embryos,” Bush said from the East Room of the White House, where he was joined by doctors and stem cell patients. “I made it clear to Congress and to the American people that I will not allow our nation to cross this moral line.”

Bush’s veto marks the third of his presidency and the second veto on a stem cell bill. Democrats don’t have enough votes to override the veto. The vetoed bill would have eased restrictions on federal funding for stem cell research. Sources tell FOX News they expect an override vote in the coming weeks to fall just short of approval.

Alongside the veto, Bush issued an executive order on stem cell research to lay out the administration’s position that it won’t support new federal funding that would destroy embryos. The order will direct the Health and Human Services Department to conduct research into cells that could be used against deadly diseases.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid joined other Democrats in denouncing Bush’s veto.

“He insists upon putting the politics of his narrow ideology ahead of saving lives. America deserves better,” Reid said on the Senate floor. “President Bush’s veto is a setback in our fight, but nothing will stop the will of the American people to give you the hope that you deserve.”

Senate Democrats might try to get another form of the stem cell bill through by attaching it to the annual labor appropriations bill, according to a report in the congressional newspaper, Roll Call.

Senate Democratic sources told Roll Call that Sens. Tom Harkin and Arlen Specter, the chairman and ranking member, respectively, of the Senate Appropriations subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and related agencies, agreed to tack the measure onto the fiscal 2008 spending bill for the departments of Labor and Health and Human Services.

That measure would expand stem cell lines available for federally funded research to include those derived before June 15, 2007 rather than the current cut-off date of Aug. 9, 2001. The bill would also tighten ethical guidelines on stem cell research.

On the House side, Rep. Rahm Emanuel, D-Ill., also lashed out at Bush’s veto.

“The president formed his opinion on stem cell research and now he has America ensnarled in a political straightjacket,” Emanuel said. “The American people see stem cell research as a cure to illnesses that plague their family and family members.”

Bush needs to drop his veto threats and support life-saving stem cell research, said Rep. Michael Arcuri, D-N.Y.

“Stem cell research would give new hope to millions of Americans, families across the country suffering from life-threatening and debilitating diseases like Lupus, juvenile diabetes and Parkinson’s,” Arcuri said from the House floor before the president’s veto.

House Minority Leader John Boehner released a statement of support for Bush’s choice, saying Republicans have enough votes to sustain the veto.

“The president’s veto today is justified for both moral and scientific reasons and it will be sustained by House Republicans,” Boehner said.

Bush also won support from Republican senators who say other stem cell research is just as promising as embryonic stem cell research.

“Given the tremendous results that have come from adult and umbilical cord stem cell therapy in the areas of oncology and orthopedics — and, more recently, in cardiology and neurology — I am further encouraged by the possibilities these non-controversial, adult stem cells have to offer,” said Sen. George Voinovich, R-Ohio.

“In this tight budgetary environment, in which there is a choke hold on our domestic discretionary spending, we must be vigilant in the way we appropriate taxpayer dollars and concentrate our resources on those lines of medical research that hold the greatest potential,” he continued.

Sen. Hillary Clinton, a 2008 White House hopeful, told an audience at a forum of Democratic presidential contenders that the legislation the way it is written holds promises to fighting disease.

“Let me be very clear. When I am president, I will lift the ban on stem cell research,” Clinton said at the “Take Back America” conference of liberal activists in Washington, D.C.

Clinton said Bush’s veto shows the need for Democrats to win back the White House.

“This is just one example of how the president puts ideology before science, politics before the needs of our families, just one more example of how out of touch with reality he and his party have become,” Clinton said.

Democratic leaders made the bill a priority when they took control of the House and the Senate in January. On Tuesday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi sent out an e-mail letter asking for contributions to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee to help elect more Democrats so the bill could be passed in the future.

“By vetoing a bill that expands stem cell research, the president will say ‘no’ to the more than 70% of Americans who support it, ‘no’ to our Democratic Congress’ fight for progress, and ‘no’ to saving lives and to potential cures for diseases such as diabetes and Parkinson’s,” Pelosi wrote. “He will say ‘no’ to hope.”

Bush vetoed a similar measure last year that would allow funding of additional lines of embryonic stem cells. The third veto of his administration came on a bill that would require setting timetables for withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq.

The National Institutes of Health says stem cells raise the prospect of a renewable source of replacement cells and tissues to treat Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s diseases, spinal cord injury, stroke, burns, heart disease, diabetes, osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis and other conditions.

Scientists were first able to conduct research with embryonic stem cells in 1998, the NIH says. There were no federal funds for the work until Bush announced on Aug. 9, 2001, that his administration would make the funds available for lines of cells that already were in existence.

Currently, states and private organizations are permitted to fund embryonic stem cell research, but federal support is limited to cells that existed as of Aug. 9, 2001. The latest bill is aimed at lifting that restriction.

Public opinion polls show strong support for the research, and it could return as an issue in the 2008 presidential election.

The executive order Bush is signing will expand the NIH embryonic stem cell registry to include all types of “ethically produced” stem cells, the White House said. It also will encourage scientists to work with NIH to add new “ethically derived” stem cell lines to the list of those eligible for federal funding, based on new research coming forward.

Sen. Norm Coleman, R-Minn., has already proposed an alternative stem cell bill that passed the Senate.

“My stem cell bill, which passed the Senate with broad bipartisan support, offers a clear alternative for our colleagues in the House to significantly expand federally funded stem cell research, while ensuring no taxpayer dollars are used for the destruction of human embryos,” Coleman said.

Bush said he would support funding for that measure or another proposed by Sen. Johnny Isakson, R-Ga.

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Scientists Believe Artificial Life Will Be Possible in 3 to 10 Years (Foxnews, 070820)

WASHINGTON — Around the world, a handful of scientists are trying to create life from scratch and they’re getting closer.

Experts expect an announcement within three to 10 years from someone in the now little-known field of “wet artificial life.”

“It’s going to be a big deal and everybody’s going to know about it,” said Mark Bedau, chief operating officer of ProtoLife of Venice, Italy, one of those in the race. “We’re talking about a technology that could change our world in pretty fundamental ways — in fact, in ways that are impossible to predict.”

That first cell of synthetic life — made from the basic chemicals in DNA — may not seem like much to non-scientists. For one thing, you’ll have to look in a microscope to see it.

“Creating protocells has the potential to shed new light on our place in the universe,” Bedau said. “This will remove one of the few fundamental mysteries about creation in the universe and our role.”

And several scientists believe man-made life forms will one day offer the potential for solving a variety of problems, from fighting diseases to locking up greenhouse gases to eating toxic waste.

Bedau figures there are three major hurdles to creating synthetic life:

— A container, or membrane, for the cell to keep bad molecules out, allow good ones, and the ability to multiply.

— A genetic system that controls the functions of the cell, enabling it to reproduce and mutate in response to environmental changes.

— A metabolism that extracts raw materials from the environment as food and then changes it into energy.

One of the leaders in the field, Jack Szostak at Harvard Medical School, predicts that within the next six months, scientists will report evidence that the first step — creating a cell membrane — is “not a big problem.” Scientists are using fatty acids in that effort.

Szostak is also optimistic about the next step — getting nucleotides, the building blocks of DNA, to form a working genetic system.

His idea is that once the container is made, if scientists add nucleotides in the right proportions, then Darwinian evolution could simply take over.

“We aren’t smart enough to design things, we just let evolution do the hard work and then we figure out what happened,” Szostak said.

In Gainesville, Fla., Steve Benner, a biological chemist at the Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution is attacking that problem by going outside of natural genetics. Normal DNA consists of four bases — adenine, cytosine, guanine and thymine (known as A,C,G,T) — molecules that spell out the genetic code in pairs. Benner is trying to add eight new bases to the genetic alphabet.

Bedau said there are legitimate worries about creating life that could “run amok,” but there are ways of addressing it, and it will be a very long time before that is a problem.

“When these things are created, they’re going to be so weak, it’ll be a huge achievement if you can keep them alive for an hour in the lab,” he said. “But them getting out and taking over, never in our imagination could this happen.”

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Reproductive Technology and the Right to Life (townhall.com, 070930)

By Ken Connor

Advances in reproductive technology have proven to be a blessing to many a couple suffering with infertility. Thanks to these advances, couples, who in the past would have been unable to have children, now happily bounce them on their knees. However, as thrilling as these new technologies can be, their application can be fraught with moral hazard. Ethical lapses can be avoided by thinking clearly about the principles that ought to inform our decision making in this area.

Principles of Human Dignity

Let’s begin by reflecting on the right to life. The first principle that ought to guide our thinking is that all human beings have a God given right to life. Our founding fathers recognized this principle and emblazoned it in the Declaration of Independence. The right to life was deemed “inalienable” because it was “endowed” by the Creator.

The next principle we should consider is that human life should be protected from conception to natural death. Human life exists from the time it is conceived until it is extinguished. If the “right to life” is to have any meaning, therefore, it must be protected from its beginning until its natural end.

Additionally, humanity is a function of our essential nature (i.e., that we are the offspring of human beings) and is unaffected by age, size, location, state of health or circumstances of conception.

Finally, we should understand that human beings have dignity, worth, and value because we have been created in God’s image (Gen. 1:27-28), and a great price has been paid for our redemption (John 3:16; 1 Peter 1:18-19).

Applying the Principles

A close examination of these principles reveals they are often violated by various applications of reproductive technologies. Consider the following:

“Embryo Creation.” In order to enhance the potential for conception, numerous embryos are often created in the laboratory with a view toward making multiple attempts at implantation. Initial attempts at implantation often fail, so “extra” embryos are created for use in future attempts. These “extras” are typically frozen and thawed for future use. If not used, they remain frozen indefinitely or are discarded and destroyed. But can such a procedure be ethically justified? Is there really such a thing as an “excess” human being? Can human beings be fairly regarded as a mere “surplus?” Aren’t basic principles of human dignity offended by such concepts?

The fact that embryos are small and not fully developed doesn’t affect their worth. Size doesn’t determine significance. We cannot credibly maintain that those who are fat are worth more than those who are thin, or that the tall are worth more than the short. Nor is an infant less precious than a full grown adult.

Likewise, age should not enter into the equation. We don’t maintain that the old are worth more than the young. And who would seriously consider freezing their three year old child and placing them in suspended animation with a view toward thawing them at a future date?

Location outside the mother’s womb shouldn’t enter in to one’s consideration about how to treat such embryos either. Location may affect the value of real estate, but it doesn’t affect the value of human beings. We don’t maintain that human beings who live in penthouse apartments have more inherent worth, value, or dignity than those who live in the ghetto.

“Embryo screening” is a practice by which parents are encouraged to “eliminate” embryos who might have undesirable genetic characteristics, such as the trait for early-onset Alzheimer’s. Through a process called “pre-implantation genetic diagnosis” (PGD), embryos who are deemed at risk for carrying undesirable genetic traits are “weeded out.” Aside from the fact that PGD poses a high risk that healthy embryos will be discarded, the practice embraces the notion that those who don’t measure up to someone else’s subjective standard of perfection do not have lives worthy of living. The immorality of such a practice for older children is manifestly apparent. We cannot justify the elimination of a two year old because it is discovered that they have a genetic trait that may cause problems for them in the future. The practice of weeding out two day old embryos is no more defensible.

“Selective reduction” is a course of action that is often recommended when more embryos than expected successfully implant in their mother’s womb, e.g., five instead of two. Selective reduction is a euphemism for “abortion.” Fertility experts often advise their clients to eliminate some of the babies they are carrying to avoid the stress of multiple births and to increase the likelihood that they will give birth to fewer, but healthier, children. Such a course puts the mother on the path of killing some of her children in utero to benefit the remaining ones. This “Sophie’s Choice” recommendation clearly violates the ethical principles outlined above.

Conclusion

Couples who wish to avail themselves of reproductive technologies will do well to educate themselves about all that the technologies entail. They will do even better to evaluate those technologies in the light of ethical principles that should inform their decision making before embarking on their use.

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Science Trumps Politics (Townhall.com, 071126)

By Rich Lowry

The “sideshow” has become the main event. For years, we’ve been told that only stem-cell research that destroys human embryos is worth pursuing. Everything else is a diversion, driven by fanatical religious opposition to the progress of science.

When President Bush sought legislation from Congress to advance research that didn’t involve destroying embryos, he was rebuffed by the Democratic Congress. Eventually, he issued an executive order in June 2007 to promote stem-cell research “without violating human dignity or demeaning human life.”

Now, a breakthrough could deliver all the therapeutic potential of stem-cell research with none of the ethical concerns. We learned this past week that stem cells that are just as versatile — and therefore as potentially useful in treating disease — as those derived from destroying embryos can be created by “reprogramming” human skin cells. The moral problem thus disappears.

Dr. James Thomson of the University of Wisconsin, a pioneer in embryo-destructive stem-cell research in the late 1990s, was one of the scientists who discovered the new method. “If human embryonic stem-cell research does not make you at least a little bit uncomfortable,” he told The New York Times, “you have not thought about it enough.” Apparently, very few Democrats thought about it at all.

They trotted out Ron Reagan, son of the late president who suffered from Alzheimer’s disease, to make the case for embryo-destructive stem-cell research at their 2004 national convention. He didn’t mention that there was any other potential way to derive stem cells, and hyped embryo-destructive research as promising “your own personal biological repair kit standing by at the hospital.” As for the moral objections, well, “the theology of the few should not be allowed to forestall the health and well-being of the many.”

Democrats loved this narrative: theology versus science, with its echo of the Inquisition repressing Galileo. It drove the charge that the Bush administration was waging “a war on science.” As if placing ethical bounds on science is a denial of the scientific method and the value of research itself. By this logic, speed limits are “anti-driving,” guardrails are “anti-highway” and meat inspections “anti-food.”

Ethical concerns about destroying embryos were dismissed as worries about “a clump of cells” without, as Ron Reagan dismissively put it, “fingers and toes.” The pro-life writer Ramesh Ponnuru countered, “Of course the embryo looks like a human being: It looks like a human being in the embryonic stage of development.” Proponents of embryonic-destructive stem-cell research spoke often about using “excess embryos” from fertility clinics. But that wasn’t their ultimate objective. To treat diseases would require embryos genetically matched to patients, and those embryos would have to be created through cloning and then destroyed.

Per Dr. Thomson, it doesn’t take a keen moral sense to realize, at the very least, that this is a boundary to cross only with extreme trepidation. But when in 2001 President Bush limited federal funding of embryo-destructive research to already existing stem-cell lines, he was showered with obloquy. He had “banned” such research. No, he had only denied it federal funding. He opposed “stem-cell research.” No, he supported stem-cell research that didn’t involve destroying any more embryos.

With the breakthrough that Bush had been hoping for — and talking about since 2006 — his position looks farsighted. The ethical boundary he defended helped push scientists to pursue the new discovery. Bush’s opponents, on the other hand, specialized in simplistic advocacy contemptuous of moral qualms about how stem-cell research was conducted. Their muted reaction to the latest development suggests that for some of them what was so exciting about stem-cell research wasn’t the far-off potential therapeutic applications, but the chance to portray pro-lifers as standing in the way of life-enhancing scientific discoveries.

“The tide of history is with us,” Ron Reagan said at the conclusion of his 2004 speech. Sorry, Mr. Reagan. On this issue, the science now says otherwise.

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Cell Mates in Full Backpedal: The truth emerges. (National Review Online, 071130)

By Jonah Goldberg

By now you’ve probably heard that scientists have discovered an elegant way to create the equivalent of embryonic stem cells (ECS) without having to create — and destroy — embryos. They just reprogram some skin cells and, voila, bypass all the controversial stuff. The long-promised miracle cures are still a long way off, if they’re coming at all, and ECS research still has its boosters, but it seems pretty clear that stem cells have been decoupled from the abortion wars.

Still, there has been one amazing breakthrough. Thanks to stem cells, journalists are finally growing backbones.

At the 2004 Democratic National Convention, Ron Reagan, the acclaimed dog show emcee, tried his hand at being an infomercial snake oil barker. “I am here tonight to talk about the issue of research into maybe the greatest breakthrough in our or any lifetime: the use of embryonic stem cells,” Reagan announced. After listing numerous diseases and injuries it could cure, Reagan delivered the pitch: “How’d you like to have your own personal biological repair kit standing by at the hospital? Sound like magic? Welcome to the future of medicine.”

“Wait! There’s more! Order your Biological Repair Kit in the next seven minutes, by voting 1-800-D-E-M-O-C-R-A-T, and you’ll receive a second repair kit at no additional cost, as well as this amazing two-in-one steak knife that can cut through your dignity and still be sharp enough to slice this tomato! Operators are standing by.”

O.K., I exaggerate. But the tone wasn’t far off.

Reagan wasn’t alone, either. Then-vice presidential candidate John Edwards proclaimed in 2004, “If we do the work that we can do in this country, the work that we will do when John Kerry is president, people like Christopher Reeve are going to walk, get up out of that wheelchair and walk again.”

Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D., N.Y.) announced a few years earlier: “We must not say to millions of sick or injured human beings, ‘Go ahead and die, stay paralyzed, because we believe the blastocyst, the clump of cells, is more important than you are.’ ... It is a sentence of death to millions of Americans.”

Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.), outraged by conservatives seeking to inject religion into politics, nonetheless proclaimed: “Mr. Speaker, the National Institutes of Health and Science hold the biblical power of a cure for us.”

Cure for what? Cure for e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g. And soon!

How soon? Very soon. Rep. Anna Eshoo (D., Calif.) promised that “we stand on the brink of finding the cures to diseases that have plagued so many millions of Americans.”

Columnist Charles Krauthammer, who is not only a doctor but also bound to a wheelchair because of the sort of spinal injury Democrats insinuated could be cured with a Democrat in the White House, said it well. This flimflammery was “a cruel deception perpetrated by cynical scientists and ignorant politicians. Its purpose is clear: to exploit the desperation of the sick to garner political support for ethically problematic biotechnology.”

And where was the press during this riot of false hope and cruel demagoguery, where politicians were in effect telling sick people they could vote for a cure for themselves or their loved ones?

The short answer is that they were either on the Democratic bandwagon, or they were outside helping push it.

When President Bush was grappling with embryonic stem cell research in 2001, Newsweek’s science correspondent, Sharon Begley, warned in a cover story that this might be “a cruel blow to millions of patients for whom embryonic stem cells might offer the last chance for health and life.”

In the current issue of Newsweek, Begley now tells us that the technology was always oversold. The notion that stem cells will lead to quick cures and transplants is “more fiction than fact,” Begley tells us — now.

The New York Times, in the words of Yuval Levin, formerly of the President’s Bioethics Council, “has been tenaciously partisan and frankly dishonest in its advocacy for embryo-destructive research in the past decade.” The Times almost never used the word “cloning” and downplayed the risks to women who donated eggs. Now, it points out to readers that not only did the old method have considerable drawbacks but that the task of delivering cures and therapies remains “daunting.” But, as Levin writes at Commentarymagazine.com, the Times “sees that the fight may be drawing to a close,” so “it’s time to put away the word games and speak openly about what has always been at stake.”

Who says stem cells can’t help regenerate spinal tissue?

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Celling Vindication: Rarely has a president — so vilified for a moral stance — been so thoroughly vindicated. (National Review Online, 071130)

By Charles Krauthammer

“If human embryonic stem cell research does not make you at least a little bit uncomfortable, you have not thought about it enough.” — James A. Thomson

A decade ago, Thomson was the first to isolate human embryonic stem cells. Last week, he (and Japan’s Shinya Yamanaka) announced one of the great scientific breakthroughs since the discovery of DNA: an embryo-free way to produce genetically matched stem cells.

Even a scientist who cares not a whit about the morality of embryo destruction will adopt this technique because it is so simple and powerful. The embryonic-stem-cell debate is over.

Which allows a bit of reflection on the storm that has raged ever since the August 2001 announcement of President Bush’s stem-cell policy. The verdict is clear: Rarely has a president — so vilified for a moral stance — been so thoroughly vindicated.

Why? Precisely because he took a moral stance. Precisely because, as Thomson puts it, Bush was made “a little bit uncomfortable” by the implications of embryonic experimentation. Precisely because he therefore decided that some moral line had to be drawn.

In doing so, he invited unrelenting demagoguery by an unholy trinity of Democratic politicians, research scientists and patient advocates who insisted that anyone who would put any restriction on the destruction of human embryos could be acting only for reasons of cynical politics rooted in dogmatic religiosity — a “moral ayatollah,” as Sen. Tom Harkin so scornfully put it.

Bush got it right. Not because he necessarily drew the line in the right place. I have long argued that a better line might have been drawn — between using doomed and discarded fertility-clinic embryos created originally for reproduction (permitted) and using embryos created solely to be disassembled for their parts, as in research cloning (prohibited). But what Bush got right was to insist, in the face of enormous popular and scientific opposition, on drawing a line at all, on requiring that scientific imperative be balanced by moral considerations.

History will look at Bush’s 2001 speech and be surprised how balanced and measured it was, how much respect it gave to the other side. Read it. Here was a presidential policy pronouncement that so finely and fairly drew out the case for both sides that until the final few minutes of his speech, you had no idea where the policy would end up.

Bush finally ended up doing nothing to hamper private research into embryonic stem cells and pledging federal monies to support the study of existing stem cell lines — but refusing federal monies for research on stem cell lines produced by newly destroyed embryos.

The president’s policy recognized that this might cause problems. The existing lines might dry up, prove inadequate or become corrupted. Bush therefore appointed a President’s Council on Bioethics to oversee ongoing stem cell research and evaluate how his restrictions were affecting research and what means might be found to circumvent ethical obstacles.

More vilification. The mainstream media and the scientific establishment saw this as a smokescreen to cover his fundamentalist, obscurantist, anti-scientific — the list of adjectives was endless — tracks. “Some observers,” wrote The Washington Post’s Rick Weiss, “say the president’s council is politically stacked.”

I sat on the council for five years. It was one of the most ideologically balanced bioethics commission in the history of this country. It consisted of scientists, ethicists, theologians, philosophers, physicians — and others (James Q. Wilson, Francis Fukuyama, and me among them) of a secular bent not committed to one school or the other.

That balance of composition was reflected in the balance in the reports issued by the council — documents of sophistication and nuance that reflected the divisions both within the council and within the nation in a way that respectfully presented the views of all sides. One recommendation was to support research that might produce stem cells through “de-differentiation” of adult cells, thus bypassing the creation of human embryos.

That Holy Grail has now been achieved. Largely because of the genius of Thomson and Yamanaka. And also because of the astonishing good fortune that nature requires only four injected genes to turn an ordinary adult skin cell into a magical stem cell that can become bone or brain or heart or liver.

But for one more reason as well. Because the moral disquiet that James Thomson always felt — and that George Bush forced the country to confront — helped lead him and others to find some ethically neutral way to produce stem cells. Providence then saw to it that the technique be so elegant and beautiful that scientific reasons alone will now incline even the most willful researchers to leave the human embryo alone.

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Sperm Donor Ordered to Pay Child Support for 18-Year-Old (Foxnews, 071202)

A New York doctor who donated his sperm to help a gay colleague conceive has been ordered to pay child support for the boy, now an 18-year-old living in Oregon, the New York Post reported Sunday.

The donor was a married doctor at a Long Island hospital in the late 1980s when he donated his sperm to a female hospital resident who was trying to have a baby with her lesbian partner, the Post reported. Although the donor gave up all claims and rights to the child, he allowed his name to be put on the birth certificate.

Click here to read the full story at the New York Post.

For several years after the boy’s birth in 1989, the doctor sent the child gifts and money and cards signed “Dad” and had regular contact with the child, the Post reported. However, when the boy moved to Oregon with his mother and her partner in 1993, regular contact stopped. Since then, the man’s contact with the child consisted of seven phone calls and one brief meeting over the past 15 years.

A New York family court judge ruled last month that the man must now pay child support for the boy, now 18 and heading to college, the Post reported.

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Christians Condemn Creation of Human-Animal Embryos (Christian Post, 080118)

LONDON – Britain’s fertility regulator gave the green light Thursday for the creation of human-animal hybrid embryos for research.

In a controversial move, the Human Fertilization and Embryology Authority (HFEA) approved applications from two universities – King’s College London and Newcastle University – to create “cytoplasmic” embryos by inserting human cells into animal eggs.

Opponents condemned the decision as a “disastrous setback for human dignity,” according to Agence-France Presse.

Researchers want to produce hybrids that are 99.9% human and 0.1% animal.

The approved research involves transferring nuclei containing DNA from human cells to animal eggs that have had nearly all their genetic information removed. The resulting embryos are effectively human, according to AFP, with a small animal component.

Then, stem cells, which can grow into different kinds of tissue, are formed.

Scientists argue the research could pave the way for therapies for diseases such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s, as reported by AFP.

Earlier this week, hundreds of Christians rallied outside Parliament to express their opposition to the Human Fertilization and Embryology Bill on the basis that hybrid embryos go against God’s intention behind His creation.

On Tuesday, the House of Lords voted against a ban on the creation of animal-human hybrids.

Andrea Minichiello Williams of Christian Concern For Our Nation (CCFON) expressed disappointment after Tuesday’s vote, stating, “This legislation, which holds many other worrying provisions besides hybrids, is attacking the very core of who we are as a society, what we value as human beings, how we view the unique dignity of humanity and the lengths we are prepared to go to in perverting nature for our own selfish and often misguided desires.

“If the nation is still capable of being shocked, then this bill – if its contents were more widely known and understood – would certainly do just that.”

Williams called on the church to speak up on the risks that the bill’s provisions pose.

“It is the church’s responsibility to speak up for God’s intention for His creation, and in the absence of a wider understanding of the Bill it falls to the church to speak on behalf the nation, to act as lookouts in the watch tower warning of the approaching dangers,” she said.

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Scientists, Critics Downplay Cloned Embryo Claim (Christian Post, 080122)

Once again, science and morality have crossed paths.

Scientists at a small biotech company claimed to be the first to have cloned human embryos from adult skin skills. Scientific and religious communities, however, have raised doubts as to whether the claim should be considered an achievement and further raised ethical concerns.

Scientists of Stemagen, a stem cell research and development firm in La Jolla, Calif., announced last Thursday that they had produced cloned embryos using skins cells from two men and eggs from women. Five embryos developed into blactocysts – the stage considered by scientists as viable for harvesting stem cells.

They claim it was the first time scientists were able to use cells from adults to produce cloned embryos.

The report is published online in the journal Stem Cell.

Samuel H. Wood, chief executive of Stemagen, whose skin cells were cloned, emphasized to The Washington Post that his interest was directed toward medicine and diseases and not toward cloning people, which he described as “unethical” and “illegal.”

There is no comprehensive ban on human cloning in the United States, although there is legislation banning cloning for both research and reproductive purposes.

Critics, however, already consider the process used to harvest stem cell lines from the embryos as unethical since it results in the destruction of life.

Bioethics Defense Fund President Nikolas T. Nikas said the announcement “marks a new and decisive step toward turning human reproduction into a manufacturing process.”

He said the new report highlights the necessity of state and federal legislation banning the creation of cloned human embryos for any purpose.

“The creation of human embryos for the purpose of exploitation as raw material for lab experiments is grossly immoral and a blatant violation of human dignity,” he added.

Richard Doerflinger of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops also raised social concerns about the mass production of developing human lives for the purpose of destruction.

Furthermore, he pointed out that the study “does not show that a viable or normal embryonic stem cell line can be derived this way, or that any such cell has ‘therapeutic’ value.”

The significance of cloned human embryos lies in their potential to create embryonic stem cell lines, which are prized by scientists who hope the stem cells could be used toward producing personalized replacement stem cells to treat diseases. The team at Stemagen, however, did not harvest the stem cells from the cloned embryos, leaving many scientists short of being impressed with the research.

Also, some scientists said the research left many questions to be answered including whether the embryos were actually healthy enough to be viable when implanted in a womb.

“I’d really like to believe it, but I’m not sold yet,” said Robert Lanza of Advanced Cell Technology to The Washington Post.

Despite marketing the potential of embryonic stem cells, scientists have yet to use them in the treatment of any diseases in human beings. Studies showed that lab animals which were subjected to treatment derived from embryonic stem cells developed tumors.

On the other hand, the use of stem cells from non-embryonic sources – such as umbilical cord blood, placentas, fat and bone marrow – has produced treatments for at least 73 human ailments, according to Do No Harm, a coalition promoting ethics in research.

Pro-life advocates say embryonic stem cell research is unnecessary in light of the numerous success stories for treatment derived from adult stem cells. They also object to embryonic stem cell research as a waste of taxpayers money and the exploitation of women for their eggs.

The clones were made using a method called somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT), the same cloning technique used to clone Dolly the sheep.

A few months ago, supporters of non-embryonic alternatives were encouraged to hear that the scientist who cloned Dolly had abandoned the SCNT technique to pursue research that converted adult skin cells in human beings into the functional equivalent of embryonic stem cells. Scientists in Wisconsin and Japan reported in November that they used a technique called “somatic cell reprogramming.”

The development was hailed by pro-life advocates as a breakthrough method to develop embryonic-like stem cells without the destruction of embryos.

That celebration was short-lived, however, when Children of God for Life, reported that the researchers had used cells from aborted fetal cell lines to produce a virus to reprogram the adult cells into embryonic-like stem cells.

C. Ben Mitchell, director of the Center for Bioethics and Human Dignity in suburban Chicago and a consultant for the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, said there is a line science should never cross.

“The principle is clear: Science should never perform an evil act – or contribute to evil acts – in order to achieve good ends. So, deriving therapies from electively aborted fetuses ethically taints the discovery,” he said in a Baptist Press report.

“Science that serves the common good must take the moral high ground and resist complicity with evil.”

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Christians Push for Action to Block ‘Horrifying’ Stem Cell Research (Christian Post, 080126)

A prominent Christian group sent a letter this week to senators, urging their support to ban research experiments that create embryos by fusing human and animal cells.

Focus on the Family called senators to co-sponsor the “Human-Animal Hybrid Protection Act of 2007,” introduced in November by Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) who has called the experiments “horrifying.”

Britain’s Human Fertilization and Embryology Authority has already approved such research to be conducted at King’s College London and Newcastle University.

“These hybrids blur the lines between human and animal, male and female, parent and child,” states the letter written by Focus on the Family.

The research involves transferring nuclei containing DNA from human cells to animal eggs that have had nearly all their genetic information removed. The resulting hybrids are 99.9% human and 0.1% animal.

Many Christians, both in Britain and the United States, argue that the experiments violate human dignity.

“To suggest it’s appropriate to use animal or human eggs and combine them with animal or human sperm, which is one of the proposals in the new (British) legislation, is absolutely horrifying,” said Josephine Quintavalle, co-founder of Comment on Reproductive Ethics, according to Focus on the Family’s publication, Citizenlink.

The Human Fertilization and Embryology Bill will face the UK House of Commons later this year. It is strongly backed by the government and expected to become law next year.

In response, the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales is urging churches to write to their MP and get involved to protest the bill.

The Catholic bishops contends that the bill allows scientists to “create embryos that are half human, half animal” and that it violates human dignity. They also say Members of Parliament may tack on an amendment to make abortion more easily available, according to a statement the churches read to their congregations this past week.

Rejecting the Catholic statement, Lyle Armstrong of the second lab at Newcastle University said, “We are very disturbed that the Catholic bishops claim the bill will allow us to create half-human, half-animal embryos.”

The scientists argue that the resulting embryos after implanting an adult human cell into an animal egg contains only human genes.

“The aim of our experiments is to discover ways to make stem cells [to treat] human diseases,” Armstrong added, “not to give birth to some abnormal chimera.”

While some Christians support scientific research, they say legislation is needed to draw the line.

“We want a powerful and vibrant science sector,” said Wesley J. Smith, a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute, according to Citizenlink, “but there are ethical parameters that we need in this research.”

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Selling Her Body, a Few Eggs at a Time (BreakPoint, 080220)

By Michael Poore

The Commodification of Motherhood

This article is from the October 2006 BreakPoint WorldView magazine. Sign up today to receive the free online edition 10 times a year!

The women at elite colleges and universities see the ads all the time—WANTED: egg donor, tall, attractive, athletic, good health, under age 26, SAT scores above 1,300, compensation $5,000. A very attractive offer for a busy, cash-strapped college student. At more prestigious schools—Harvard, Yale, or Brown—the offering price can range from $15,000 to $60,000 per donor cycle. A few years ago an ad ran in the Stanford Daily offering $100,000.

Students are not the only respondents to such ads. A recent article in USA Today describes a Virginia attorney who received $7,500 for her first donation of fifteen eggs, and she expects to receive another $7,500 for a second cycle. This money will be used to help pay off her $175,000 college debt. Women with families also sell their eggs. Whether a working mother or stay-at-home mom, these women have a track record—they have already produced children with their eggs.

Even so, the attorney and the Ivy League grad student may have an advantage over the stay-at-home mom in the human egg market—a market in which the highest prices go to those who possess the characteristics most in demand: intelligence as demonstrated by academic achievement, beauty, athletic ability, and a family history of good health.

The demand for eggs is not likely to decline soon. Those in search of eggs are highly motivated, often desperate. Many are career women who delayed having children and are now in their late thirties, forties, and even fifties. At this age, the risk of genetic defects for children born with their own eggs has risen dramatically, and purchasing younger, healthier eggs is a solution.

This buying and selling of human eggs—although thinly disguised as compensation for time and trouble—is controversial. Should women sell their eggs? Should they be allowed to sell their eggs? Yes, according to the libertarian thinking that dominates the fertility industry: Consenting adults should be able to do whatever they want with their bodies as long as no one else is harmed. However, the mental, medical, moral, and social dimensions of egg donation are not that cut-and-dried.

RATIONALIZING AWAY HER EGGS

Julia Derek, a Swedish journalism student studying in the United States, discovered many of the hazards of egg donation the hard way. Desperate for cash and looking for a job, she came across an ad in the Washington Post offering $3,500 for an egg donor.

At first, she was repulsed by the idea: “If I donated my eggs to a woman—or sold actually—I would become the mother to that woman’s child, wouldn’t I?” But her desperation soon led to a host of rationalizations. It would not be the same as giving away a child. It would be like giving away a cell, the same as giving someone a hair. It could not be her child since it would not be in her womb nine months. The real mother is the woman who raises the child, not the one who only contributes her genetic material.

In the end, she started selling her body, a few eggs at a time. After all, why wait tables if you can get thousands of dollars by becoming an egg donor?

From the beginning, Julia knew that “donation” was not donation. No one would provide eggs without compensation for the considerable time and trouble—physical exams, daily hormone injections, frequent blood tests to monitor hormone levels, and ultrasounds to track development of the eggs. Then, there’s the small chance that fertility drugs, used to stimulate the ovaries to produce multiple eggs, could lead to serious complications, sterility, or even death. This time-consuming process takes about four weeks and is completed by minor surgery, during which the ripened eggs are suctioned from the follicles of the woman’s ovaries.

All of these burdens and risks were not enough to discourage Julia from donating repeatedly, sometimes providing thirty eggs per cycle—all chronicled in her book Confessions of a Serial Egg Donor. Her lifestyle and dreams demanded an income well beyond what she could earn as a physical fitness trainer. Living off “egg money” became a way of life.

But Julia’s donor career came to a traumatic halt with her twelfth donor cycle. “Another Visit in Hell” is the chapter in which she describes the consequences of a serious hormone imbalance that took months to correct—deep depression, severe headaches, prolonged periods of weeping, and suicidal thoughts. Help came from a reputable gynecologist who provided proper medical care and a six-month prescription of the anti-depressant Serafem. With time, her body regulated its hormones naturally.

EXPLOITING DESPERATE WOMEN

As Julia Derek’s story confirms, egg donation can be dangerous, even though the fertility industry touts its safety. Beyond the short-term dangers to body chemistry, no one knows the long-term effects of the powerful drugs and hormones used to stimulate and control the donor cycle. And the ovaries can be damaged during removal of eggs.

But the problems raised by egg donation go well beyond donor safety.

What about the exploitation of financially strapped young women? At twenty-four, it may be easy to say thoughtlessly that eggs are “just DNA” when anticipating a $10,000 check. At thirty-four, things may look very different when the woman starts her own family and comes face-to-face with the reality that she has other children—in London, New York, or San Francisco—whom she will never know or even see.

The psychological effects of donation, like the physical, are impossible to predict. One poor Ukrainian woman, whose eggs went to couples in England, thinks of the ages and appearances of the children who are half-brother or half-sister to her own two children. Her five donations are a closely guarded secret: “I don’t want anybody to know; for me it’s unpleasant that I have sold a part of myself. That I have sold myself for money.” Her shame springs from the magnitude of what she’s done—sold her genetic heritage, her eggs, some of which have become her unknown children, for money. Her body and her motherhood have been reduced to a commodity, sold at a price established in a competitive market by buyers in search of the perfect baby.

Yes, for prospective parents, the search is for the perfect baby. It’s not just about having a baby, any baby. It is about having a certain kind of baby, a baby that can be designed by selecting the eggs of a woman who is intelligent, beautiful, artistic, athletic, and from a healthy family. But the moral ramifications of this project are rather sinister—they’re eugenic. No, it’s nothing like the Nazi eugenics programs of sterilization, euthanasia, and death camps. Rather, it is best described as “consumer eugenics.”

PEDIGREE CHILDREN

Egg-donor recipients, as they are called, shop for eggs that have a certain pedigree. They talk with egg brokers. They look at pictures of potential donors and at pictures of their children, if they have any. They study the answers to extensive donor questionnaires. They may meet and interview prospective donors. Then, they purchase the eggs that best match their desires, in preparation for creating embryos by in vitro fertilization.

Additionally, they may use genetic screening to eliminate embryos with genetic defects. Screening can also permit them to choose the sex of their child, if that is one of their goals.

All of this destroys the meaning of parenting and family. Children are not seen as a gift and certainly not as a “heritage of the Lord” (Psalm 127). These children are “made,” not “begotten.”

At root, this approach to parenting is profoundly gnostic. It rejects the world as it is. It separates who we are from our bodily nature. The human will is the real self, and our bodies and all else are but raw material from which to fashion the satisfactions of our desires.

The human body, kinship, and intergenerational obligations are treated as social constructs rather than essential parts of the created order that, though broken, retains an essential goodness that can be preserved and cultivated to the health and benefit of all generations.

Biomedical technologies are being used, as C. S. Lewis worried, to seize control of human nature. “[T]he power of Man to make himself what he pleases means . . . the power of some men to make other men what they please.” In Lewis’s words, the children of egg donation are “artifacts”; they are manufactured products. The destruction of our concept of what it means to be human—the “abolition of man,” to use the title of one of Lewis’s books—is well underway.

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Science Almighty (BreakPoint, 080724)

By Chuck Colson

Adult vs. Embryonic Stem Cells

The news is filled lately with stories about the promise of adult stem-cell therapy. Last fall, for example, researchers reported they successfully produced stem cells from adult skin cells, bypassing the need for embryonic stem cells. The Los Angeles Times reported recently that treatment using umbilical and marrow cells healed a boy of a fatal skin disease. Doctors said the treatment’s success may move that disease “off the incurable list” for other patients.

And the Family Research Council just released a report about more successes. “Currently, peer-reviewed studies have documented 73 different conditions in humans where patient health has been improved through adult stem cell therapy . . . and over 1,400 FDA approved trials are ongoing.”

The paper describes a myriad of therapies, including the regeneration of heart tissue for a man with congestive heart failure; enabling a patient with Type I Diabetes to become insulin-free; and the treatment of a bone-cancer victim, who is now cancer-free. The report also cites adult stem-cell treatments that could treat trauma injuries and help patients with liver cancer.

Good news, indeed—and good news that we no longer have to wrestle with the moral question of embryonic stem cell research.

Well, not so fast . . . Both candidates for president still favor it, for they are marching to the drumbeat of those who want no restrictions on science.

Michael Kinsley, for example, a columnist who himself suffers from Parkinson’s, said bluntly, “This issue [that is, embryonic stem cell research] will not go away.”

“Scientifically,” Kinsley says, “it makes no sense to abandon any promising avenue just because another has opened up . . . Every year that goes by, science opens new doors.”

I hope you see the problem: Just because science opens a door does not mean we should walk through it. In fact, science rarely asks the question, “Should we?” It only asks the question, “Can we?”

Kinsley’s response reflects a certain worldview: specifically, “scientism,” the belief that scientific investigation is the only means to knowledge and progress. As such, it must be free from restraints or interference. Scientists—not political leaders, and certainly not morally concerned citizens—ought to determine what is or is not permissible in the laboratory.

In addition, scientism, given its materialistic grounding, rejects any appeal to the sanctity of human life. The worldview of scientism teaches that we humans are merely an interesting and potentially useful collection of cells and genetic material.

The problem is, if a human embryo only has worth insofar as it can be used for others, then what worth does a person have who is dependent on others—say, someone who is permanently disabled? See where that leaves Kinsley and all the rest of us? Vulnerable.

It is certain that the next president will revisit federal policy on embryo-destructive research. Even though it is not needed, proponents are not going to back down. That is why Christians, who believe in the sacredness of human life from conception to natural death, need to continue vigorous opposition to research on living human beings. If we do not, who is next in a world with science unchecked by ethical restraints?

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Reinventing Man (BreakPoint, 080819)

By Chuck Colson

Biotechnology and the Human Future

If you have been watching the Olympics, you cannot help but be awed by the strength, speed, and skill of Olympic athletes. Take Michael Phelps, the phenomenal American swimmer who took gold in event after event. Or Dara Torres, a 41-year-old American swimmer who bested much younger athletes, winning a silver medal.

These men and women have spent years training, strengthening, and perfecting their skills and their bodies. As much as we applaud their accomplishments, we marvel at their effort.

Now, imagine not long from now, watching an Olympic games featuring athletes who never had to train like Phelps and Torres have. Instead, their skills and physique were planned before their birth, enhanced through nanotechnology. The games would be called the “Bio-Olympics,” in which competitors have artificially enhanced features, like superhuman strength and speed.

Sound like science-fiction? It’s not. Not long ago the President’s Council on Bioethics wrote about such a possibility.

We talk often on “BreakPoint” about bioethics, especially when it comes to cloning, embryo-destructive research, genetic engineering, and so forth. But science is bringing even greater ethical dilemmas right to our front doors now.

As my friend Nigel Cameron points out in the latest issue of BreakPoint WorldView magazine—which, by the way, you can subscribe to for free at BreakPoint.org—science is moving beyond improving or fixing humanity, to remaking humanity.

Thanks to genetic, robotic, information, and nano technologies—collectively known by the ironic acronym GRIN—mankind is poised for what some call “engineered evolution.” Nigel warns that the very technologies that can “help us restore function to the disabled and fight disease, can also be used to bring in the ‘Brave New World’—in which what it means to be human, made in the image of God, is fundamentally lost.”

Not only will the results of this “evolution” be unprecedented, but so will the speed at which it happens. “Pain vaccines,” “memory pills,” and “gene doping,” which may turn even the scrawniest kid into a Hercules, are being tested as I speak.

But who will enjoy the fruits of such enhancements? As Nigel writes, developments in “blending human nature and machine nature through such means as the implanting of brain chips for memory, skills, or communication . . . could compound both the intelligence and the wealth of a small segment of society.” This could lead “to a new feudalism, in which power of all kinds is concentrated in the hands of ‘enhanced’ persons.”

This raises unimaginable ethical problems, and Christians must be engaged in the debate. As Nigel writes, “At the heart of the agenda for the 21st century lies the need to build a policy framework in which ethical principles set the ground-rules for our use of these new powers.” We must, he says, “secure human nature from commodification.”

I could not agree more. Humans and human nature are not commodities to be manipulated, bought, and sold. In the rush to “make life better and easier” by “improving” the human body, we cannot allow human life to become less human.

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Vatican issues document on bioethics (Paris, International Herald, 081212)

VATICAN CITY: The Vatican issued the most authoritative and sweeping document on bioethical issues in twenty years on Friday, taking into account recent developments in biomedical technology and reinforcing the church’s opposition to in vitro fertilization, human cloning, genetic testing on embryos before implantation and embryonic stem cell research.

The Vatican says these techniques violate the principle that every human life — even an embryo — is sacred, and that children should be conceived only through intercourse by a married couple.

The 32-page instruction, titled “Dignitas Personae,” or “The Dignity of the Person,” was issued by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican’s doctrinal watchdog, and has the approval of Pope Benedict XVI. It was developed to provide moral responses to bioethical questions that have been raised in the 21 years since the congregation last issued instructions.

The document bans the morning-after pill, the IUD and RU 486, saying these can result in what amount to abortions. The church also objects to freezing embryos, because it exposes them to potential damage and manipulation, and raises the irresolvable problem of what to do with frozen embryos that are not implanted. There are hundreds of thousands of these in the United States alone, a fact that prompted church ethicists to use this document to reiterate the church’s opposition to in vitro fertilization.

“There is no morally licit way” to get out the blind alley created by the thousands of frozen embryos already in existence,” said Monsignor Elio Sgreccia, president of the Pontifical Academy for Life, at a news conference here on Friday.

The Vatican’s intended audience is both individual Roman Catholics, but also doctors, scientists and medical researchers, and legislators who might consider regulating new developments in biomedical technology.

In the United States, President-elect Barack Obama has said he would end the restrictions on U.S. government funding of embryonic stem cell research that were instituted by President George W. Bush.

The Vatican document reiterates that the church is opposed to research on stem cells derived from embryos. But it does not oppose research on stem cells derived from adults, blood from umbilical cords, or from fetuses “who have died of natural causes.”

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Vatican Releases New Bioethics Document (Christian Post, 081212)

VATICAN CITY – The Vatican hardened its opposition Friday to using embryos for stem cell research, cloning and in-vitro fertilization but showed flexibility on some forms of gene therapy and using vaccines created from aborted fetuses.

In a major new document on bioethics, the Vatican also criticized “embryo adoption,” whereby infertile couples adopt embryos frozen during in vitro techniques and subsequently abandoned. It said that while the intent was “praiseworthy” the result posed legal, medical and psychological problems.

The Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith issued “The Dignity of a Person” to help answer bioethical questions that have emerged in the two decades since its last such document was published.

With it, the Vatican essentially confirmed in a single, authoritative instruction the opinions of the Pontifical Academy for Life, a Vatican advisory body that has debated these issues for years.

The Vatican’s overall position is informed by its belief that human life begins at conception and must be given the consequent respect and dignity from that moment on. The Vatican also holds that human life should be created through intercourse between husband and wife, not in a petri dish.

As a result, the Vatican said it opposed in vitro fertilization because it involves separating conception from the “conjugal act” and often results in the destruction of embryos.

It similarly opposed the techniques involved in IVF — selective reduction of embryos, pre-implantation diagnosis and embryo freezing — because embryos are or can be destroyed.

It also said it opposed the morning-after pill, even if it doesn’t cause an abortion, because an abortion was intended. That could complicate the situation of some Catholic hospitals in the United States that offer the morning-after pill to rape victims.

In the use of drugs such as RU-486, which causes the elimination of the embryo once it is implanted, the “sin of abortion” is committed, the document said, thus their use is “gravely immoral.”

The Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, agreed that, on a superficial reading, the document could be seen as a litany of “no’s.”

“But it’s not like that. It is based — starting with its title — on the fundamental affirmation of the dignity of the human person,” he said.

The Vatican did show flexibility in saying that parents could in good conscience use vaccines for their children that were developed using cell lines from an “illicit origin.” Religious groups in the United States have pressed the Vatican to issue a statement concerning the morality of using vaccines developed using cell lines derived from aborted fetuses.

“Grave reasons may be morally proportionate to justify the use of such ‘biological material,’” the instruction said, adding that the parents would have to make known their disagreement with the way the vaccines were developed and press for alternatives.

But the document was strong in stressing that researchers using such material had a greater degree of responsibility. It said they had a moral duty to remove themselves from the “evil aspects” of the original, illicit act — even if they and their institutions had nothing to do with it.

The document said gene therapy on regular cells in the body other than reproductive ones was in principle morally licit since it sought to “restore the normal genetic configuration of the patient or to counter damage caused by genetic anomalies.”

But it said cell therapy that seeks to correct genetic defects with the aim of transmitting the therapy to offspring was more problematic. It didn’t rule it out, however.

“Because the risks connected to any genetic manipulation are considerable and as yet not fully controllable, in the present state of research, it is not morally permissible to act in a way that may cause harm to the resulting progeny,” the document said.

In the instruction, the Vatican repeated that it fully supported research involving adult stem cells. But it said obtaining stem cells from a living embryo, even for the sake of effective therapies, was “gravely illicit.”

It repeated its opposition to human cloning for both medical therapies and reproduction. Such techniques could result in an individual being subjected to a form of “biological slavery from which it would be difficult to free himself.”

It noted therapeutic cloning techniques in which embryonic-type stem cells can be produced without destroying true embryos. The document didn’t rule definitively on the technology, known as altered nuclear transfer, saying there were still questions about what was produced.

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Obama to Lift Restrictions on Stem Cell Research Funding (Foxnews, 090309)

Supporters say it will open up a broad front of research to find better treatments for ailments from diabetes to Parkinson’s disease; opponents saying destroying embryos for research is morally wrong.

President Obama plans to sign an executive order Monday lifting restrictions on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research, in the latest reversal of his predecessor’s policies.

The move fulfills a campaign promise, and supporters say it will open up a broad front of research to find better treatments for ailments from diabetes to Parkinson’s disease.

The goal, administration officials told FOX News, will be to allow federal researchers access to more available lines of embryonic stem cells than currently exist.

Embryonic stem cells are master cells that can morph into any cell of the body. Scientists hope to harness them so they can create replacement tissues to treat a variety of diseases.

But the issue remains controversial since days-old embryos must be destroyed to obtain the cells.

Opponents argue that research using embryonic cells is morally wrong.

“I believe it is unethical to use human life, even young embryonic life, to advance science,” said Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, a conservative organization.

Obama on Monday also planned to make a broad declaration that science — not political ideology — would guide his administration.

“I would simply say this memorandum is not concerned solely — or even specifically — with stem cell research,” said Harold Varmus, chairman of the White House’s Council of Advisers on Science and Technology and a Nobel Prize-winning biologist. He said it would address how the government uses science and who is advising various federal agencies.

Obama plans to use the executive order and accompanying memo to signal his commitment to shift government’s priorities.

Former President George W. Bush was the first president to authorize any federal support for embryonic stem cell research but limited it to 78 known stem cell lines — lines that were created before Aug. 9, 2001. Federal research dollars could not flow to any research on embryonic stem cell lines derived after that deadline, and some scientists objected that the Bush policy left them with too few stem cell lines to research, and that only 16 of the original 78 were even suitable.

Hundreds more of such lines — groups of cells that can continue to propagate in lab dishes — have been created since then. Scientists say those newer lines are healthier and better suited to creating treatments for diseases. The Obama order will give researchers access to lines derived after Aug. 9, 2001.

The proposed changes do not fund creation of new lines, nor specify which existing lines can be used. They mean that scientists, who until now have had to rely on private donations to work with these newer stem cell lines, can apply for government money for the research, just like they do for studies of gene therapy or other treatment approaches.

At the same event, the president planned to announce safeguards through the National Institutes of Health to protect science from political interference.

Senior Obama officials would not describe how broadly the executive order will open up lines for research, saying only that it will reverse Bush-era restrictions.

Rep. Eric Cantor, the No. 2 Republican in the House, said the focus should be on the economy, not on a long-simmering debate over stem cells.

“Frankly, federal funding of embryonic stem cell research can bring on embryo harvesting, perhaps even human cloning that occurs,” he said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “We don’t want that. ... And certainly that is something that we ought to be talking about, but let’s take care of business first. People are out of jobs.”

Perkins argued that taxpayers should not have to pay for “experiments that require the destruction of human life.”

“I urge President Obama to direct funding not only to the best science, but also to the surest common ground — research using adult stem cells and stem cells created by reprogramming,” he said.

Dr. Curt Civin, whose research allowed scientists to isolate stem cells and who now serves as the founding director of the University of Maryland Center for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine, said that type of rhetoric was not helpful.

“This was already life that was going to be destroyed,” he said. “The choice is throw them away or use them for research.”

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Cloner’s Ark: Ten Notable Cloned Animals (Foxnews, 090417)

Researchers in Dubai made news this week by announcing the arrival of the world’s first cloned camel, a singular achievement in a region where top racing camels are prized.

Iran followed two days later with the birth of the country’s first cloned goat, though many other cloned goats have been born elsewhere.

Most cloned mammals now lead regular lives, but as recently as 10 years ago they often died young of lung malformations, a problem that appears to have been largely overcome. Healthy cloned dogs and cats are the most recent significant achievements.

Many researchers are getting closer and closer to human cloning by trying to clone monkeys.

Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, all attempts at cloning monkeys from adult donor cells have failed, with one researcher deeming the resulting embryos “a gallery of horrors.” (Splitting newly formed regular monkey embryos does work, but that can be seen as just inducing natural twins.)

The following is a list of significant animal species cloned from adult cells, in chronological order — plus one that’s even more remarkable.

Frog: The first amphibians cloned from adult cells were made in 1962 by John Gurdon, a British biologist at Cambridge University. His experiments showed that cloning adults was theoretically possible (clones made from embryonic cells had been created a decade earlier).

But his tadpoles didn’t survive to full adulthood, and it wasn’t until years later that he was able to get cloned frogs that lived full lives.

Carp: Way back in 1963, a Chinese researcher named Tong Dizhou apparently created the world’s first cloned fish when he transferred the genetic material from an adult male Asian carp into a carp egg, which developed and was born normally, and even sired children.

But since his work took place behind the “Bamboo Curtain” at the height of the Cold War, Tong’s achievements went unheralded in the West. He died in 1979.

Sheep: The famous Dolly was born on July 5, 1996, in Edinburgh, Scotland, the first known mammal of any species to be cloned from an adult donor. She was the only one of 277 cloned embryos to survive.

She quickly became a media sensation, yet went on to live a short but quiet life, bearing six lambs naturally. Cloned cattle, genetically similar to sheep, followed within the next year.

In February 2003, suffering from a virus-borne form of lung cancer common among sheep, Dolly was put to sleep. Some experts wondered whether she was already “old” at birth, due to her genes coming from an adult animal, but her creators disputed that.

Goat: The world’s first cloned goat was born on June 16, 2000, the result of work by scientists at Northwest University of Agriculture and Forestry Science and Technology in Xi’an, China. Unfortunately, the kid, nicknamed “Yuanyuan,” died after a day and a half from lung defects.

On June 22, 2000, another cloned goat was born in the same facility. Named “Yangyang,” she lived at least six years and had kids, grandkids and great-grandkids.

Housecat: CC, or Copy Cat, the world’s first cloned domestic cat, was born Dec. 22, 2001 on the campus of Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas. Though she was the clone of a calico, her surrogate mother was a tabby, and CC’s coloring was a mixture of the two.

She currently lives in the household of one the scientists who worked to create her and has had naturally conceived kittens of her own.

White-tailed deer: The same Texas A&M team responsible for CC the cloned cat also created the world’s first cloned deer, which was born on May 23, 2003. Dubbed “Dewey,” he was cloned from a dead buck. Three years later, he became the father of female triplets, who were conceived the old-fashioned way.

Horse: Five days after Dewey, the world’s first cloned horse was born in Italy. A female named “Prometea” — presumably after Prometheus, the god who gave man fire in Greek mythology — news reports from the time indicate she was healthy.

Dog: Snuppy, an Afghan hound born April 24, 2005, was the world’s first cloned dog. He was created by a team led by Korean genetics researcher Hwang Woo-suk, who also claimed to have cloned human stem cells, later found to be untrue; Snuppy was the sole part of Hwang’s work that was untainted.

Snuppy has since fathered 10 puppies through artificial insemination of two cloned female dogs.

Pyrenean ibex: The world’s first extinct mammal to be “resurrected” was a subspecies of the more widespread Spanish ibex, or mountain goat. The last known Pyrenean ibex was found dead in early 2000, but tissue samples that had been taken when it was alive led to a joint Spanish-French cloning program.

After hundreds of failed attempts, a live Pyrenean ibex was born in January 2009, for the first time in more than a decade. The surrogate mother was a domestic goat. But the achievement was short-lived; the kid died 9 minutes after birth due to malformed lungs.

Camel: Injaz, the world’s first cloned camel, was born April 8, 2009 in Dubai, one of the United Arab Emirates. Her name means “achievement” in Arabic, and she likely won’t be the last cloned camel, as camel racing is very popular in the Gulf states and certain animals are prized.

However, Injaz won’t ever get to know her older “twin” — the donor animal was slaughtered for its meat in 2005.

And last but far from least:

Fatherless mouse: Japanese researchers went beyond cloning in 2004 to create the world’s first fatherless mammal.

The mouse, nicknamed Kaguya, was born in 2004 and was a “parthenote” — she literally had two mommies. Genetic material from two mouse eggs was modified and combined so that one “fertilized” the other.

Kaguya has almost certainly died of old age since, but bore at least one litter of naturally conceived pups.

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Stem Cell Decision Exposes Religious Divides (Christian Post, 090310)

The embryonic stem cell research debate is steeped with religious arguments, with some faith traditions convinced the research amounts to killing innocent life, others citing the moral imperative to alleviate suffering, and plenty of religious believers caught somewhere in between.

President Barack Obama <http://www.christianpost.com/topics/Barack_Obama> ‘s order Monday opening the door for federal taxpayer dollars to fund expanded embryonic stem cell research again brings those often colliding interests to the fore.

Cardinal Justin Rigali, chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Pro-Life Activities, called Obama’s move “a sad victory of politics over science and ethics.”

“This action is morally wrong because it encourages the destruction of innocent human life, treating vulnerable human beings as mere products to be harvested,” Rigali, the archbishop of Philadelphia, said in a statement.

On the other side is the Rev. Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite, a United Church of Christ minister and a professor at Chicago Theological Seminary.

“There is an ethical imperative to relieve suffering and promote healing,” she said. “This is good policy for a religiously pluralistic society that cares about human suffering and the relief of human suffering.”

Obama alluded to religion in announcing the changes, saying, “As a person of faith, I believe we are called to care for each other and work to ease human suffering. I believe we have been given the capacity and will to pursue this research and the humanity and conscience to do so responsibly.”

Some religious traditions teach that because life begins at conception, any research that destroys a human embryo, as this research does, is tantamount to murder and is never justified. The Roman Catholic Church and the Southern Baptist Convention are among those that oppose the research.

Other more liberal traditions, including mainline Protestant and Jewish institutions, believe the promise to relieve suffering is paramount. In 2004, the governing body of the Episcopal Church said it would favor the research as long as it used embryos that otherwise would have been destroyed, that embryos were not created for research purposes, or were not bought and sold.

Under Jewish law, an embryo is genetic material that does not have the status of a person. According to the Talmud, the embryo is “simply water” in the first 40 days of gestation. Healing and preserving human life takes precedence over all the other commandments in Judaism.

Some groups and faiths are divided on the issue. Muslims disagree over - among other things - whether an embryo in the early stage of development has a soul. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or the Mormon church, has not taken a position.

The Rev. Joel Hunter, an evangelical pastor from Orlando, Fla., who serves on an Obama White House advisory panel, said he was encouraged by Monday’s developments.

“The principle is still that it’s not only understandable but in some ways moral to use embryonic stem cells that are destined for destruction for research for helping people,” he said. “I think we have to tread very lightly and very carefully, and I think we have to be vigilant for years to come.”

But most evangelicals criticized Obama’s move. Gilbert Meilaender, a Christian ethicist at Valparaiso University and a member of the President’s Council on Bioethics, created by President George W. Bush, said Obama’s decision was especially disappointing because scientists are advancing toward being able to produce cells that act like embryonic stem cells without destroying any human embryos.

Meilaender said that while there is no good solution for frozen embryos left in storage at fertility clinics, destroying them for stem cell research is not the answer.

“My own position is that having, as it were, produced and used them once in the use of someone else’s project, for a reproductive purpose, that using it once for someone else’s purpose is enough,” said Meilaender, a member of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod.

Catholic bishops have been outspoken in opposing embryonic stem cell research. Other Catholics, though, are more open to lifting the Bush-era restrictions, with caveats. The Rev. Tom Reese, a senior fellow at the Woodstock Theological Center at Georgetown University, said restrictions should be put on embryonic stem cell research - including prohibition on their buying and selling, and using only embryos that otherwise would be destroyed.

“I’m trying to make an argument for some middle ground here,” Reese said. “Hopefully down the line we can reach a point where we don’t have to use embryonic stem cell research.”

Polls show some believers are willing to buck their leaders on the issue. Fifty-nine percent of white, non-Hispanic Catholics and 58% of white mainline Protestants favor embryonic stem cell research, according to a poll released in July 2008 by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. Only 31% of white evangelical Protestants, however, favored the research.

Princeton University politics professor Robert George, a Catholic and another member of the Bush-era Council on Bioethics, said the moral argument over embryonic stem cell research is not rooted in religion but in ethics and equality. He said research shows that an embryo is a human being in its earliest form of development, so we have to ask ourselves whether all human life should be treated equally, with dignity and respect.

“I don’t think the question has anything to do with religion or pulling out our microscope and trying to find souls,” George said. “We live in a pluralistic society where some people believe there are no such things as souls. Does that mean we should not have moral objections to killing 17-year-old adolescents?”

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Pelosi’s ‘Misleading’ Stem Cell Remark Prompts Clarification (Christian Post, 090604)

For at least the four in ten Americans who are not familiar with stem cell research, the conservative Family Research Council offered a clarification Wednesday to comments made by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi regarding the divisive issue.

At the unveiling of a statue of former President Ronald Reagan on Capitol Hill, Pelosi took a moment to honor Reagan’s widow, former first lady Nancy Reagan, who in recent years has been frequently noted for her active support of embryonic stem cell research.

Since 2004, Reagan has favored what many consider to be the Democratic Party’s position, and urged then President George W. Bush to support federally funded embryonic stem cell research in the hope that this science could lead to a cure for Alzheimer’s disease, which her husband had suffered for nearly a decade from until his death in June 2004.

In March, Reagan was among those who praised President Barack Obama for reversing Bush’s ban on federally-funded embryonic stem cell research though the White House failed to invite her to the bill-signing ceremony.

“Mrs. Reagan, with your presence here today, I hope you know that we honor you. Not only for your support of the President (Ronald Reagan), but for turning that support and love into action,” Pelosi said during Wednesday’s statue unveiling.

“Your support for stem cell research has made a significant difference in the lives of many American people,” she added. “It has saved lives, it has found cures, it has given hope to people.”

Shortly after Pelosi’s remarks were made, the Family Research Council issued a statement claiming that Pelosi “got her facts all wrong, misleading people again, this time with her statements on stem cells.”

“Adult stem cell research has indeed saved thousands of lives, produced cures, and benefited and given hope to many. But embryonic stem cell research, which Speaker Pelosi has promoted, has not helped a single human being, has produced no cures or treatments, has led to the destruction of countless vulnerable human embryos, and is most noted for giving tumors to lab rats,” FRC president Tony Perkins clarified.

“Speaker Pelosi, please get your facts straight, put politics aside, and push for real help for people through adult stem cells,” he added after chastising her for “injecting divisive politics” into her speech.

According to a poll released last year by the polling company, inc., only 17% of Americans say they are “very familiar” with stem cell research while 41 are either “a little bit familiar” or “not at all familiar.” Roughly 42% say they are “somewhat familiar.”

And while 69% of Americans said they support stem cell research, when asked specifically if they support both adult and embryonic stem cell research, only 45% said they do. And that’s without being told of the successes of stem cell research that don’t involve embryos or of the failures of embryonic stem cell research to date.

“What most people are unaware of is that there are three types of stem cell research: there is embryonic stem cell research (ESC), there is induced pluripotent (IPSC) research, and adult stem cell research (ASC),” noted Michael Reagan, the adopted son of the late Ronald Reagan and his first wife, Jane Wyman.

“When Barack Obama rescinded George Bush’s ban on federal funding on certain types of embryonic stem cell research he also rescinded Bush’s Executive Order 13435 which had provided federal funding for induced pluripotent stem cell research using harmless adult stem cells manipulated into mimicking embryonic stem cells without the risk ESC cells entail,” the author and radio personality added after Obama’s executive order this past March.

“This is where 72 different diseases are now being remedied or cured.”

As Perkins had done, Reagan noted how embryonic stem cells have led to tumors in the mice that have been tested upon.

“It is well known that lab animals given embryonic stem cells routinely develop tumors and other malignant growths that eventually kill them. There is a 100% mortality rate among lab animals that develop these tumors,” he stated.

Reagan also referred to the case of a now 17-year-old boy in Moscow who developed benign tumors after he was treated in 2001 with embryonic stem cells for a rare genetic disease.

“Israeli doctors removed the abnormal growth from his spine and their tests show it most probably was caused by the stem cell,” Reagan commented.

Though Nancy Reagan supports embryonic stem cell research, Michael Reagan alleges that his late father, like him, opposed the creation of human embryos for the sole purpose of using their stem cells as possible medical cures.

On Wednesday, Michael Reagan said that he was not able to attend the unveiling of his father’s statue due to a previous commitment, though he wishes he could have.

“I offer my deepest gratitude to those who have arranged for his statue to be unveiled only a few short days from the fifth anniversary of his passing,” he said.

Ronald Reagan died on June 5, 2004, at the age of 93. Today, he ranks highly among former U.S. presidents in terms of approval rating.

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New Guidelines on Stem Cell Research Released (Christian Post, 090707)

The U.S. government’s medical research agency has published the final guidelines for human stem cell research in response to President Obama’s executive order earlier this year.

Having been directed by the president to issue the guidelines before July 7, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) released the guidelines on Monday after scanning through the approximately 49,000 comments it received from around the nation as well as comments from members of Congress.

“The guidelines apply to the expenditure of NIH funds for research using human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) and certain uses of induced pluripotent stem cells,” explained Dr. Raynard S Kington, acting director for the government agency.

“These guidelines implement Executive Order 13505, as it pertains to extramural NIH-funded stem cell research, establish policy and procedures under which the NIH will fund such research, and helps ensure that NIH-funded research in this area is ethically responsible, scientifically worthy, and conducted in accordance with applicable law,” he added.

According to Kington, the guidelines are based on two principles – the first being that responsible research with hESCs has the potential to improve understanding of human health and illness and to discover new ways to prevent and/or treat illness. The second principle is that individuals donating embryos for research purposes should do so freely, with voluntary and informed consent.

Under the new guidelines, stem cells created solely for research in whatever manner, including cloning, still won’t qualify for funding.

But hundreds of new embryonic stem cell lines, once ineligible for federal funding under a Bush Administration restriction, will now be eligible for funding so long as proof is provided that they (1) were created using in vitro fertilization for reproductive purposes and were no longer needed for this purpose; and (2) were donated by individuals who sought reproductive treatment and who gave voluntary written consent for the human embryos to be used for research purposes.

Furthermore, scientists using stem cell lines created before Tuesday – the day the new guidelines takes effect – can seek eligibility by submitting materials that demonstrate that the hESCs were derived in the spirit of the new guidelines, though perhaps not by the letter.

“Many of the lines already in existence may have met very rigorous standards of informed consent but may have been implemented in ways not consistent with the present guidelines,” Kington said during a news conference Monday. “It’s unreasonable to retroactively apply procedures intended for future use.”

Though titled “National Institutes of Health Guidelines for Human Stem Cell Research,” the new guidelines pertain primarily to the donation of embryos for the derivation of hESCs, which has been at the center of the debate of stem cell research.

Many within the pro-life community equate the processes involved in embryonic stem cell research to abortion as they require the destruction of embryos, unlike research on other types of stem cells, such as adult stem cells (taken from bone marrow and other tissue sources) and neonatal stem cells (from umbilical cord blood and the placenta).

In comments made Tuesday, Tony Perkins, president of the conservative Family Research Council, said the new guidelines “implement a plan that will force taxpayers to foot the bill for research that involves human destruction, not healing.”

“The NIH guidelines create an incentive to create and destroy so-called ‘excess’ embryos, pasting a veneer of ‘ethics’ on unethical experiments. They remove limits on taxpayer funding of experiments that require embryo destruction, and open the door to future abuses,” Perkins stated. “NIH clearly believes the President’s order allows them to fund other forms of unethical research at any point in the future.”

Perkins accused the NIH of ignoring the some 30,000 comments that were submitted against any federal funding of human embryonic stem cell research and chastised the government agency for not investing more in research that is not only undoubtedly ethical but also more fruitful.

Despite the highly touted potential of embryonic stem cells to develop into any cell of the body, embryonic stem cell research has yielded no cures to date. Adult stem cells and neonatal stem cells, meanwhile, have been used in successfully treating over 100 diseases and have been hailed by some as having many superior qualities to embryonic stem cells.

“Instead of funding more life-destroying experiments, federal funding should go toward life-saving treatments and clinical trials using adult stem cells, which are on the cutting edge of treating patients for diabetes, spinal cord injury, heart disease, multiple sclerosis, and other diseases,” concluded Perkins.

According to a poll released last year by the polling company, inc., 69% of Americans say they support stem cell research but only 45% say they support both adult and embryonic stem cell research when asked more specifically.

Furthermore, only 17% of Americans say they are “very familiar” with stem cell research while 41 are either “a little bit familiar” or “not at all familiar.” Roughly 42% say they are “somewhat familiar.”

According NIH acting director Kington, the NIH will review and update the stem cell guidelines “periodically, as appropriate,” as directed by Obama’s executive order.

Obama had signed the order on March 9, effectively reversing former President Bush’s stem cell policy by undoing his 2001 directive that banned federal funding for research into stem lines created after Aug. 9, 2001.

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New Guidelines on Stem Cell Research Released (Christian Post, 090707)

The U.S. government’s medical research agency has published the final guidelines for human stem cell research in response to President Obama’s executive order earlier this year.

Under the new guidelines, stem cells created solely for research in whatever manner, including cloning, still won’t qualify for funding.

According NIH acting director Kington, the NIH will review and update the stem cell guidelines “periodically, as appropriate,” as directed by Obama’s executive order.

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NIH Chief: More Ethical to Use Embryos than Discard (Christian Post, 091203)

[KH: half truth]

Thirteen embryonic stem cell lines were approved Wednesday for federally-funded research with assurance from the director of the National Institutes for Health that research on them is ethical and does not violate principles on human dignity and sanctity of life.

“Let me be clear, these are embryos that would have been otherwise discarded as part of in-vitro fertilization clinic activities,” Dr. Francis Collins noted during an appearance Wednesday on CNN.

The NIH director also noted that his federal agency had conducted a “very careful” review of the lines based on the conditions that were set forth in guidelines issued earlier this year and further pointed out that it was former President Bush who first approved the use of stem cell lines for federal researchers to work with.

Notably, however, taxpayer-funded stem cell research under the Bush administration was limited to about 21 embryonic stem cell lines – only those already in existence as of August 2001.

Since then, hundreds of “better lines” have come out, such as the 13 made available Wednesday.

The NIH’s announcement marked the first time new lines were made available since President Obama lifted the restriction set by Bush that made research on lines created after August 9, 2001, ineligible for federal funding.

According to Collins, another 96 embryonic stem cell lines are currently undergoing NIH review, and 20 or more could get a decision by Friday. Researchers have also notified the NIH that they may apply for approval of another 250 stem cell lines.

Though embryonic stem cells have been highly touted for their potential to lead to breakthroughs in curing diseases such as Parkinson’s, cancer, and paralysis, among others, critics of embryonic stem cell research say lifting the ban on their federal funding could open the door to future abuses and paste “a veneer of ‘ethics’” on unethical experiments.

Critics also point out that embryonic stem cell research has yielded no cures to date. Adult stem cells and neonatal stem cells, meanwhile, have been used in successfully treating over 100 diseases without controversies and have been hailed by some as having many superior qualities to embryonic stem cells.

In his appearance on CNN, Collins acknowledged the lack of progress in the relatively new field but noted that it’s partly because of the limits that have been placed on the research.

“We really don’t know what the potential is here,” he reported. “And I want to be clear that we should be careful not to overstate the likelihood that this approach is going to result in breakthroughs in those diseases. But it is certainly an exciting new pathway.”

Despite the uncertainty, Collins made clear that he believes that it’s far more beneficial to utilize what would otherwise be discarded.

“The embryos are being created anyway with a benevolent purpose to try to give a childless couple a chance to have a baby. It does seems to me, as a believer, as a Christian, that it’s more ethically acceptable – as long as the consent process was carefully followed and it’s clear that no payment was involved, there was not coercion involved. It was the free gift of the donors to make this available for research. That seems to me to measure up to ethical standards that are quite defensible from whatever your worldview,” he stated.

In continuing, Collins said: “The question that many ethicists have posed and people both of faith and people who come at it from a different perspective have concluded that in fact, ethically, isn’t it more justifiable if those embryos that have been created to use them for a purpose that might help someone with a disease as opposed to simply discarding them?

“It seems to me with that kind of argument, even those who feel strongly about the sanctity of life, when asked to balance the pros and cons of discarding versus trying to do something useful to honor that particular source of human material would say ‘Maybe we’re better off doing what we’ve done,’” he added.

With Wednesday’s announcement, researchers who were awarded $21 million in stem cell research grants earlier this year can start using the approved lines immediately. Millions more in stem cell money, meanwhile, is due out later this winter.

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Is Embryo Adoption Immoral? (Christian Post, 100223)

By Russell D. Moore

I received an email from a man who was upset about a couple in his extended family who are pursuing a so-called “snowflake adoption,” the adoption of a “frozen embryo” (to use, for clarity’s purpose only, the satanically clinical lingo of the current era). This couple had been led to do this after reading Adopted for Life, so he wanted to correspond.

How, he wondered, could I support this kind of adoption when I am opposed (and I am, strongly) to in vitro fertilization (IVF), donor assisted reproduction, and other technologies that violate the one-flesh union and the relationship between love and procreation.The same thing, he argued, is going on here with a donor embryo being implanted in an adopting mother’s womb.

First of all, there is no such thing as a “donor embryo.”

Someone can donate sperm or ovum or even a heart or a liver, but no one can “donate” an “embryo.” No one can “own” an “embryo.” An “embryo” isn’t a thing; he or she is a “who.” Our Lord Jesus is the pinnacle of the image of God (Heb. 1:1-3). He was an “embryo” (Luke 1:42-43). The “embryonic” John responded to our Lord’s “embryonic” presence in precisely the same way he responded to his adult presence on the banks of the Jordan River.

These so-called “snowflakes” are brothers and sisters of the Lord Jesus are stored in cryogenic containers in fertility clinics as the “extras” of IVF projects. They already exist, and they already exist as persons created in the image of God.

And there are Christians called to adopt them, to bring them to birth through pregnancy, and to raise them in love. To be sure, the numbers of children who can be adopted in this way are a microscopic percentage of the whole. And the numbers even of those who can be safely brought to birth is even smaller.

Isn’t this simply an embrace of the kind of “Brave New World” Frankenstein technology we elsewhere lament?

No.

Adopting parents are not complicit in the “production” (I shudder to type such a horrible word in reference to a human creature) of these children. Again, the children are already conceived. The adopting parents are no more endorsing the technologies involved than parents adopting from an unwed mother are endorsing fornication or adultery.

Embryo adoption also doesn’t carry with it the violence to the one-flesh union that comes with surrogacy or sperm donation, in which one spouse’s genetic marterial is joined with a stranger’s.

Embryo adoption would be problematic if the adoptions themselves became a further commodity in the buying and selling transactions of the reproductive technology business or if these adoptions were a widespread incentive for couples to justify the decision to “create” and freeze additional embryos. This is not, though, presently the case and doesn’t appear to be likely to become so anytime soon.

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Delay revealing gender of fetus to curb sex selection: experts (National Post, 100412)

Two Canadian medical experts are calling for new guidelines that would bar doctors from telling parents the sex of their fetus until late in a pregnancy, calling it a subtle way to curb the practice of sex selection.

Writing in a major obstetrics journal recently, the bio-ethicist and doctor say physicians should delay imparting information on baby sex until it is too late for the woman to have an abortion with no questions asked.

They admit it is unfortunate doctors should have to play such a role, but say it is unavoidable because Canadian law does not address the sex-selection phenomenon — or any other aspect of abortion.

“I think Canadians have a sort of visceral reaction to the idea that people would terminate a pregnancy based on gender alone,” said Brendan Leier, a bio-ethicist at Edmonton’s Stollery Children’s Hospital and co-author of the recommendations.

“But we have no legislation that reflects those values.... The entire burden of upholding those values falls on clinicians.”

One province, British Columbia, is already following the kind of policy he suggests.

Some doctors, however, say the idea violates their duty to divulge patient information, while abortion advocates argue the measure would be “paternalistic” and ultimately useless.

“The difficulty comes in the ethical agreement that the physician has with the patient,” said Dr. Doug Wilson, head of obstetrics and gynecology, University of Calgary. “If they have information, I think they have an ethical obligation to provide it, if the patient asks for it.”

Sex selection, fuelled by the widespread use of ultrasound scans that can often detect a fetus’s gender, has been well documented in countries such as China and India. A 2006 study in the journal Lancet, co-authored by Prabhat Jha, head of the University of Toronto’s Centre for Global Health Research, used lopsided birth statistics in India to conclude that 10 million female fetuses had been aborted there in the previous two decades.

There is evidence, though less conclusive, that the same practice is common in North America among some immigrant populations. A 2003 analysis of Statistics Canada data by the Western Standard magazine found that communities in B.C. and Ontario with large South Asian populations had disproportionate numbers of male births.

A 2008 U.S. study found that the ratio of boys to girls in families of Korean, Chinese or Indian background climbed steadily in favour of boys if the first child was a girl. [KH: could be misleading as the probability for a boy after a girl is higher than a girl after a girl.]

Mr. Leier and his co-author, Dr. Allison Thiele, an obstetrics and gynecology resident at the University of Saskatchewan, note that the official policy of professional groups such as the Society of Obstetrics and Gynecology of Canada (SOGC) condemns sex selection.

They say keeping back the information until a point in the pregnancy where abortions for non-medical reasons are difficult to obtain would abide by a doctor’s obligation to reveal all patient information, while discouraging sex selection.

Parents who wanted to know their baby’s sex in advance would still have time to plan for the birth, the authors argue.

In fact, doctors in British Columbia have for several years employed that approach, refusing to divulge sex information until 20 weeks into the pregnancy, said Dr. Alain Gagnon, an administrator at the B.C. Children and Women’s Hospital. It seems to work, even if the policy strikes patients as strange, he said.

“Many of them find it a little silly that they have to wait to get the information,” said Dr. Gagnon. “[But] the vast majority of people seem to be happy with it.”

One critic, however, questions the measure’s effectiveness, given that parents can mail order DNA tests that accurately predict fetal sex, and abortion clinics generally do not ask the reason for the procedure. The way to tackle sex selection is by combatting the social mores that lead people to want sons and not daughters, rather than by limiting abortion, said Joyce Arthur, coordinator of the Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada.

“To restrict people’s freedoms, withholding information in that way, I think is unethical and unnecessary and is not going to prevent anything,” Ms. Arthur said. “It’s a little bit paternalistic and authoritarian.”

Mr. Leier said the issue is ultimately one for government to handle, and Parliament should at least address ways of preventing sex selection. He noted, though, that most politicians in Canada tend to avoid any discussion of abortion because of the emotions around the question.

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After IVF, Abortion? What Does This Say? (Christian Post, 100611)

By R. Albert Mohler, Jr.

Just when you think that every imaginable dimension of the great tragedy of abortion has come to light, along comes a report that will stop you dead in your tracks. One of the most respected British newspapers has just revealed that approximately 80 abortions are performed in the UK each year, terminating pregnancies that came about by IVF treatments.

That’s right - on average, 80 British women each year abort their babies after having conceived them through the ordeal of IVF treatments. The British government, along with the British public, seems to be outraged at this discovery, made possible through the nation’s freedom of information rules. But, what is the basis of the outrage?

The Times [London] reported on June 6, 2010 that the discovery has shocked many in the medical community, but not all who are abortion providers. Professor Bill Ledger, a member of Britain’s Human Fertilization and Embryology Authority, pointed to the obvious: “These women can’t be surprised to be pregnant; you can’t have an IVF pregnancy by accident.”

Added to the scandal is the case that these abortions are classified as driven by “social” reasons. In other words, there is no medical issue at stake here. These are successful and healthy pregnancies that were sought by these women, even to the extent of seeking IVF treatments. Women who had sought such abortions after IVF told The Times that they decided after becoming pregnant that they just did not want to have the baby after all, that they terminated the relationship with their partner, or that the realization of impending motherhood was just too much.

Though there is a sense of outrage on the part of many in the public, it appears that much of the concern is financial, rather than moral. In its coverage of the scandal, The Times referred to the fact that “young women are having abortions on the NHS (National Health Service) after expensive IVF treatment.” In other words, the scandal is implied to be the waste of funds and the misuse of expensive and specialized high-tech fertility treatments.

Some observers responded to the report with no outrage at all. Ann Furedi, a prominent defender of abortion rights, told The Times, “Sometimes, it is only when women get pregnant that they can allow themselves to ask the question about whether it is really what they want.”

Come again? Ann Furedi appears to be saying that women need not even ask themselves if they really want to be mothers until they are actually pregnant. That assertion is about as morally shocking as can be imagined. Ms. Furedi also told the paper that she believes every abortion doctor sees at least one woman a year who seeks abortion after becoming pregnant through IVF technology.

Ann Widdecombe, a former Member of Parliament, said that women who abort after IVF treatments are treating babies as “designer goods.” On the other hand, the Human Fertilization and Embryology Authority insisted that it does not regulate abortions and sought to separate the IVF issue from the abortions in these cases. In an expression of classic bureaucratic banality, the HFEA said, “All patients who undergo IVF are assessed, as are the implications for any child that might be born, in advance of the decision to treat.”

Well, the “implications” for a significant number of these children are that they are killed in their mothers’ wombs.

What does this new scandal say about the human condition? In the first place, it tells us that we are turning ourselves into unabashed idolaters of the self. We are witnessing the elevation of personal autonomy, personal happiness, and personal fulfillment to levels that can only be described as idolatry. These women are seeking abortions just because they have decided they really do not want to be pregnant after all. Their concern is the solitary self above all.

Second, this scandal reminds us that the real issue here is the killing of innocent human life, and not the waste of expensive fertility treatments. The response to this report in some quarters is primarily about money, and not about the sanctity of human life. This fact alone should serve as a warning to us all.

Third, we must remember in light of this scandal that human dignity does not rest in any sense upon the circumstances of conception, but on the fact that every human being ever conceived is made in God’s image and is a life that is sacred and to be honored, protected, welcomed, and cherished. There are all too many women who conceive by natural means, only to make the decision to abort on the same basis as those described in this report. The scandal of the abortions sought after IVF treatments throws a dramatic light on the scandal of abortion itself. This new scandal just serves to make the murderous reality of abortion even more plain to see.

Americans should take note - we can be virtually assured that this scandal is present in this nation to a degree exceeding even what has been revealed in Britain. This nation lacks some of the protections and regulations found even in Britain. The United States is, as some foreign observers have noted, the “wild, wild West” of fertility treatments. Add to that fact the reality that women in the U.S. can demand an abortion for any reason or for no stated reason at all.

One might think that the most welcome place in the world for an unborn child would be the womb of a mother who would be so intent on getting pregnant that she would seek and undergo IVF fertility treatment. It turns out that in a significant number of cases, that assumption is proved wrong. How do we take the measure of that tragedy?

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FDA Approves First Human Trial of Embryonic Stem Cells (Christian Post, 100802)

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the world’s first human clinical trial of a therapy involving embryonic stem cells, the biotechnology company behind the planned trial announced Friday.

California-based Geron Corporation has been given the green light to proceed with its trial on a therapy for patients with spinal-cord injury. The trial involves injecting a stem-cell treatment into patients with severe spinal cord injury with the hope that it would help damaged nerve cells regrow and eventually allow patients to regain movement.

Both opponents and proponents of embryonic stem cell research highlight the fact that the FDA had originally approved the study in January 2009 and the trial was scheduled to begin last summer. But Geron found that animals used in a preclinical study had developed small cysts that appeared with “a higher frequency” than other studies, resulting in the FDA delaying the trial from proceeding.

Even proponents of embryonic stem cell research raised concern about this trial, noting its history with animals.

Embryonic stem cell research is controversial because it requires the destruction of the embryo during the process of harvesting the stem cells. Many pro-life groups, therefore, argue it is unethical and equate the research with abortion because it destroys another potential life. They also argue that adult stem research is an alternative that is both ethical and has proven results.

“Despite the efforts that are made to deny it, science continues to show us that the embryo is a human being in the making,” said Elio Sgreccia, emeritus head of the Pontifical Academy for Life, on Radio Vatican.

However, proponents of the research method highlight that embryonic stem cells are highly versatile and can develop into any tissue in the body. They, therefore, hope it can be used to develop organs for transplant and help regrow damaged nerves.

Under President George W. Bush, federally funded embryonic stem cell research was highly restricted. He twice vetoed legislations that would expand federal funding for the research. But President Obama in 2009 repealed Bush’s order that prevented the National Institutes of Health from funding the research beyond the cell lines that existed at the time.

Obama allowed greater freedom and federal funds for scientists who want to research using embryonic stem cell research.

Geron’s therapy, if successful, has the potential to help Alzheimer’s disease and multiple sclerosis, among other health problems.

The company has not scheduled a date when the trial will begin, but it wants to start this year. Geron has spent 15 years and more than $150 million on this therapy treatment, according to the San Jose Mercury News.

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Inconvenient Facts About Stem-Cell Research (townhall.com, 100827)

Steve Chapman

When he announced his policy expanding federal funding of embryonic stem cell research, President Barack Obama was not timid about proclaiming its benefits. It would, he announced, hasten “a day when words like ‘terminal’ and ‘incurable’ are finally retired from our vocabulary.”

You thought Obama wanted to establish death panels? Actually, he seems to think he can confer immortality.

That announcement, made in March of last year, dismantled the limits imposed by the Bush administration. The change, in Obama’s view, was a triumph over ignorance and ideology.

His executive order was, the president claimed, “about protecting free and open inquiry” and letting scientists “do their jobs, free from manipulation and coercion, and listening to what they tell us, even when it’s inconvenient.” When science wins, he led us to believe, we all win.

Conspicuously absent from those declarations were facts that Obama would prefer to omit because they are — well, inconvenient. But those facts did not elude U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth, who on Monday said the revised policy violates federal law.

What facts? A restriction approved by Congress in 1996, and repeatedly renewed, says federal money may not be used for “research in which a human embryo or embryos are destroyed.” But the point of Obama’s new policy was to pay for experiments using stem cells harvested from embryos that are killed in the process.

The administration evaded the ban by stipulating that Washington could fund such research as long as it didn’t fund the part where the fetus is terminated. Judge Lamberth was not buying.

Embryonic stem cell research, he noted, requires the destruction of embryos. The federal prohibition, he said, “encompasses all ‘research in which’ an embryo is destroyed, not just the ‘piece of research’ in which the embryo is destroyed.” So any funding of experiments using such stem cells is forbidden.

Obama imagines that this research may make the word “terminal” obsolete — except, of course, when applied to the embryos that perish when their stem cells are taken for scientific inquiry.

President George W. Bush’s policy allowed research only on stem cell lines that had already been established. The idea was to facilitate studies without creating incentives to destroy additional embryos. Obama, by contrast, took the view that the destruction of additional embryos (those “left over” at fertility clinics) is essential to the march of science.

What’s wrong with destroying a 5-day-old embryo that would be discarded anyway? Nothing, unless you think there is something wrong with killing a human embryo ostensibly for some greater good.

If there is nothing wrong with that, though, it’s hard to see what’s wrong with destroying an embryo that is 5 weeks old or 5 months old, if its tissue could be used to help people who are seriously ill. In that case, why limit research to leftover embryos? It would make more sense to let scientists create embryos and let them gestate for months, for the sole purpose of destroying them for their stem cells.

Americans might bridle at that prospect, but proponents of expanded embryonic stem cell research have spared them from the contemplation of such unpleasantness. Their campaign focuses on ends, not means — alleviating suffering, conquering disease, letting the blind see and the lame walk.

Such advances are only speculative at this point. But their allure is such as to discourage us from looking too closely at the methods needed to bring them about. It’s easier to think in terms of excising tissue from blastocysts than in terms of killing human embryos. In reality, they are the same thing.

The problem with embryonic stem cell research is that the goals are so desirable that they override our usual moral impulses. Yuval Levin, a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, wrote in 2006 in The New Atlantis, “It is very hard for us to describe something higher than health, or more important than the relief of suffering, so when relief comes at a cost, even the cost of cherished principles or self-evident truths, we all too often pay up.”

The court decision against Obama’s policy on stem cell research is a rare exception, which may induce us to reconsider the wisdom of what we have sanctioned. “Our problem is not that we are lacking in ethical principles,” says Levin, “but rather that we are forgetful of them.”

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Delaware GOP Rumblings (townhall.com, 100917)

Ken Blackwell

During post-election analysis, Republican luminaries stumbled badly in discussing Christine O’Donnell on the night of the Delaware senatorial primary.

But Delaware Republicans had just voted. They had given their support—rather convincingly—to the clearly more conservative O’Donnell in a hotly contested primary election. Where was the unity that night?

Her opponent, Mike Castle, is surely a prominent Delaware Republican. A veteran of the Governor’s Mansion and the holder of the state’s only seat in Congress, Castle should have won in a walk. But restive conservatives rebelled.

Pro-lifer O’Donnell stressed her economic differences with liberal Republican Castle. But it should not go without mention that Castle was the co-author of the Castle-DeGette bill. Under this measure, Americans would be taxed to create embryonic human beings. Taxpayers would then have to fund experiments upon those embryonic human beings, including cloning humans. Finally, the taxpayers would have to pay for the killing of these cloned humans and other embryonic human lives.

This is a nightmare scenario for pro-life Americans. Delaware is famous for its giant chemical company corporate headquarters. Do we really want to see one of the most important industries in the world given over to the creation of human beings and their destruction? Do we want to see human lives treated as no more than another commercial commodity?

Congressman Castle sincerely believes that cloning humans holds real promise for curing a host of human ills. For this promise, he is willing to cast aside moral and ethical constraints. Even Bill Clinton’s bioethical panelists recoiled at the idea of cloning human beings to kill them.

Consider how illogical Mr. Castle’s position is. If stem cells scavenged from embryonic human beings or from cloned humans really did promise cure-alls, wouldn’t those same Delaware corporations be elbowing each other in a profit-seeking race to become the discoverer, patent holder, and marketer of the golden pill?

The fact is that stem cells scavenged from embryonic humans have not yielded a single viable treatment or cure. This, despite the fact that there has never been a legal ban on killing these human beings for their stem cells.

All that President Bush said on August 9, 2001 was that the federal government would not pay for killing these embryonic humans. Bush in no way limited private corporations from killing.

The most promising treatments have come from ethical research using adult stem cells. Many people are confused by terminology here. Adult stem cells don’t have to come from adult people. They can be found even in umbilical cords of newborn children. Even the mothers’ placentas are rich sources of adult stem cells. We see daily breakthroughs coming from adult stem cell research. Many of the headline grabbers speak of stem cells being used for this or that promising treatment—even as they fail to note that the stem cells used were adult.

The Republican Party has billed itself as the pro-life alternative to a militantly pro-abortion Democratic Party since 1976. Since 1980, every Republican Platform has affirmed that “the unborn child has a right to life that cannot be infringed.” The last two Republican platforms, 2004 and 2008, have explicitly condemned cloning-to-kill, as envisioned by Castle-DeGette.

In the interests of party unity, the pro-life majority in the GOP has gone along with many a “RINO,” hoping that Republicans like Arlen Specter, Susan Collins, and Olympia Snowe could at least be relied upon to stand with us against abortion funding and in favor of originalist judges. But Mike Castle went far beyond even these liberal Republicans.

Conservative Republicans are willing to work with Democrats on Capitol Hill. Think back to the famous Gramm-Latta legislation of 1981. Conservative Democrat Phil Gramm teamed with Ohio GOPer Del Latta to give us the famous Reagan tax cuts (and, not incidentally, three decades of growth and prosperity).

Where we get into trouble is when Republicans in Congress embrace the left-most Democrats. Think of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance legislation. That bill muzzled conservative groups like the NRA, the National Right to Life Committee, and Family Research Council. McCain-Feingold gave free rein to the New York Times, Dan Rather, and Chris Matthews. Not only was that legislation an assault on the First Amendment and largely struck down by conservative judges in the courts, but it also helped to sink John McCain’s own presidential run.

Castle-DeGette is another example of left and lefter legislation. Delaware Republicans signaled to the national GOP establishment that they have had enough. Those voters did not set fire to the Big Tent. But they did say that some things are simply beyond the pale of what can be accepted. To have high profile nominees of the party embracing the left-most positions on human life is simply intolerable. President Kennedy said it well: “Sometimes party unity demands too much of us.”

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Court Blocks New Federal Funding for Embryonic Stem Cell Research (Foxnews, 100823)

A federal judge temporarily blocked the Obama administration Monday from using federal dollars to fund expanded human embryonic stem cell research, saying the research involves the destruction of embryos.

The ruling comes after the National Institutes of Health last year issued new guidelines permitting federal funding for research on certain stem cell lines that had already been created.

The court challenge was brought by adult stem cell researchers who argued the new rules not only would increase competition for limited funds, but violated federal law. A nonprofit group, Nightlight Christian Adoptions, also joined and argued that the government’s new guidelines would decrease the number of human embryos available for adoption.

The District Court for the District of Columbia granted a preliminary injunction on the research, saying the plaintiffs would suffer “irreparable injury” from the policy and that the new guidelines violated federal law that prohibits federally funded research involving the destruction of human embryos.

U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth ruled that despite attempts to separate the derivation of human embryonic stem cells from the research process, “the two cannot be separated” because culling those stem cells destroys an embryo.

“The guidelines violate that prohibition by allowing federal funding of ESC research because ESC research depends upon the destruction of a human embryo,” he wrote.

The new NIH guidelines did not authorize the explicit creation or destruction of any embryonic stem cells. At issue were rules for working with cells that initially were created using private money.

The Bush administration had limited taxpayer-funded research to a small number of stem cell batches, or lines, already in existence as of August 2001. Last spring, Obama lifted that restriction, potentially widening the field but letting NIH set its boundaries.

The NIH came up with a compromise, saying it deems those old stem cell lines eligible for government research dollars if scientists can prove they met the spirit of the new ethics standards.

The embryonic stem cells are master cells that can morph into any cell of the body — researchers hope they can be used to one day create better treatments, maybe even cures, for ailments ranging from diabetes to Parkinson’s to spinal cord injury.

The District Court previously dismissed the case, saying the plaintiffs did not have legal standing.

But after an appeals court upheld the suit, the District Court reversed course and allowed the case to proceed. The suit names Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius as a defendant.

Stem cell research has the potential to produce breakthroughs in treating life-threatening conditions — from spinal cord injury to diabetes to Parkinson’s — that have resisted traditional treatment. Scientists say they need to do research with embryonic stem cells as well as so-called adult ones because the former are more flexible, and the NIH is funding both types.

“This injunction blocks important research on how to unlock the enormous potential of human embryonic stem cells,” said Sean Tipton of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, a group that treats infertility and does research with a variety of stem cell types. “It will be incredibly disruptive and once again drive the best scientific minds into work less likely to yield treatments for conditions from diabetes to spinal cord injury.”

Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, a conservative public policy foundation, called the decision “a stinging rebuke to the Obama administration and its attempt to circumvent sound science and federal law.”

The NIH declined to comment, referring calls to the Justice Department, where department spokeswoman Tracy Schmaler said the ruling was under review.

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Christian Physicians Hail New Breakthrough in Stem Cell Research (Christian Post, 101006)

Christian medical professionals are hailing the latest breakthrough in stem cell research, claiming that it further proves that the destruction of embryos is unnecessary to find cures for disease.

“This breakthrough validates many other significant proofs of the therapeutic promise of induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS cells) and adult stem cells,” declared Dr. David Stevens, CEO of the 16,000-member Christian Medical Association (CMA), on Monday.

“Compared to the speculative, controversial and dangerous embryonic stem cell research that the [Obama] administration insists on funding illegally, iPS cell and adult stem cell research is a cheaper, faster, safer, more efficient and quicker path to the cures we need,” he added.

On Thursday, a team of researchers led by Derrick J. Rossi of the Children’s Hospital Boston revealed its development of a new technique that can quickly and more efficiently create safe alternatives to human embryonic stem cells.

The new method, which is featured in the October issue of Cell Stem Cell, uses synthetic RNA to drive the expression of stem cell-inducing proteins without irreversibly altering the cells’ genetic material.

The resulting stem cells then are able to recapitulate the functional and molecular properties of human embryonic stem cells, and therefore can be transformed into specialized cells to treat disease.

Furthermore, unlike current methods that use viruses to deliver the genes that “reprogram” a cell into a stem cell, the new method poses little (if any) risk for cancer as RNA doesn’t become part of the cell’s genome. The resulting stem cells are also generated at much higher efficiencies than standard virus-based techniques and in half the time.

If that’s not reason enough to celebrate, Rossi - whose team spent more than a year developing the synthetic, chemically-modified RNA - said the new technology also has potential reaching far beyond the stem-cell field.

“In terms of therapeutics, any genetic disease that involves a mutation of a gene that doesn’t make a certain protein, we can now approach that with this technology to reintroduce that protein into those cells and reestablish proper function to those cells,” he reported. “So we think that this is going to be really important for many therapeutic avenues in addition to basic questions of biology.”

After news spread of the latest development, CMA’s Stevens questioned how anyone could continue insisting that the government, “in a time of financial crisis, should continue to shovel hundreds of millions of tax dollars down the black hole of speculative embryo-destroying research.”

“These new iPS cells are safer; there is no evidence of a risk of causing cancer by using viruses to insert genes into cells. The new cells are produced more efficiently, taking just 17 days to create. The new iPS cells are cheaper to develop, can easily tissue match the patient that the therapy are given too and are morally acceptable to all,” Stevens noted. “The fact that these iPS cells strategy can then turn those cells into ones that could be used for transplants is a huge step forward as well.”

Notably, despite the highly touted potential of embryonic stem cells, research on embryo-derived cells has yet to treat a single disease. Adult stem cell research, meanwhile, has produced treatments for heart muscle rehabilitation, muscle growth, diabetes and Parkinson’s disease, among others. Altogether, more than 80 diseases are already being treated with non-controversial adult stem cells and 1,970 clinical trials with adult stem cells are underway. With embryonic stem cells, there is only one human clinical trial.

“With patients desperately waiting for cures and ethical alternatives showing such great promise, it is increasingly ludicrous to spend and speculate our tax dollars instead on unethical, illegal and cancer-producing embryonic stem cell research,” Stevens remarked.

CMA, which claims a membership of around 16,000 physicians, medical students and allied health professionals, was an original party to a lawsuit that on Aug. 23 won a temporary halting of all federal funding of human embryonic stem cell research.

A federal appeals court in Washington has since made permanent a stay requested by the Obama administration on the district court judge’s order to halt federal funding of the controversial research.

The U.S. government’s funding of embryonic stem cell research, therefore, is allowed to continue as the case against it makes way through the court system.

Supporters of the controversial research emphasize that embryonic stem cells can differentiate into almost any tissue and therefore have the potential to treat a wide range of diseases.

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Couple urged surrogate mother to abort fetus because of defect (National Post, 101007)

When a B.C. couple discovered that the fetus their surrogate mother was carrying was likely to be born with Down syndrome, they wanted an abortion. The surrogate, however, was determined to take the pregnancy to term, sparking a disagreement that has raised thorny questions about the increasingly common arrangements.

Under the agreement the trio signed, the surrogate’s choice would mean absolving the couple of any responsibility for raising the child, the treating doctor told a recent fertility-medicine conference.

Dr. Ken Seethram, revealing the unusual situation for the first time, said it raises questions about whether government oversight of contracts between mothers and “commissioning” parents is needed.

A bioethicist who has studied the issue extensively argues that contract law should not apply to the transaction, unless human life is to be treated like widgets in a factory.

“Should the rules of commerce apply to the creation of children? No, because children get hurt,” said Juliet Guichon of the University of Calgary. “It’s kind of like stopping the production line: ‘Oh, oh, there’s a flaw.’ It makes sense in a production scenario, but in reproduction it’s a lot more problematic.”

Prof. Guichon speculated that courts likely would not honour a surrogacy contract, drawing instead on family law that would require the biological parents to support the child.

It appears no surrogacy contract has actually been contested in a Canadian court, however, leaving the transactions in some legal limbo.

Dr. Seethram’s presentation to the Canadian Society of Fertility and Andrology conference suggested the accord signed by the three in B.C. may have undermined the surrogate’s right to make decisions in a “non-coercive” environment.

The surrogate, a mother of two children of her own, eventually chose to have the abortion, partly because of her own family obligations.

A former surrogate who helps parents and mothers make such arrangements said the parties should agree on what they would do if defects are discovered during pregnancy, ensuring they have the same views on abortion. If a dispute still arises, however, parents ought to be protected, said Sally Rhoads of SurrogacyInCanada.ca.

“The baby that’s being carried is their baby. It’s usually their genetic offspring,” she said. “Why should the intended parents be forced to raise a child they didn’t want? It’s not fair.”

In some U.S. jurisdictions, in fact, parents can even sue a surrogate to recoup their payments if the woman insists on going ahead with a pregnancy against their wishes, Ms. Rhoads said.

Disputes are rare here, but she said it is usually surrogates who end up feeling most aggrieved. She recalled one case where the mother conceived twins, the parents asked for a procedure to reduce the number of fetuses to one, and the whole pregnancy was inadvertently lost.

In three other Canadian cases, surrogates are now raising the babies after the commissioning couples got divorced and backed out, Ms. Rhoads said.

The conference presentation disclosed no names or other personal details on the B.C. case, but Dr. Seethram said it occurred within the past year.

The surrogate was implanted with an embryo created with the parents’ egg and sperm. An ultrasound during the first trimester showed the fetus was likely to have trisomy 21, the genetic abnormality that leads to Down syndrome. A further test confirmed the diagnosis.

The couple and the surrogate always got along and their disagreement on what to do never became acrimonious or tense, Dr. Seethram said. But the physician with Pacific Centre for Reproductive Medicine said it appeared to him that the three had never seriously considered such a scenario before the pregnancy.

“They were certainly quite shocked,” he said. “Obviously, [the parents] had come on a long journey before commissioning the surrogacy, [but] all they were thinking about was success.”

It is an issue of growing importance. While there appear to be no national statistics, experts in the field say that surrogacy arrangements are becoming increasingly commonplace in Canada.

Larry Kahn, a Vancouver lawyer who specializes in assisted-reproduction and adoption law, said he has arranged more than 35 surrogacy contracts in each of the past three years, up from barely 15 a decade ago.

He said the surrogate is always represented by her own lawyer, but the contracts usually absolve the parents of responsibility when a defect is found and the surrogate refuses an abortion. He said he knows of no disputes involving any of his clients, though he acknowledged that it is possible the courts would not recognize the contract if a legal battle did ensue.

Dr. Seethram said he believes that the federal government will eventually pass regulations to address the situation, but Mr. Kahn said he doubts Ottawa will get involved.

Françoise Baylis, a Dalhousie University bioethicist, said the case highlights how human life can become like a commodity in such transactions.

“The child is seen by the commissioning parents as a product, and in this case a substandard product because of a genetic condition,” Prof. Baylis said.

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Court OKs Funding of Embryonic Stem Cell Research Pending Appeal (Christian Post, 100928)

A federal appeals court in Washington is allowing the U.S. government’s funding of embryonic stem cell research to continue as the case against it makes way through the court system.

Just one day after hearing arguments over the issue, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit made permanent the stay requested by the Obama administration on a district court judge’s order last month to halt federal funding of the controversial research.

Earlier this month, the appeals court temporarily lifted the preliminary injunction issued by Judge Royce Lamberth of the U.S. District Court for D.C., who said the funding violated the Dickey-Wicker Amendment – a 1996 law that prohibits funding for research that involves destruction or damage to a human embryo.

The Obama administration, however, argued that the funding to date has not been used to destroy embryos but only for research. Furthermore, it claimed that an injunction – even a temporary one – could harm “numerous” research projects.

“Numerous ongoing projects will likely not survive even a temporary gap in funds, jeopardizing both the potential benefit of the research and the hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayer funds already invested in it,” the Obama administration said.

Critics of the research, however, maintain that the process of harvesting the embryonic stem cells will require the destruction of embryos – a main reason why opponents of the controversial research liken it to abortion.

Furthermore, they say granting a stay pending appeal, even of short duration, would “flout[] the will of Congress,” and that “the public interest is served by preventing taxpayer funding of research that entails the destruction of human embryos.”

“This funding violates the plain language of the Dickey-Wicker Amendment, in which Congress prohibits federal funding of ‘research in which’ a human embryo is ‘destroyed, discarded, or knowingly subjected to risk of injury or death,’” remarked Sam Casey, general counsel for Advocates International, one of the groups that argued against federal funding of the research Monday.

Despite the arguments, the three-judge panel decided Tuesday to grant the Obama administration’s request to allow the funding from the National Institutes of Health while it appeals last month’s order blocking the research. The court also said it would expedite the case.

In response, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said the Obama administration is “heartened that the court will allow NIH and their grantees to continue moving forward while the appeal is resolved.”

“President Obama made expansion of stem cell research and the pursuit of groundbreaking treatments and cures a top priority when he took office,” he noted.

NIH director Francis Collins, in a statement attached to the Obama administration appeal, said the NIH has invested more than $546 million in federal dollars for human embryonic stem cell research since 2001.

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