Pro-Lifers Unconvinced About 'Ethical' Embryonic Research

Beware of those who play at being God, kiddies.

The first of the two new papers reports that the private company Advanced Cell Technology has managed to remove a cell from an eight-cell mouse embryo and use it to grow a batch of ESCs -- with no apparent harm to the embryo, which continued to develop normally.

The technique researchers employed is similar to that used in pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) -- an established procedure to test embryos during IVF to weed out genetically flawed ones and only implant in the mother's womb embryos free of defects.

In the other study, Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research researchers used a technique -- altered nuclear transfer (ANT) -- to disable a critical gene in a mouse skin cell and use it to create a cloned embryo (or embryo-like entity) that is incapable of developing normally into an adult. They then harvested ESCs from it.

What's so bad about that?, you may ask.

Some pro-life ethicists and scientists in the U.S. and Italy this week put their names to a joint statement cautiously endorsing a form of ANT that produces a cell which is "incapable of being or becoming an embryo.

"They voiced support for further research on animals, adding: "If, but only if, such research establishes beyond a reasonable doubt that ... [the technique] can reliably be used to produce pluripotent stem cells without creating embryos, would we support research on human cells."

But others, both in the U.S. and in other countries where bio-research is advancing rapidly, are skeptical.

Greg Pike, director of the Southern Cross Bioethics Institute in South Australia, voiced concerns about both methods.

He said by phone Wednesday that ANT was tantamount to "the intentional creation of a defective embryo" and so was highly questionable ethically.

"Morally it's not terribly different - in fact there is a way in which it could be viewed as a more sinister approach than using embryos spare from IVF programs or from other sources, because it has that predetermined human action built into it - to subvert a natural process and then legitimize something which would normally be considered immoral.

"That's of course based on the view that human life at that stage ought to be protected, which is a view that I hold.

"This embryo, for all intents and purposes, would be indistinguishable from any other, he said.

In its earliest days, development would be normal until it reaches a point where "a gene which usually kicks in to guide the next stage of the developmental process" fails to activate, having been switched off.

With regard to the second research project reported in Nature, Pike said the long-term impact of PGD, when used in IVF, was still unknown.

Some medical practitioners worry that when IVF babies conceived after PGD reach their 40s or 50s "a series of metabolic disorders may begin to appear."

He said it was also possible that the single cell removed from the eight-cell embryo in the Massachusetts research may itself have the potential to be a new embryo, but be robbed of that potential.

In Britain, the group Corethics said neither of the two new reported developments resolved basis ethical objections to ESC work.

Spokeswoman Josephine Quintavalle said the ANT procedure deliberately created an embryo with limited viability.

"It is nevertheless an embryo for the duration of its shortened life, and therefore our objections remain in place. Respect for the human embryo is not based on its life expectancy. While it exists it is living and the ... research brings that life to an end."

Of the PGD-related research, she said "we do not distinguish between embryos on the basis of quality assessments. All embryos have a right to their natural life span."

Another British group, the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children, commented: "These methods would still pose ethical problems as they would both involve the manipulation of human embryos."

In the U.S., the National Catholic Bioethics Center also voiced concern about the PGD component in the new research.

"While the attempt to obtain embryonic-like stem cells for the purpose of establishing embryonic stem cell lines without destroying embryos is in principle morally laudable, any procedure that places at risk the health and life of a human embryo for purposes that do not directly benefit the embryo is morally unacceptable," it said in a statement.

The center also objects to IVF, because it bypasses the natural method of conception.

Remember, kiddies: In vitro, no one can hear you scream.