Some Reasons to Oppose the NIH Draft Guidelines for (Destructive) Human Embryonic Stem Cell Research
Posted by drbob2 on Jun 1, 2009
As a physician and father of seven wonderful children who began their lives as embryonic individuals, I write to present my comments in opposition to the DRAFT National Institutes of Health Guidelines for Human Stem Cell Research presented over the April 17, 2009 name of Dr. Raynard S. Kington, Acting Director, NIH. Guidelines
Of course, as one who adheres to the Hippocratic Oath, my opposition to the proposed Guidelines is based primarily on their inherent and unwarranted devaluation of human life, which, in this context, is to be killed in the name of “science.” There are many more reasons to oppose these Guidelines.
Throughout the Guidelines, cells derived from the intentional killing of little human beings are described in terms of their “use.” When they are deemed, by their parent or donor owners, to no longer be useful to provide an implanted embryo, intrauterine fetus, and born child, they are relegated to be killed and used in the name of “research.” Echoes of the testimony provided at the Doctors Trials at Nuremberg in the late 1940’s (and of the Tuskegee Study) are now sounding loudly in America. Is anyone in Washington listening? One is reminded that the secret of Schindler’s List was that Oskar Schindler found ways to portray the usefulness of born human beings to bureaucrats of the Third Reich. In so doing, he saved many otherwise slated for death or lethal “research” at the hands of physicians and scientists. Pragmatic Utilitarianism is not only impractical but, neither then and there nor here and now, is it anything but barbarism.
In my second paragraph I noted that my unfailing objection is rooted in the immoral and unethical action of directly killing one human being for some reputed “higher purpose.” When that “higher purpose” is based on smoke, mirrors, and fantasy, the entire enterprise becomes incredible and demeans its proponents. Human embryonic stem cell research has been carried on for over 10 years in the U.S., largely but not entirely funded by non-public dollars. At this time, before EO 13505, our country was spending more on this destructive research each year than the rest of the world combined!
In spite of this level of funding for this period, no human clinical trials have even begun, although one—very cautious and very small—has now been approved by the FDA. The scientific reasons are, no doubt, known to the author(s) of the Guidelines: human embryonic stem cells have not been controllable and are prone to form a variety of tumors; additionally, human embryonic stem cells always carry a genome distinct from any putative patient. Although this latter impediment may be addressed with immunosuppressive drugs, when balancing that regimen against the currently demonstrated effectiveness of cell therapies employing the patient’s own stem cells (without immunosuppression) or those employing donated but matched adult stem cells (with immunosuppression), the risks of using embryonic stem cells tips the scales against them.
It would appear, from my reading of the Guidelines, that Dr. Kington has made an unwarranted and unsupportable interpretation of the Dickey-Wicker Amendment, here presented as currently in force.
Dickey-Wicker Amendment
(enacted on March 11, 2009 as part of the Omnibus Appropriations Act, 2009,)
SEC. 509. (a) None of the funds made available in this Act may be used for–
(1) the creation of a human embryo or embryos for research purposes; or
(2) research in which a human embryo or embryos are destroyed, discarded, or knowingly subjected to risk of injury or death greater than that allowed for research on fetuses in utero under 45 CFR 46.208(a)(2) and Section 498(b) of the Public Health Service Act [1](42 U.S.C. 289g(b)) (Title 42, Section 289g(b), United States Code).
(b) For purposes of this section, the term “human embryo or embryos” includes any organism, not protected as a human subject under 45 CFR 46 (the Human Subject Protection regulations) . . . that is derived by fertilization, parthenogenesis, cloning, or any other means from one or more human gametes (sperm or egg) or human diploid cells (cells that have two sets of chromosomes, such as somatic cells).
To present these Guidelines as approving funding of research using human embryonic stem cells that were “derived” i.e. obtained by killing an embryonic human being, is disingenuous at best if it is meant to be within the actions approved by Dickey-Wicker. To consider this further, these Guidelines are meant to divorce themselves from the actual killing—presumably not funded by NIH—how can the “Eligibility” provisions not be interpreted as a wink and a nod to those who, although, perhaps, not directly funded by tax dollars, must meet specific NIH requirements so that their unfunded killing actions are allowed to generate a funding stream by using the products of the killing? If the “eligibility” provisions are not a clear attempt to tacitly approve actions contrary to the language and intent of Dickey-Wicker what are they?
Penultimately, these Guidelines become patently incredible when they promote the immoral, unethical, and increasingly outdated and unworkable destruction of human beings by providing the accurate definition of human embryonic stem cells as “cells derived from human embryos (that) are capable of dividing without differentiating for a prolonged period in culture, and (that) are known to develop into cells and tissues of the three primary germ layers.” Contrast that definition with the same Guidelines definition of human induced pluripotent stem cells: “cells that are capable of dividing without differentiating for a prolonged period in culture and (that) are known to develop into cells and tissues of the three primary germ layers.” Since the defined characteristics, as presented in the Guidelines, are indistinguishable, and since one involves the killing of a human being without their foreknowledge or consent, the reasonable reader must ask why Executive Order 13505 was issued and why these Guidelines were drafted?
It is clear the answer to that question is that President Obama is enthralled by the notion that human embryos are human enough to be used but not human enough to be protected. It follows that President Obama is here engaged in fulfilling a campaign promise to require taxpayer funding of increasingly irrelevant “research” which requires the killing of little human beings. As such the Executive Order and these Guidelines are morally corrupt. They devalue human life and demean and degrade scientific inquiry.
Just the Facts, Doctor!
Posted by drbob2 on Apr 21, 2009
It was a real honor to host Dr. David Prentice on the program today. He was Professor of Life Sciences at Indiana State University, Adjunct Professor of Medical and Molecular Genetics at Indiana University School of Medicine, and is now Senior Fellow for Life Sciences at the Family Research Council. Dr. Prentice has carried out ethical stem cell research and, from his position of authority, he made several important points. He reminded us:
- That, scientifically, human life begins at conception;
- That almost all of about 400 thousand embryonic human beings currently stored at IVF clinics are not about to be destroyed but are considered children by their parents–and, if need be, can be adopted by other childess couples;
- That before President Obama mandated taxpayer support of destructive embryonic stem cell research the U.S. was already spending more on it than the rest of the world COMBINED;
- That non-embryonic stem cell research, especially adult stem cell research, is the field that is already successfully treating human patients and adult and the new Induced Pluripotent Stem cells show greater promise than destructive embryonic stem cell research; and
- That non-embryonic stem cell research is the field that private funds are supporting simply because it is more likely to be successful than destructive embryonic research.
All in all, it was a refreshing and expert defense of the Culture of Life…I hope those in the media were listening!
Brits Stop Funding for Cow-Human “Cybrids”; UK “Scientists” Howl
Posted by drbob2 on Mar 27, 2009
A recent article “Rival stem cell technique takes the heat out of hybrid embryo debate” in the British paper, Guardian, by science correspondent Ian Sample, merits wider distribution for many reasons. The main reason is that here in the U.S., where “news” is limited to an agenda crafted by only a few newsmongers, it is newsworthy. Another reason may be that the topic: the British government first authorizing, and now de-funding, the creation of cow-human embryos, (which some have termed “cybrids,” to be killed within 14 days so their cells can be studied) is gruesome.
The Guardian reported that, due to budgetary restraints and the advent of reprogrammed skin cells (called induced pluripotent stem cells) which have virtually all the benefits of embryonic stem cells without their inherent dangers, the UK’s Medical Research Council refused to finance the cow-human embryo research and, instead, favors the new (and ethical) technique of inducing skin cells to become pluripotent stem cells.
Several things need more explanation.
The whole idea of cybrids came about because human embryonic stem cells are always different from the human patient being treated and, therefore, subject to immune rejection, as well as other serious problems. This means that any human treatment using embryonic stem cells requires either cloning a human embryo identical to the patient, then killing the embryo and manipulating the stem cells into some form of treatment option or the use of immunosuppressive drugs. In other words, if you want to treat someone with embryonic stem cells, you can’t use stem cells derived from embryos created by in vitro fertilization facilities and then killed for their stem cells without suppressing your immune system. If you don’t want immunosuppression, you have to clone a replica embryo of yourself and then kill it and use it.
Now you can see that, to clone an embryo from each patient being treated is a tremendous logistical problem since cloning (euphemistically “called somatic cell nuclear transfer” by the cloners) requires that women donate unfertilized eggs to the researchers who remove the nuclei (containing just 23 human chromosomes) from those eggs and replace each with a nucleus (containing all 46 human chromosomes) taken from a cell from the patient. How cloning is done Human eggs for this process are always in short supply—hence the dream of some “scientists” to replace human eggs (oocytes) with cow, rabbit, or pig eggs!
So, the cloning of human embryos to kill them for their stem cells is a complicated process, notwithstanding the significant moral and ethical objections to it. And the prospect of using cow eggs doesn’t make it easier or ethical but harder and, if possible, more disgusting. This is especially so since the advent of induced pluripotent stem cells, or iPSC, which can be ethically developed from a prospective patient, and, thus do not contain immunologically foreign material subject to rejection. YDB Blog readers will know that iPSC are made from a patient’s skin, or other, cells and are ethically reprogrammed to have embryonic cell properties identical to the patient. iPSC are so important that Sir Ian Wilmut, who cloned Dolly the sheep, and who had been active in human cloning research, reported that he will stop trying to close humans and start using iPSC.
Nevertheless, last year, the U.K.’s Human Fertilization and Embryology Authority granted licenses to three groups to make human-cow hybrid embryos or “cybrids.” Now, however, the funding for that research has been nixed by Britain’s Medical Research Council. Professor Stephen Minger of King’s College is one of the license holders. He said his cow-human embryo research has not even started because of lack of funds. One source quoted Minger, who, according to the Times of London, had left the U.S. for the U.K. because of England’s promotion of human embryonic stem cell research, “We put in a grant proposal last year but it wasn’t successful and we’re dead in the water.”
The coup de grace, to cybrid prospects may, however, have come from research done here in America by controversial scientist Dr. Robert Lanza, Chief Scientific Officer of Advanced Cell Technology. Unencumbered by financial, ethical, or, apparently, licensure impediments, Lanza reports on his website Lanza the results of his comparative analysis of human embryos and cow-human and rabbit-human embryos,
Importantly, the human oocytes significantly upregulated Oct-4, Sox-2, and nanog (22-fold, 6-fold, and 12-fold, respectively), whereas the bovine and rabbit oocytes either showed no difference or a downregulation of these critical pluripotentency-associated genes, effectively silencing them. Without appropriate reprogramming, these data call into question the potential use of these discordant animal oocyte sources to generate patient-specific stem cells. (Emphasis added.)
In other words, in his lab here in the U.S., Lanza found that cow-human embryos and rabbit-human embryos don’t work!
If you have a topic you’d like me to address, just send me an email at drbob@superhealthms.com.
Human Stem Cell Research: Promises and Perils, Part 5
Posted by drbob2 on Jan 26, 2009
As I noted last time, when it comes to advances in ethical (non-embryonic) stem cell research, it’s hard to know when to stop gathering information and start writing. A fascinating report just recently came along from Europe that put together a multinational and multispecialty medical team that used ethical adult stem cell research to successfully treat a young Spanish woman with a serious lung condition. More about that below. In this, my last planned entry for this series on stem cell research, I will take note of:
- The use of the ethical Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells (iPSC) created in late 2007 to treat sickle cell anemia—so far only in mice;
- How a 2003 prediction for taking regenerative medicine beyond growing and modifying adult stem cells outside a patient’s body is being fulfilled; and
- The successful treatment of a Spanish woman using a multi-national team which used the patient’s own adult stem cells to tissue-engineer a segment of airway and then successfully transplanted it to replace her narrowed bronchus.
On November 20, 2007, the same day that Dr. Yamanaka reported his success in creating imps cells from a woman’s skin cell—which provided an amazing new tool for researchers to use, researchers also reported not only that they had duplicated Dr. Yamanaka’s experiment and produced iPS cells, but they had used them to successfully treat—in mice—sickle cell anemia.
This complicated but effective process is explained at Sickle Cell Mice Cure
As a reader of this series on stem cell research knows, the advances in ethical adult and IPS stem cell research involve a process like this:
- Take adult stem cells from a patient’s bone marrow, brain, fat, skin, or other source;
- Grow and multiply them by cell culture in the laboratory;
- Use the right “recipe” of growth factors, culture media, and other substances to get the adult stem cells to change into just the type of cell the patient needs;
- Then find a way to put them back into the patient, right where they are needed; and
- See if they will regenerate needed tissue and restore lost or diminished function.
That’s what is being done right now with adult stem cells already in treating human patients with heart disease, Parkinson’s disease, and some spinal cord injuries. It has been a useful process, and has even more promise, witness the enhanced possibilities of ethical research and human treatments using Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells.
Yet over five years ago, Dr. James Prentice, an ethical stem cell researcher and member of President Bush’s Commission on Bioethics, recognized that, although the process was effective and promised to be even more so, there may be a better way. As Dr. Prentice’s testified at before the President’s Commission on Bioethics in 2003:
“…perhaps the best avenue eventually to pursue might be trying to isolate what these factors are (which deliver a signal to the stem cells in a patient and stimulate them) so that no stem cells would be needed at all. Instead, if you can identify those factors to stimulate regeneration within the tissue, they could be delivered directly.”
In other words, instead of finding, removing, culturing, differentiating, and reinjecting our own reparative or regenerative stem cells, Dr. Prentice predicted it would be much simpler to identify the specific growth factors needed and then give them to patients to activate their own stem cells—right where they are— to change into the type of cells needed to repair or regenerate a diseased or destroyed organ or tissue.
Working with mice, Harvard’s Dr. Douglas Melton reported (August of 2008),that his team had done just that; injected a selected set of growth factors incorporated into a virus into diabetic mice. The virus contained three growth factor genes: Ngn2, Pdx1, and Mafa. The pancreas contains many kinds of cells but the two cells of interest here are the exocrinecells—which secrete essential digestive enzymes like pepsin and trypsin into the intestinal tract and endocrine cells, like the beta cells which secrete insulin into the bloodstream. Three days after the growth factor genes were injected into the pancreas’s of diabetic mice, 20% of the exocrine cells changed (without becoming stem cells first) directly into insulin-producing beta cells. Although the new cells did behave like ordinary beta cells, secreting insulin in response to rising glucose levels in the mice which did lower the glucose level, they remained as single or clumped cells and did not organize themselves into little islands in the pancreas the way ordinary beta cells do and did not appear to communicate with other beta cells as ordinary beta cells do. Even so, if this process can be safely translated into treating humans, it has tremendous significance.
The Cleveland Clinic is currently investigating the approach predicted by Dr. Prentice in human patients who have had a heart attack. First, they give patients growth factors to stimulate their production of adult stem cells. Then they give the patients a migration factor to see if they can induce the stem cells to migrate to the damaged heart muscle in hopes of repairing it. Even today that sounds like science fiction or something out of one of the Star Trek series.
A different and significant approach to treating humans with adult stem cells was recently announced. A multinational team of clinical researchers reported, in The Lancet, Early Online Publication, 19 November 2008, that they had successfully transplanted a hybrid section of a bronchus (breathing tube) into a 30 year mother of two. Mrs. Claudia Lorena Castillo Sanchez.
Mrs. Castillo-Sanchez, who lives in Barcelona, developed an unusual complication of pulmonary tuberculosis. The TB bacilli infected her left mainstem bronchus, the major airway which carries all the air from her trachea to her left lung. As a result of the infection, the cartilage in the wall of the bronchus, which keeps the airway open when we exhale, softened to such a degree that her airway became very narrow. Her doctors first inserted a stent to widen the narrowing but it was not successful and she became too short of breath to carry out her normal daily activities. To treat her, her doctors were considering removing her entire left lung.
In a remarkable multinational collaboration teams from Spain, Britain, and Italy carried out a treatment plan which involved “autologous tissue engineering.” As Dr. Paolo Macchiarini reported in The Lancet, the process began by taking a three inch segment of bronchus from an organ donor, who had died of a cerebral hemorrhage; removing all the donor’s immunologically active cells and then covering the outside of the graft with cartilage cells derived from Mrs. Castillo’s own bone marrow and replacing the inner lining of the graft with Mrs. Castillo’s own bronchial lining cells.
Surgeons then operated and took out the narrowed airway and replaced it with the donor’s “bioengineered” normal size bronchus. Her operation, in June of 2008 was successful and, so far, measurements of her lung functions have gone from 55% and 62% to 100% without any sign of rejection or other problems!
At this rate of progress, who knows what good things will have happened by the next time I pick up this subject,
We live in especially interesting medical times for a number of reasons, one being the recent recognition that each one of us is a virtual walking warehouse of adult stem cells that, with the application of proper techniques, can repair and regenerate diseases and conditions for which other treatments have been ineffective. When we add to the current successes being made with adult stem cells the additional promise of induced Pluripotent Stem Cells, the ethical reader and ethical researcher must wonder why anyone persists in killing little embryonic human beings in the name of “science.”
Remember, if you have a topic you’d like me to address, just send me an email at drbob@superhealthms.com.
Human Stem Cell Research: Promises and Perils, Part 4
Posted by drbob2 on Oct 11, 2008
In one sense it has been too long between log entries but, in another sense not long enough since, during the delay (occasioned by a vacation, among other things) “almost daily” scientific discoveries have been demonstrated once more in the field of ethical (non-embryonic human) stem cell research.
As I noted in my last entry, even researchers engaged in destructive embryonic stem cell, contrary to what has been widely reported by most of the media, recognized that they were destroying human life in their work. One example, as recounted by Justin Cardinal Rigali, was when “a very influential (embryonic) stem cell researcher, Kyoto University’s Dr. Shinya Yamanaka, was humbled when he was looking through a microscope at a human embryo in a fertility clinic” Rigali quoted a New York Times story which reported: “The glimpse changed his scientific career. ‘ When I saw the embryo, I suddenly realized there was such a small difference between it and my daughters,’ said Dr. Yamanaka, 45, father of two. ‘I thought, we can’t keep destroying embryos for our research. There must another way.’” He went on to find a way to do just that.
Last November, in a breakthrough report, the very same Dr. Shinya Yamanaka reported that he had been able to take skin cells from a 38 year old woman and grow them in his lab. Nothing new about that. But then, using an ingenious but basically trial and error process, his lab identified four human genes (Oct3/4, Sox2, Klf4, C-Myc.) that produced cellular growth factors. In order to get these growth factor genes into the growing human skin cells, Yamanaka’s lab first put them in a special type of virus, called a lentivirus, and then infected, or as they reported “transfected” them into the skin cells they were growing. They kept an eye on the skin cells and noted that about one in several thousand “transfected” skin cells developed virtually all of the characteristics of human embryonic stem cells! Although one in several thousand may not seem very impressive to you or me, they were able to isolate and grow millions of the special cells— all they would need for research.
The same day that Dr. Yamanaka reported his results, Dr. James Thompson of the University of Wisconsin, and also one of the originators of destructive embryonic human stem cell research, reported a similar way to develop these iPSC, using a set of four growth factor genes, two of which were different from Yamanaka’s (Oct3/4, Sox2, NANOG, LIN 28).
These new cells appeared to meet all the qualifications to be ethical (they were, remember, not taken from a human embryo but from mature skin cells) and pluripotent (being capable of differentiating into virtually all types of cells). The cells, which Yamanaka called “induced Pluripotent Stem Cells” (iPSC), also had a new advantage. Since they could be taken from not only healthy individuals but also from patients suffering with, say Rheumatoid Arthritis, the iPSC may contain the same intracellular flaw(s) that caused the arthritis. When that’s the case, these cells, taken from an affected patient may be used to test the effectiveness of new medicines or combinations of medicines in the laboratory—without exposing that patient to the risks of trying out the new drugs themselves!
Although the scientific world was thunderstruck by Yamanaka’s and Thompson’s work, press reports were somewhat muted. Remember, it was the press that had pushed the agenda of destructive embryonic human stem cell research, either ignoring or simply pushing aside moral and ethical objections to the lethal nature of that work, even though the researchers were, as noted above, keenly aware of its destructive nature. It was the press, along with some researchers trying to get the public to pay for research that the free market would not, that pushed legislation in several states to publicly fund cloning human beings and then killing them for their stem cells. However none other than Sir Ian Wilmut, who devised many of the techniques of cloning and cloned Dolly the sheep, recognized what many in the press found hard to swallow, much less report. Sir Ian, almost immediately after Dr. Yamanaka’s paper on iPSC, went public with his determination to abandon his work on human cloning and use the new techniques instead.
I had meant this to be the last in this series of blog entries on human stem cell research but enough has happened since last November’s announcement of iPSC that it appears one more entry is needed to point out some of what has been learned since then and to report how the 2003 prediction of ethical researcher Dr. David Prentice is being fulfilled right now, just five years later.
Remember, if you have a topic you’d like me to address, just send me an email at drbob@superhealthms.com.
Human Stem Cell Research: Promises and Perils, Part 3
Posted by drbob2 on Aug 11, 2008
So far in this set of blog entries, I presented some general information, noted that currently there currently 3 major types of human stem cells: adult stem cells, embryonic stem cells and induced pluripotent stem cells, and detailed some of the therapeutic history and current human treatments utilizing adult stem cells. Those have recounted how some of the Promises of human stem cell research have been realized and led to a greater understanding of regenerative medicine.
As a result of adult stem cell research we have come to recognize that we are walking warehouses of spare parts, in the form of adult stem cells. The challenge is how to obtain them safely, grow them and guide them into generating the types of cells we need, and then get those reparative/regenerative cells into the right place in the patients who need them.
Now, I will point out some of the Perils of human stem cell research, those that arise from the type of research that destroys human embryos and uses stem cells derived from them. It is necessary to do this but I do so, as previously noted, from the standpoint of a Hippocratic (“First do no harm”) physician. I will discuss some of the realities of who, not what, embryonic stem cells are and what is being done to them in the name of research.
Each of us began life as a single fertilized egg, called a zygote or “conceptus” containing 46 human chromosomes, 23 from mother and 23 from father. From that single living, genetically distinct, cell came all the different types of cells, tissues, and organs that make us who we are today. How did that happen? How can one cell, with a complete genetic complement or “genome” differentiate, while nurtured in mother’s womb, into so many different cells and structures in a self-directed manner? For example, just 18-25 days after conception our heart muscle cells begin to beat rhythmically. Why and how does that happen? Just imagine the lessons to be learned by ethical researchers motivated to advance regenerative and reparative medicine?
That is a promise of stem cell research. But, unfortunately, present day research utilizing human embryos has a high cost. I find it a prohibitively high cost because embryonic stem cell research requires the destruction of a unique human beings at a very early stage in the human life cycle. Just as ethical researchers found research conducted on unwilling human “subjects” in Europe and in America tainted by the researchers’ disdain for human life, so do thoughtful scientists, physicians, and lay persons find embryonic stem cell research ethically unsupportable.
No doubt you have heard, during the publicity campaigns to require taxpayers to fund such research in California, Missouri and elsewhere, that destroying early human life is “enlightened” and promises great benefits for mankind. One TV star with Parkinson’s Disease even made a “commercial” promoting the tax funding of human embryonic stem cell research in Missouri. I have to wonder what he was thinking, since clinical trials utilizing ethical adult stem cells has, for a number of years, been treating human patients with Parkinson’s.
In trying to understand the many and unsupportable claims by proponents of embryonic stem cell research, almost all of which are duly but uncritically reported by most of the media, I found that:
- The United States already spends more on embryonic stem cell research than the rest of the world combined
- That, according to www.stemcellresearch.org as of today, there are 73 adults stem cell treatments for humans, including those in everyday practice and those in research, while there are zero embryonic stem cell treatments for humans, in practice or in clinical trials.
- That, because using embryonic stem cells derived from human beings conceived in the course of in vitro fertilization are different from the patient, the concept of therapy of patient A using embryonic stem cells without the need for powerful drugs to suppress patient A’s immune system, requires that a cell from patient A must be cloned, using a human egg donated or purchased from a woman. The cloned embryo is then grown in the laboratory until it becomes a blastula (a globe of cells which all of us once were) , then “disaggregated” (killed) for its stem cells which are grown in cell culture in hopes of forming just the type of cells, or tissues, that patient A needs.
To sum up, let me say, the wonderful way that each of us developed from a single cell is indeed astounding and thought-provoking. It is not an excuse to kill little human beings in the name of science. It is important to note that moral objections to embryonic stem cell research are not based upon its lack of usefulness to date. Even if, God forbid, it did prove to be of some use in the treatment of human patients, it would still be immoral and unethical. For example, if you are an adult were a dialysis patient in need of a kidney, it is moral and ethical to obtain a kidney from a living person who, recognizing the risks and benefits, donates a kidney for you. It is also moral and ethical to obtain a kidney from a dead person who certified their desire to be an organ donor. It is immoral and unethical for you to kill someone for their kidney.
Human embryonic stem cell research is problematic and perilous for several reasons:
- It kills little human beings at a very early stage of development.
- It requires cloning, and then killing, a human embryo to even be considered for therapeutic purpose.
- It is based on the discredited philosophy of Pragmatic Utilitarianism: “That which is (in this case may, possibly in the future) be useful is good”
- It has not generated, to date, a single treatment for human illness. This is the least forceful reason for opposing it since, even if it generated cures, it would still be immoral and unethical because it kills humans.
In reading all the deceitful and unsupportable reports by the press promoting human embryonic stem cell research, you would never get the message that there has been a very real ethical controversy even among those scientists active in human embryonic stem cell research who are aware of the lethal aspects of their work. However, when the discovery of Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells (iPSC—the changing of adult human skin cells into stem cells with virtually all the properties and promises of embryonic stem cells) was announced last November, Sir Ian Wilmut, who cloned the sheep he named Dolly, reported that he will abandon his efforts to clone humans and focus on the new iPSC research.
Also, James Thompson of the University of Wisconsin, one of the two “fathers” of human embryonic stem cell research in 1998 AND one of the two researchers (with Dr. Shinya Yamanaka of Japan) who developed the new iPSC techniques told reporter Gina Kolata, of the New York Times:
- That he “had ethical concerns about (human) embryonic research from the outset.”
- “I believe these results (iPSC) are the beginning of the end of this (ethical) controversy.” And
- “Isn’t it great to start a field (embryonic stem cell research) and then to end it?”
In my next entry, I plan to explore this new and most promising type of stem cell research: Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells; some of the amazing discoveries regarding them made just since last November; and how it is becoming apparent that even iPSC research may be just another mile marker on the super highway of regenerative medicine.
Remember, if you have a topic you’d like me to address, just send me an email at drbob@superhealthms.com.
Human Stem Cell Research: Promises and Perils, Part 2
Posted by drbob2 on Jul 25, 2008
In my last blog entry, I reported some of the basic information about stem cells in general and just a bit about why they are increasingly important and in the news. Now I’d like to start presenting some information about the (now) three different types of stem cells currently being studied in research and those that are being used clinically. I make no bones about my perspective which is, I hope, that of a physician who holds dear the ethical rule attributed to Hippocrates: “First, do no harm.” Except where otherwise noted, I will be writing of stem cells of human origin.
Adult stem cells, primarily those found in bone marrow, have been used for over three decades in treating human patients. First, they were used to treat leukemia, which can be thought of as a cancer of the bone marrow. The concept was to first destroy the leukemia patient’s bone marrow with a high dose of chemotherapy and radiation, and then restore the patient’s ability to make blood (red and white blood cells and platelets) by transplanting into their veins, immunologically matched cells taken from someone else’s the bone marrow. That “someone else” could be an identical twin, a family member, or an unrelated donor—as long as they were a compatible match. Bone marrow transplantation became increasingly effective in treating leukemias and certain other malignant diseases like lymphoma and multiple myeloma as well as some non-malignant conditions like sickle cell anemia. In current clinical trials, transplanting these kinds of adult stem cells is being tested in the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis and multiple sclerosis, as well as other conditions.
A lot has been learned over the years about how to identify the different types of adult stem cells, based on certain molecules that serve as markers on the surface of the cells. For example, hematopoietic (blood forming) stem cells found in bone marrow carry on their surfaces a molecular receptor site named CD 34. Not all CD 34 cells are blood forming stem cells but all blood forming cells—to my knowledge— are found within the CD 34 cluster. CD stands for “cluster of differentiation” (some researchers use the term “cellular differentiation”) and there are many different numbered clusters—like the CD 4 cells which are used to monitor patients with HIV infections.
Using new equipment which can recognize, and sort out, CD 34 cells from a blood sample, donating adult CD34 stem cells to treat blood diseases has gotten easier for the donor. Instead of taking marrow from a donor by aspirating it from their hip bone by a needle, the donor now receives a drug to stimulate increased production of their CD 34 cells, which are then “harvested” from their peripheral venous blood and injected into the patient’s vein. Another thing that was discovered within the last decade or so was that some adult CD 34 cells transplanted into a leukemia patient could, without any guidance from the doctors, form other kinds of cells, liver cells for example, in the patient who received them! It demonstrated that some of the stem cells within the CD 34 cluster had the inherent capacity to form more than “just” blood cells.
Among other things, discoveries like that stimulated a search for other sources of adult stem cells and ways to coax them to form specific types of tissue needed for repair and regeneration. These days, according to www.stemcellresearch.com, a website I heartily recommend, adult stem cells can be taken from bone marrow, peripheral blood, umbilical cord blood, amniotic fluid, placenta, brain tissue, and fat, including the fat removed by liposuction, as well as other organs and tissues. These adult stem cells are then grown and multiplied in the lab and used in the treatment of about 73 human conditions currently.
Not only can adult stem cells be found in many tissues and organs, a great deal has been learned about how to use substances called growth factors and other means to guide them to become just the cell type needed. As just one example, University of Florida researchers at the McKnight Brain Institute have developed a method to change non-nerve cell tissue taken from human brain biopsies into nerve cells!
Next time we’ll look at embryonic stem cells and the newest—and perhaps most promising—development called Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells, or iPSC.
Remember, if you have a topic you’d like me to address, just send me an email at drbob@superhealthms.com.
Human Stem Cell Research: Promises and Perils
Posted by drbob2 on Jul 7, 2008
Stem cell research is such an important, timely, and evolving topic that I plan to make several blog entries about it. It’s really a fascinating subject and is full of promises and perils. I remember years ago that my (undergrad) Senior Seminar in Biology was a study of “Cytodifferentiation and Macromolecular Synthesis” which was a compilation by author Michael Locke of (then) cutting edge reports by noted scientists who were investigating not only the way that animals, including we humans, develop from a single fertilized cell, but how that happens. That’s exactly what’s going on in science today, but with new capabilities in research tools which have answered a lot of the questions asked in the old days and which have generated many more questions.
In one sense, when we were a single fertilized egg (known scientifically as a zygote or conceptus) we had more potential, in the words of Professor Jerome Lejeune, discoverer of the genetic basis for Down Syndrome, that at any other time in our lives. Our genetic code, contained in the DNA ½ of which we received from our mother and ½ from our father, had the potential to express all the genetic information it contained. That, however, might have been dangerous and is not the way things work. If all of our genes were put in play at once, we would not have developed in an orderly fashion at all.
Like an orchestra composed of many instruments, our DNA appears to be made to have its instruments (genes) played in an orderly fashion over time—and in response to signals. Just as the composer’s music gives signals to each musician about what notes each instrument is to play and when, the director also sends more signals: “more from the violins just now, less from the brass,” so now scientists are learning how cells signal each other and direct the fabrication (synthesis) of protein gene products, some of which signal back to the DNA “more (or less) of my protein (x) or more (or less) of another protein (y).” These messenger molecules, which can stimulate more gene activity (“up-regulation” or “expression” of a gene) or suppress gene activity (“down-regulation” or “repression” of a gene) can make for an incredibly complex but exciting scheme of things. It’s no wonder that stem cell research is so important and so active.
What is a “stem cell?” We know that living cells divide at varying intervals. When somatic cells, like skin, muscle, liver or kidney cells divide they produce two cells just like the one that divided. One skin cell divides into two skin cells, etc. When a stem cell divides, however, it can yield a cell that is different from itself, a differentiated cell, as well as another stem cell like itself. For example, when a “hematopoietic stem cell” (a Greek term that means “blood forming”) divides, it gives rise to one stem cell and a differentiated cell like a red blood cell, a white blood cell, or a platelet (a small cell essential to blood clotting).
That’s all for now. Next time we’ll delve into the types of stem cells, what they can do, are doing, and more about their “promises and perils.”
Remember, if you have a topic you’d like me to address, just send me an email at drbob@superhealthms.com.