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!
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