LETHAL STEM CELL RESEARCH DEBATE GROWS MORE FIERCE

By Dave Andrusko

Just when it seemed the red-hot controversy over lethally harvesting stem cells from human embryos could not get any more heated, four new developments changed the dynamic yet again.

At issue is whether the federal government will use taxpayer dollars to underwrite research which culls stem cells from embryonic human beings. The extraction destroys the embryos, which proponents assert is unimportant since they are dismissed as mere "left over" embryos created at fertility clinics but not implanted. (See related stories, pages 2, 4, and 7.)

On July 10, the influential Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF), a powerful lobby with considerable clout in Congress, announced that it is launching a major television and print advertising campaign to create pressure on President Bush. A dollar figure was not included, but the figure no doubt is in the multi-million-dollar range.

At the same time the JDRF said it was hoping to reach 100 million people with its ad campaign, the Jones Institute for Reproductive Medicine at the Eastern Virginia Medical School in Virginia issued a press release [technically embargoed until the following day], saying that scientists there "have successfully created new tissue lines using sperm and eggs donated [purchased] explicitly for that purpose." The press release was in advance of an article that appeared in the journal Fertility and Sterility.

In other words, the controversial institute simply leapfrogged the debate over using stem cells that had been lethally extracted from human embryos created but not implanted. In this historic first, at least in the United States, "investigators sought sperm and egg donors specifically to begin stem cell lines." More candidly, these represented human beings created for the sole purpose of being the object of fatal experimentation.

And then, literally the next day, the Washington Post reported that a Massachusetts company is working to develop methods to clone embryos for the explicit purpose of lethally extracting their stem cells.

According to the article in Fertility and Sterility, the Jones Institute used standard in vitro fertilization techniques to secure 162 eggs from 12 women each paid $1,500 to $2,000. After the eggs were inseminated, 50 embryos were "successfully created."

According to the Washington Post, "The researchers destroyed 40 of them to get the stem cells that resided inside." From these early human embryos, "18 inner cell masses" were cultured out, from which three embryonic stem cell lines were created.

The Jones Institute boasted of "the careful ethical review and discussion undertaken prior to conducting the study." The institute's press release said that after "consulting with clergy, ethicists, and legal professionals, the Jones Institute Ethics Committee concluded that creating embryos for research purpose wan not only justified but in keeping with 'our duty to provide human kind with our best understanding of early human development.' "

The Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation's print ad revolves around 12-year-old "Samantha," who has had juvenile diabetes since she was two. The headline is, "For Samantha, Stem Cell Research Isn't a Political Issue--It's Her Best Hope for a Cure."

There is nothing that suggests that recent research published in the July 7 edition of Science magazine has called into question the very underpinning of embryonic stem cell research, let alone that adult stem cells are already saving lives.

What is next? On the morning the article appeared, NPR Morning Edition reporter Joe Palca interviewed ethicist Ron Green, a perfervid supporter of destructive embryonic stem cell research.

When asked if this special creation might lead to creating embryos for spare parts/ organs, Green allowed as to how it was " probably" not going to happen, that a law could "probably" be passed banning such a repulsive practice.

Palka also interviewed R. Alta Charo, a professor of law and ethics at the University of Wisconsin. Charo found the practice of anonymous donors of eggs and sperm a much preferable technique to using "leftover" embryos.

She argued that this way, scientists could avoid altogether the possible emotional attachments parents might feel toward the children they had created but not implanted.

A more accurate, not to mention more humane, assessment came from Richard Doerflinger, an official with the National Conference of Catholic Bishops. Doerflinger told the Los Angeles Times this "shows the slippery slope in action. Once clinics get used to the idea of research on spare embryos, they will become desensitized enough to consider creating embryos solely to be destroyed."