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« Double Money for Salvo | Main | Death Works Culture War »

November 20, 2007

Goodbye Dolly

A reader, Gene Godbold, sent me this link this morning to the coverage in the Washington Post about a new breakthrough in stem cell research: using adult skin cells. No human embryos or human eggs are required. At one point the article said that

Until now only human egg cells and embryos, both difficult to obtain and laden with legal and ethical issues, had the mysterious power to turn ordinary cells into stem cells.

Perhaps I am wrong, but I thought that "adult" stem cells have been used and developed from adult cells, and that some successful therapies have resulted. So to say that it was not possible to develop "stem cells" from anything other than embryos and eggs seems misleading. If so, then it's more of the same journalistic coverage that simply repeats party line.

That said, I hope the drive to use human beings for body parts will peter out. In a related story from a few days ago,

The Scottish scientist who created Dolly the sheep more than a decade ago said he is abandoning the cloning technique that he pioneered, according to an interview published Saturday.

Ian Wilmut, who led the team that created Dolly in 1996, told The Daily Telegraph that he is abandoning cloning to pursue a new technique that can create stem cells without an embryo.

Wilmut's announcement could mark the end of therapeutic cloning, in which DNA is inserted into an unfertilized egg, an embryo is produced and stem cells are harvested, the newspaper said. Tens of millions of dollars have been spent worldwide on therapeutic cloning research in the past decade, but nobody has made it work in humans.

One can hope also that support for [embryonic] "stem cell" research won't be featured in the upcoming political ads I dread.

Posted by James M. Kushiner at 09:41 AM | Permalink

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I am sharing this quote from an AP article about the discovery:

Scottish researcher Ian Wilmut, famous for his role in cloning Dolly the sheep a decade ago, told London's Daily Telegraph that he is giving up the cloning approach to produce stem cells and plans to pursue direct reprogramming instead.

Other scientists said it's too early for the field to follow Wilmut's lead. Cloning embryos to produce stem cells remains too valuable as a research tool, Jaenisch said.

Dr. George Daley of the Harvard institute, who said his own lab has also achieved direct reprogramming of human cells, said it's not clear how long it will take to get around the cancer risk problem. Nor is it clear just how direct reprogramming works, or whether that approach mimics what happens in cloning, he noted.

So the cloning approach still has much to offer, he said.

Daley, who's president of the International Society for Stem Cell Research, said his lab is pursuing both strategies.

"We'll see, ultimately, which one works and which one is more practical."

Notice that even though they have been given an alternative, some are still not willing to give up their option to use ethically and medically questionable procedures. Could it be that their motives are less about helping others and more about profit and power?

Posted by: Kathy ******** | Nov 20, 2007 10:01:59 AM

Notice that even though they have been given an alternative, some are still not willing to give up their option to use ethically and medically questionable procedures. Could it be that their motives are less about helping others and more about profit and power?

Absolutely, not to mention the desire of some in the "pro-choice" movement to use pro-life opposition to embryonic stem cell research to paint us as uncaring of the seriously ill and even cruel fundamentalists, willing to sacrifice the well-being and even lives of breathing humans for some blobs of cells. This has never been primarily about the value of the research; its always been about trying to stir up public opinion against the pro-life movement in general.

Posted by: GL | Nov 20, 2007 10:07:38 AM

"Perhaps I am wrong, but I thought that "adult" stem cells have been used and developed from adult cells, and that some successful therapies have resulted. So to say that it was not possible to develop "stem cells" from anything other than embryos and eggs seems misleading. If so, then it's more of the same journalistic coverage that simply repeats party line."

You are not wrong at all. I read an article just the other day that listed some 70 uses of adult stem cells to help alleviate or cure various physical ills. This has been public knowledge for a long time, at least for those who read something besides the mainstream media.

Posted by: Beth | Nov 20, 2007 10:12:43 AM

Just a personal comment on all this - I am an insulin dependent diabetic, and have been since the age of 6. Yet people find it hard to believe that I will not give money to find a cure because it is in most cases based on embryonic stem cell research. I have written the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation to let them know this. Sadly, they were a great deal of help to my parents 40 years ago when I was diagnosed.

Posted by: Michele Driver | Nov 20, 2007 10:34:46 AM

Michele,

I understand your concerns. We have similar concerns in my family.

First, my wife is a pharmacists. She is limited as to where she can work because of the morning after pill and the fact that some states mandate that pharmacists fill prescriptions for the morning after pill on pain of losing their licenses. This means that she must avoid working at any retail or hospital pharmacies where she might be required to fill such a prescription since she, and I, believe the morning after pill is a form of abortion. I am currently considering a new position which would require us to move to another state. We must research her employment options before we can make a decision on whether I should accept one of the offers I have.

Second, my youngest daughter has a rare chromosomal disorder. It is possible that at some point some one will develop a treatment based on ESC research. Even if the treatment itself does not require the use of ESCs, we may have to decide whether to refuse her treatment because it was developed through ESC research. For that reason, among others, I pray that ESC research is entirely unproductive, as it has been to date, and I further pray that if it does prove productive in developing a treatment that would benefit our daughter, that we will not be compelled by the nanny state to have her so treated.

Posted by: GL | Nov 20, 2007 10:44:00 AM

Kathy,
I beg to differ. It can't be about profit and power--at least technological power--because they've been spectacularly unsuccessful in getting anybody treated with embryonic stem cells. I think it's more a transgressive desire to "play God" coupled with an ideological drive to poke a finger in the eye of pro-lifer types. This only, of course, applies to the hard-core folks.

I predicted back in 2000 to a friend of mine that all it took would be the right combination of transcription factors (of course at the time, I had no idea what they would be--1000s are encoded in the human genome). There isn't anything magical about the pluripotent state. A guy I work with is a reproductive (animal) biologist and met the guy at Wisconsin. (He's apparently painfully introverted and didn't even have a tenure-track job until he hit the jackpot with rhesus macaque cells about ten years ago.)

Posted by: W.E.D. Godbold | Nov 20, 2007 11:06:34 AM

On the stem cell front, it appears that a team of scientists has managed to generate stem cells by modifying human adult skin tissue. The resulting stem cells behave in much the same manner as embryonic stem cells. A spokesman for the Catholic Church described the development as a "win-win" situation; the horizon for new treatments opens up, while the ethical dilemmas of embyronic research are avoided. Of course, the Frankenstein factor is eliminated, which means it will be much less enticing for a certain type of scientist.

Posted by: Stuart Koehl | Nov 20, 2007 12:25:06 PM

As I've mentioned before you get a bit of a look into the scientific communities zeitgeist in science fiction since there's quite a bit of cross-over with the authors (a large number of "hard" sci-fi authors are also scientists). Its clear from the short stories from the past few years that the community views ESC reasearch as just another method of the "man" keeping smart free-thinking people down. A brief sample:
1.) Government thugs assault a research institute where pig/human genome experimentation was going on. Its clear that pig-people, since they look, smell, and feel like real people are people too. Evil government doesn't understand that this is the human race evolving. After all, we weren't always homo sapien.
2.) Mother has to flee and seek out black market treatment for child

Posted by: Nick | Nov 20, 2007 12:49:34 PM

There's also a largely untapped resource for stem cells....umbilical cord blood. This rich blood contains stem cells that have been used for research to develop treatments for numerous diseases. The great thing about cord blood is that it's not used for anything else and there is no ethical dilemma to using it. If not banked, the umbilical cord is normally just thrown away.

My husband and I are planning on donating our son's umbilical cord blood to the cord blood bank here in Texas. Thankfully our hospital participates in this program and there is no charge to us for the service.

Posted by: Isamashii Yuubi (Courageous Grace) | Nov 20, 2007 12:51:35 PM

We have stored all of our children's umbilical cord blood and plan on doing so for the one to be born next year. Whether it is a racket or not, I do not know, but my wife is sold on the idea that it is good insurance and if the one who carries the child for nine months and goes through labor and delivery wants to do it, I ain't arguing with her. ;-)

Posted by: GL | Nov 20, 2007 1:56:49 PM

GL said: . Even if the treatment itself does not require the use of ESCs, we may have to decide whether to refuse her treatment because it was developed through ESC research.

----

I agree that it's something that would take some thinking, but it makes me wonder about medical procedures and the like (to be regrettably vague) that might have been or were developed through unethical means. I think cutting up dead people (not just "corpses" or "cadavers," but people) is unethical, but how much do I profit from that practice? How responsible am I for where a technology (if that word really fits here) comes from?

Posted by: Kevin | Nov 20, 2007 2:44:24 PM

Dear Gene,

I don’t think Kathy is incorrect. First, as for profit, despite the singular lack of success ESC research has had in producing viable therapies, it has attracted lots of money for research grants, etc. to support scientists in the lifestyle to which they wish to become accustomed. ;-)

And as for power, you in effect gave the answer yourself. There are many other forms of power than holding of legal political office. There is the love of power to manipulate nature in defiance of God and concerns for humanity. And nowadays that brings prestige and influence, which are also forms of power, in the scientific community. And, underneath, in some cases, there is a lust for forms of power far more sinister, even diabolical, as C. S. Lewis portrayed in “That Hideous Strength.”

Posted by: James A. Altena | Nov 20, 2007 4:33:58 PM

The "breakthrough" they are referring to took place in March 2006. This is the biggest Mainstream Media con job to come along the pike for a long time.

What is happening is that the embryonic stem cell advocates have finally begun to throw in the towel. Pro-lifers have known for at least 2 or 3 years that the real promise for cures was with adult stem cells. But the research establishment, largely fighting for the principle that they should be free to do whatever they wish with embryos because they are just a bunch of cells, insisted that embryonic cells were pluripotent in a way that other stem cells were not etc.

But that's simply become untenable and the negative side effects of embryonic stem cells are obvious, so this is the turning of the tide. But they and the New York Times and WaPost can't admit that they were wrong all this time to minimize adult stem cell research and insist on embryonic. No, they have to create the fiction that only just now has the great breakthrough taken place that makes it clear that the one line of research has greater promise than the other. And to explain why only now is the breakthrough that occurred 18 months ago "happening," they explain that in March 2006 when the research breakthrough took place in Japan, the news was clogged with reports of the cloning fraud in Korea, so this great breakthrough went largely unnoticed. Which then excuses them for only writing it up now.

And a few researchers are holding out--I saw out of the corner of my eye a story about some researcher saying that embryonic cells are still superior in some fashion--I don't remember the details.

Still, it's good news that many of them are finally admitting that non-embryonic stem cells were the better route all along. It's a great victory for those who fought against all the demagoguery in favor of embryonic research.

Posted by: Dennis Martin | Nov 20, 2007 8:08:41 PM

God is sitting in heaven when a scientist prays to Him,
"God, we don't need you anymore. Science has finally
figured out a way to create life out of nothing.

In other words, we can now do what you did in the
"beginning."

"Oh, is that so? Tell me..." replies God.

"Well," says the scientist, "we can take dirt and form
it into the likeness of you and breathe life into it,
thus creating man."

"Well, that's interesting...show Me."

So the scientist bends down to the earth and starts to
mold the soil.

"No, no, no..." interrupts God, "Get your own dirt."

Posted by: Ken Peirce | Nov 20, 2007 9:57:07 PM

Perhaps I am wrong, but I thought that "adult" stem cells have been used and developed from adult cells, and that some successful therapies have resulted. So to say that it was not possible to develop "stem cells" from anything other than embryos and eggs seems misleading.

I believe, from my reading of this article and the synopsis from my Zenit.org daily email, that the breakthrough here is these stem cells are pluripotent. This is the "magic" property of embryonic stem cells that has had the scientists so excited. That is, they can become any type of tissue, whereas adult stem cells previously were limited to replacing the kind of tissue in which they are found.

The other big breakthrough here is these stem cells should genetically match the donor, so there shouldn't be the issues with tissue rejection that embryonic stem cells apparently can have.

Posted by: Occasus | Nov 21, 2007 12:32:56 AM

>>>What is happening is that the embryonic stem cell advocates have finally begun to throw in the towel. Pro-lifers have known for at least 2 or 3 years that the real promise for cures was with adult stem cells. <<<

So did the investment community. The smart money was always behind adult stem cells, because embryonic stem cells were too problematic from the technical perspective (investors seldom worry about the morality of science). Since investors want return on their investment, they aren't going to put their money behind something they don't think will work. That's why the embryonic research community and its shills in the abortion industry needed to get Federal funding. it's also a good example of why government should not subsidize specific technologies.

Posted by: Stuart Koehl | Nov 21, 2007 6:18:56 AM

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