Embryo-friendly Stem Cell Research
Date: April 02, 2007
Time: 4:07am est

Upon their return after Easter recess, United States Senators are expected to take up debate on two stem cell bills. They've been through this same exercise before-last July, to be precise. One bill, S.5 , which already passed the House in January, proposes to broaden federal funding for embryonic stem cell (ESC) research. It is identical to the legislation passed in House and Senate last July, championed in the House by representatives Mike Castle (R-Del) and Diane DeGette (D-Colorado), and in the Senate by Arlen Specter (R- Penn), and which became the object of President Bush's first-ever veto. If approved in the Senate, the rehashed legislation is destined for yet another presidential veto, without-it would seem-enough votes (67 would be needed) for the Senate to override the veto.

Of interest here, however, is a second bill the Senate will debate. S.30 , sponsored by Sens. Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.) and Norm Coleman (R-Minn.), seeks to direct federal funding to research on alternative sources of embryonic-like stem cells, alternatives that do not involve the creation, damaging or destruction of human embryos (something necessarily involved in standard embryonic stem cell research.) A very similar bill passed the Senate unanimously last July, but was stalled in the House .

I want to take advantage of this development to dedicate a brief series of posts on my e-column to explore several issues related to these alternative sources. First of all, as Dr. Robert George and I asserted in The Wall Street Journal two weeks ago, it is increasingly clear that ethically and scientifically acceptable alternatives to embryo-destructive research may well be within reach. These alternatives would appear to hold out the promise of providing stem cells with properties equivalent to, or nearly equivalent to, embryonic cells, but without involving the use (and destruction) of human embryos as a means to an end.

In recent posts I have already explored one such alternative, direct cell reprogramming. In future posts, I want to explore two others that have made significant headway in the past two years, but which also still require careful moral analysis.

But prior to that, I want to return to a key presupposition of our pursuit of alternatives. The pursuit of scientifically acceptable alternatives to ESC research presupposes that the whole ESC research project is scientifically legitimate. It presupposes that ESC research can one day proffer valuable scientific knowledge and even lead to therapeutic applications in a way that adult stem cell research cannot.

My experience over the past five years working closely with both pro-life and secular scientists and experts in the field of stem cell biology tells me that this presupposition is correct. Here's why.

Adult stem cell research has proffered hundreds of positive and promising clinical trials on human subjects (something embryonic stem cell research is years from commencing). In fact, there are over 1200 human trials involving cells derived from ASCs currently underway around the globe. That is all wonderful.

Notwithstanding those inroads, however, ASC research is still at a very early stage. Most treatments derived so far from ASC research apply to blood-related diseases. A broader application of ASC-derived therapies is also likely many years away. Will ESC research come up with cures that cannot be found by cells derived from ASCs? That remains within the realm of possibility.

More importantly, however, as Dr. George and I were at pains to state in the WSJ piece, the search for cures is only one motive behind ESC research and it is clearly not the only motive:

Most scientists acknowledge that ESCs will not provide therapies for many years, if ever. Their therapeutic potential is, at best, speculative. They cannot be used now, even in clinical trials, because of their tendency to produce tumors. So it comes as no surprise that many scientists now admit that their primary interest in pursuing ESC research lies not in the hope for direct cell transplant therapies, but in the desire to enhance basic scientific knowledge of such things as cell signaling, tissue growth and early human development.

We must remember that we are now entering the era of developmental biology. In that realm, biologists want to do basic scientific research on human embryos and the cells that compose them at very early stages so as to harness the science of cell differentiation-the science of how stem cells generate more specialized tissues. It may be true that precisely from such knowledge there can arise potential therapeutic applications, but such scientific knowledge is of value regardless of whether there are ever cures or not. For many of these researchers, the whole project of seeking therapeutic advances using human adult stem cells, noble enough in itself, is largely a side show, having little or no impact on their endeavors.

Again, we are talking about a kind of scientific knowledge that the study of ASCs cannot deliver. To get what they are looking for, scientists want human embryonic stem cells or their functional equivalent. Human adult stem cells will simply not fit the bill. In this sense, adult stem cell research will never assuage the scientific interest in human embryos or their stem cells.

Hence it is incumbent upon us, now more than ever, to seek out ethically acceptable alternatives that can give scientists what they want, but which avoid the destruction of embryonic human life. And these I hope to explore with you in up-coming posts.

***