Another Stem Cell Fact
Date: March 22, 2007
Time: 5:25am est

A week ago I authored an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal with Dr. Robert George entitled "Six Stem Cell Facts" . Our intention in writing the piece was to point out a number of things on which persons on either side of the ethical debate over embryo-destructive research could agree. In addition to the six facts we elaborated on, there is plenty more that could have been said. That's why I was grateful that Cathy Ruse , senior fellow for legal studies at The Family Research Council wrote a letter to the editors of the Journal to address an issue that we were unable to cover given space restrictions for the op-ed. Here is what she had to say:

This research almost certainly will lead to cloning embryos and to exploiting the women who will be needed to produce the massive numbers of human eggs that cloning research requires. The Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act that Congress is considering is a dead-end street. It provides federal funding for research using frozen embryos that would otherwise be "discarded" by in vitro fertilization clinics. But a RAND study has determined that only about 11,000 such embryos have been designated by their parents for research, and that, at best, 275 stem cell lines could be created from them. "The actual number," said RAND, "is likely to be much lower." For this reason, researchers are already looking at cloning human embryos to create an unlimited number of genetically diverse stem cell lines. The human-cloning path to stem-cell research runs smack into the exploitation of women, because every cloned human embryo requires at least one human egg.

And Cathy is exactly right. ESC research and progress toward human cloning go hand in hand because the holy grail of stem cell research continues to be the production of patient specific (genetically matched) cells for tissue replacement therapies. In the minds of many scientists, cloning is the surest way to get there: technicians would use a somatic (body) cell from the patient and a donated egg (its nucleus removed) to create a cloned embryo (genetically matched to the patient) which, after 5-6 days of development, would be destroyed in order to derive stem cells from it, which in turn could be used to yield patient specific tissues for therapy. Researchers are currently hard at work to overcome the technical hurdles to primate cloning which leaves them within range of successfully cloning human embryos. If ever this becomes mainstreamed, it will require hundreds of thousands of human eggs.

While some researchers might look for uncontroversial sources of eggs (such as retrieval of eggs from female cadavers), it is highly unlikely that most would be willing to take such measures. Indeed, it would seem that most researchers quietly acquiesce to the idea of paying women for their eggs. Hence, as Cathy rightly points out, "the human-cloning path to stem-cell research runs smack into the exploitation of women." It is hard to see how this could not be the expected outcome-a further travesty over and above the moral depravity of creating human embryos for research.

NOTE: The current "In Focus" feature on the Westchester Institute website looks at the issue of egg donation, payment, and the exploitation of women for their eggs.

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