Stem Cell Research

Stem cells are in the news again. On May 24, the House passed legislation that would overturn the Bush Administration's policy that limits federal funding for embryonic stem cell research to a handful of stem cell lines created before Aug. 9, 2001. Identical legislation is pending in the Senate. President Bush has said that he will veto the legislation if it reaches him.

The legislation would correct a policy that never made any ethical sense. There is no moral distinction between stem cells created from embryos destroyed before or after a given date. The legislation states that the federal government will support research on stem cells derived from human embryos donated from in vitro fertilization clinics that were derived for the purpose of fertility treatment and were in excess of the clinical need of the individuals seeking such treatment. The individuals donating the embryos would give written informed consent and would not receive any compensation.

More interesting from a scientific point of view, on May 19, a team of Korean scientists reported in Science a simple technique for cloning human cells to generate embryonic stem cells. The scientists, led by Woo Suk Hwang and Shin Yong Moon of Seoul National University, transferred the nuclei of skin cells from 11 male and female humans ranging in age from two to 56 years into donated, enucleated human oocytes; grew the resulting cell lines on human feeder cells; and harvested pluripotent, chromosomally normal stem cells from the resulting blastocysts. What the Korean scientists accomplished is generally referred to as "therapeutic cloning" to distinguish it from "reproductive cloning"--the latter having the goal of producing a new, cloned organism.

Legislation reintroduced in the Senate in March by Sens. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) and Mary Landrieu (D-La.)--the Human Cloning Prohibition Act of 2005 (S. 658)--would make the work reported in Science illegal in the U.S. and anyone doing the research subject to imprisonment for up to 10 years and a $1 million or greater fine.

Opponents of embryonic stem cell research often argue that no one has ever shown that such stem cells have any utility in treating human disease. That's a lousy reason for not doing research. Finding out whether stem cells are good for anything is exactly the point of the research.

The fundamental argument against embryonic stem cell research is that it destroys an embryo. Opponents of stem cell research equate embryos with fully formed human beings, regardless of how, why, where, and from what they were created. Thus, stem cell research, to these opponents, is wrong and should be prohibited, regardless of its potential utility in treating human disease.

Let's examine that contention with respect to the therapeutic cloning research done in South Korea. I deliberately refrained from referring to the cell lines created in that research as "embryos." They were not created from the union of a sperm cell and an egg. They do not represent a unique combination of genetic material with the potential to grow into a unique human being. They were not, and in fact were never intended to be, implanted into a human uterus and carried to gestation. The blastocysts created in the research were, in fact, extensions of the human beings whose genetic material was used to create them.

There are people, some of them members of the American Chemical Society and readers of this magazine, whose religious convictions lead them to disagree with what I have written above. I deeply respect those religious convictions although I do not share them. Many other U.S. citizens also do not share them. Some of those U.S. citizens or their loved ones suffer from one of the multitude of diseases and disorders that many researchers believe stem cells could one day cure or alleviate.

Religious convictions, no matter how deeply held by some segment of the U.S. public, should not be the basis of laws enacted by Congress regulating or prohibiting scientific research. The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution explicitly prohibits Congress from enacting laws that establish religion. It seems clear to me that the Human Cloning Prohibition Act is exactly such a law.

Thanks for reading.