Future of Stem Cell Tests May Hang on Defining Embryo Harm

washingtonpost.com: By Rick Weiss

With the active encouragement of the Bush administration, U.S. scientists in the past year have developed several methods for creating embryonic stem cells without having to destroy human embryos.

But some who now wish to test their alternatively derived cells have found themselves stymied by an unexpected barrier: President Bush's stem cell policy.

The 2001 policy says that federal funds may not be used to study embryonic stem cells created after Aug. 9 of that year. It is based on the assumption that the only way to make the cells is by destroying human embryos -- a truism in 2001 but not any longer.

As a result, the National Institutes of Health recently refused to consider a grant application for what would have been the first federal study to compare several of the new, less politically contentious stem cell lines. ...

At the center of the debate is a new technique, pioneered by ACT [Advanced Cell Technology], that obtains stem cells from human embryos while leaving the embryos functionally intact. A single cell, called a blastomere, is removed from an eight-cell human embryo, then coaxed to multiply into a colony of stem cells in a dish. ...

Sean Tipton, president of the Coalition for the Advancement of Medical Research, a stem cell research advocacy group, said the policy amounts to a Catch-22.

"On the one hand, they're saying, 'Find this out,' " Tipton said, referring to the Bush administration's repeated call for scientists to find ways to make and study stem cells without destroying embryos. "On the other hand, they're saying, 'You're not allowed to do the research to answer these questions.' "...

My UW colleague Alta Charo is quoted further down in the story.
Federal stem cell policy certainly exemplifies the high degree of bureaucratic competence and regard for scientific expertise so characteristic of this Administration.

Famous Fraudster Gets a New Start in a South Korean Laboratory

The Chronicle:

Returning to the lab is Woo Suk Hwang, the South Korean scientist who first shocked scientists in 2005 by announcing that he had generated human stem cells from cloned human embryos and then fell from grace in 2006, when an investigation by his employer, Seoul National University, found that he had fabricated his data, and his important research papers were retracted. The Associated Press reported today that he had recommenced research in a private lab outside of Seoul, taking 30 colleagues with him.

They are continuing work on embryonic stem cells, according to the AP report, though not on human embryos, which the government has withdrawn permission to study. Dr. Hwang, whom the AP describes as “determined to make a comeback,” is also still fighting charges of fraud, embezzlement, and bioethics violations.

New Tactic on Stem Cell Studies

Inside Higher Ed:

Sens. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) and Arlen Specter (R-Penn.), respectively the chairman and senior Republican on the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and Related Agencies, included in the legislation that their colleagues on the full committee approved Thursday a provision that would have expanded the number of “lines” of embryonic stem cells scientists could study using federal funds through some legislative sleight of hand.

A day after President Bush vetoed broad legislation that would have significantly expanded such research, Harkin and Specter proposed allowing researchers to study all stem cell lines that had already been derived as of June 15, 2007, instead of August 9, 2001, the date set in President Bush’s original executive order restricting the promising but controversial research.

Harkin called the date set by the president “arbitrary,” set because that was the date on which Bush gave a speech on the subject, and noted that the change would expand the number of stem cell lines available by researchers by almost 400, up from the current 21, only some of which are of significant value.

Committee members overwhelmingly approved the bill by a vote of 26-3, but several Republicans said they would oppose the stem cell provision on the Senate floor. “Moving the date is the easy way out” of a contentious public policy debate that is dividing the country, said Sen. Larry Craig of Idaho.

G!d forbid (so to speak.) Trading one arbitrary date for a different, arbitrary date. Quel horreur!

60% of Couples OK Embryos for Research

Web MD Medical News (reporting on survey in Science): By Salynn Boyles

A new survey suggests the majority of people most intimately involved in the debate over embryonic stem cell research favor the use of stored frozen embryos for this purpose.

Sixty percent of infertility patients with frozen embryos queried in the newly published survey said they would be willing to donate their unused embryos for stem cell research.

By contrast, just over one in five (22%) said they would be willing to donate the embryos to other couples wishing to conceive.

Results from the survey were made public Wednesday, just as President Bush vetoed legislation aimed at easing restrictions on federally financed stem cell research.

“Polls show that 60% or more of the American public support embryonic stem cell research, and we now know that about the same number of infertility patients would be likely to donate their embryos for this cause,” survey co-author Ruth R. Faden, PhD, tells WebMD.

Faden is director of the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics.

“There is a strange disconnect between the pubic policy at the federal level and the preferences of both the American people and the people who created the embryos we are talking about,” she says....

“The presumption has been that if you respect embryos you would be less likely to want to see them used for research or destroyed than for [pregnancy],” she says. “What we found was that the people who are most invested in these embryos -- emotionally, genetically, and financially -- are reluctant to have them turned into children outside the context of their families, without their love and care.”

President Bush Offers a Veto, and Not-So-New Support, for Stem-Cell Research

The Chronicle:

As President Bush vetoed a bill on Wednesday that would have loosened his restrictions on stem-cell research, he offered an alternative policy that he said would strengthen the field in an ethical way, but that critics called nothing but spin....

'This was a political fig leaf and a redundant policy designed to give the president political cover' as he vetoed the bill, said Sean B. Tipton, a spokesman for the Coalition for the Advancement of Medical Research, which supported the bill. 'He's not going to fool American scientists.'

Stem cell developments

contentions » archive:By Yuval Levin

Just a few months after the first human stem-cell experiments, President Clinton assigned his board of bioethics advisors, the National Bioethics Advisory Commission (NBAC), to consider the issues involved. Their report, published in 1999, has helped ever since to define the Democrats’ approach to the issue. In light of the headlines today about a new way to produce stem cells without destroying embryos, that report is worth another look.

The commission made a point of taking into account the ethical issues raised by embryo-destructive research. “In our judgment,” the report concluded, “the derivation of stem cells from embryos remaining following infertility treatments is justifiable only if no less morally problematic alternatives are available for advancing the research.”

At the time, there were no such alternatives. The NBAC’s conclusion was taken (and certainly intended) as an endorsement of embryo-destructive stem-cell research, which quickly became the view of the Clinton administration and of American liberals more generally. But the big stem-cell story of the past two years has been the emergence of precisely those “less morally problematic alternatives” imagined by the commission. ...

Developments like the one making news today could (in time) mean the end of the stem-cell debate, and an end that lets everyone win: the research would advance without human embryos being harmed. In light of the news this morning, it’s time for the Democrats to rediscover the long-forgotten last clause of the Clinton commission’s stem-cell recommendation.

This is likely to be the line of those opposing rapid expansion of stem-cell research in the US. That parenthetical "in time" qualifier is the kicker, though. Could be quite a while.

Republican Hopefuls Demonstrate Doublespeak on stem cells

blog.bioethics.net: Republican Hopefuls Demonstrate Doublespeak: Art Caplan on Blog.Bioethics.net

W

hat exactly, students sometimes ask me, is 'doublespeak'. Now I have a paradigmatic example to show them.

Herewith the wafflings, twistings, turnings and outright mumbo-jumboing of ten wannabe Presidents.The ten GOP presidential candidates held a debate on Thursday evening. Moderator Chris Matthews of MSNBC asked the candidates about stem cell research. Here is that section of the debate transcript.