Embryonic Stem Cells? Never Mind! Bush was Right
By
Bat One
on November 20, 2007 at 01:48 pm
5 Comments
With a pronounced lack of enthusiasm normally reserved for inconvenient truths which belie the liberal litany, the New York Times reports that two separate teams of scientists, one in Wisconsin and the other in Japan, appear to have successfully transformed normal human skin cells into the equivalent of embryonic stem cells.
Needless to say, the NYT does not mention President Bush, or the ban on federal funding for expanded embryonic stem cell research he put in place nearly six years ago… a ban which in some way may be responsible for this most recent breakthrough.
As witness the NYT Company’s stock price, the editors and publishers of the so-called “paper of record” know precious little about markets and incentives. But the fact of the matter is incentives DO work, and Mr. Bush was clearly right all along. Morally and scientifically.
Two teams of scientists are reporting today that they turned human skin cells into what appear to be embryonic stem cells without having to make or destroy an embryo — a feat that could quell the ethical debate troubling the field.
All they had to do, the scientists said, was add four genes. The genes reprogrammed the chromosomes of the skin cells, making the cells into blank slates that should be able to turn into any of the 220 cell types of the human body, be it heart, brain, blood or bone. Until now, the only way to get such human universal cells was to pluck them from a human embryo several days after fertilization, destroying the embryo in the process.
The reprogrammed skin cells may yet prove to have subtle differences from embryonic stem cells that come directly from human embryos, and the new method includes potentially risky steps, like introducing a cancer gene. But stem cell researchers say they are confident that it will not take long to perfect the method and that today’s drawbacks will prove to be temporary.
Researchers and ethicists not involved in the findings say the work should reshape the stem cell field. At some time in the near future, they said, today’s debate over whether it is morally acceptable to create and destroy human embryos to obtain stem cells should be moot…
The two independent teams, from Japan and Wisconsin, note that their method also creates stem cells that genetically match the donor without having to resort to the controversial step of cloning. If stem cells are used to make replacement cells and tissues for patients, it would be invaluable to have genetically matched cells because they would not be rejected by the immune system. Even more important, scientists say, is that genetically matched cells from patients will enable them to study complex diseases, like Alzheimer’s, in the lab.
But with the new method, human cloning for stem cell research, like the creation of human embryos to extract stem cells, may be unnecessary…
Still, the new work could allow the field to vault significant problems, including the shortage of human embryonic stem cells and restrictions on federal funding for such research. Even when scientists have other sources of funding, they report that it is expensive and difficult to find women who will provide eggs for such research…
The reprogrammed cells, the scientists report, appear to behave exactly like human embryonic stem cells.
“By any means we test them they are the same as embryonic stem cells,” Dr. Thomson says.
Needless to say, the NYT does not mention President Bush, or the ban on federal funding for expanded embryonic stem cell research he put in place nearly six years ago… a ban which in some way may be responsible for this most recent breakthrough.
As witness the NYT Company’s stock price, the editors and publishers of the so-called “paper of record” know precious little about markets and incentives. But the fact of the matter is incentives DO work, and Mr. Bush was clearly right all along. Morally and scientifically.
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