"getting stem cells right"

The title of an article by Maureen Condic in First Things-- a professor of neurobiology and anatomy speaking on the advances in adult stem cells...

A true, no-cost resolution of a conflict, where the interests of all parties are served without compromise, is an exceedingly rare thing. Yet just such an unlikely resolution may be in hand for one of the most acrimonious conflicts of recent times: the debate over human embryonic stem cells.

Research groups in Japan and the United States have shown that ordinary human skin cells can be converted to stem cells with all the important properties of human embryonic stem cells by a process termed direct reprogramming. Like embryonic stem cells, reprogrammed cells are pluripotent, able to generate all the cells of the body, and so they have been named induced pluripotent stem cells (IPSCs). Unlike human embryonic stem cells, however, IPSCs are genetically identical to patients and are generated without destroying human embryos or using either human or animal eggs.

Producing IPSCs is remarkably simple. First, adult skin cells are removed by a biopsy procedure similar to a blood draw. The skin cells are treated in the laboratory with gene-therapy viruses that contain four reprogramming factors. Over approximately two weeks, the reprogramming factors convert some of the adult skin cells into IPSCs. No embryos are produced and no embryos are destroyed; the skin cells simply transform into cells that are the functional equivalents of human embryonic stem cells.

Direct reprogramming is one of the most exciting scientific discoveries of modern times, and it significantly alters both the political and the scientific landscape of stem cell research. The availability of an ­ethically and scientifically uncompromised source of pluripotent stem cells should be warmly embraced by all parties as a truly win-win resolution to the ­long-standing controversy over embryo-destructive research.

Or so one would think. Despite the initial euphoria with which both scientists and ethicists greeted these remarkable findings, the stalwarts of unrestricted stem cell research almost immediately began the solemn chant of “research must go forward on all fronts.”...

Regardless of how one views the ethical status of human embryos, the existence of an alternative source of pluripotent stem cells radically undermines the justification for human embryonic stem cell research. Even President Clinton’s bioethics commission concluded that embryo destruction posed a moral problem and was justifiable only if there were no alternatives, stating in the 1999 report entitled “Ethical Issues in Human Stem Cell Research ”: “In our judgment, 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. . . . The claim that there are alternatives to using stem cells derived from embryos is not, at the present time, supported scientifically. We recognize, however, that this is a matter that must be revisited ­continually as science advances.”

In addition to these important scientific advantages, direct reprogramming offers a number of practical advantages. IPSCs are simpler to produce than stem cells from human embryos, and they are ethically uncompromised and therefore fully eligible for federal funding. These features make the cells attractive to scientists who have avoided embryo-destructive research from technical, ethical, or financial concerns. Direct reprogramming also does not involve human embryos or human eggs and is therefore subject to simpler regulatory requirements, another practical advantage that will attract more scientists to this area and speed the pace of discovery.
These practical advantages do not merely reflect current federal policies that might be altered by the next presidential administration. They reflect the intrinsic superiority of IPSCs on a practical front.

IPSCs also offer a significant ethical advantage, even for those who do not consider destruction of human embryos to be an ethical problem. Because direct reprogramming does not use human eggs, research can be conducted without subjecting women to the medical risks associated with egg donation. The difficulty of obtaining human eggs has been a serious problem for research on both human embryonic stem cells and human cloning....

In a seemingly last-ditch effort to justify a line of research that is clearly compromised on scientific, practical, and ethical fronts, advocates of human embryonic stem cells are quick to assert that the direct-reprogramming breakthrough was based on information obtained from the study of human embryonic stem cells—therefore proving that human embryo research is critical to scientific advancement.

What this argument fails to point out is that IPSCs were first produced from cells of an adult mouse, using information from studies of mouse embryonic stem cells. The factors identified in these animal studies proved sufficient to reprogram adult human cells as well. Research on human embryos may have contributed to the development of IPSCs, but it can hardly be seen as critical.

The final argument of those still supporting research on human embryos is that freedom of scientific inquiry demands that research be unrestricted—that science and society will be harmed by placing limits on what scientists can investigate.

Yet science, like all human endeavors, must operate within the constraints of ethical values. No one seriously believes that freedom of scientific inquiry should trump all other considerations. Good science does not demand that all avenues of inquiry be pursued. The Tuskegee experiments on African American men with syphilis and the Nazi experiments on Jews and disabled persons were not legitimate avenues of scientific investigation and were not justified by the useful information they ­yielded.