-Caveat Lector-
Embryo Work Raises Specter Of Human Harvesting
Medical Research Teams Draw Closer to Cloning
By Rick Weiss
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, June 14, 1999; Page A01
A team of American researchers has quietly begun
trying to create the world's first
batches of cloned human embryos, and another team has
resumed its controversial
cloning of embryos that are part human and part cow,
according to scientists
involved in the work.
The privately funded work is part of a new surge of
human embryo research aimed at
developing novel treatments for diseases -- but which
some scientists believe could
be inadvertently paving the way to the first births of
cloned babies.
The work is also a vivid reminder that while Congress,
the National Institutes of
Health and a presidentially appointed bioethics
commission debate the finer points
of whether federal dollars should be spent on certain
types of human embryo
research, the private sector is rapidly moving forward
to capitalize on the potentially
lucrative field.
The two companies that have started the programs to
grow their own embryos,
Geron Corp. of Menlo Park, Calif., and Advanced Cell
Therapeutics (ACT) of
Worcester, Mass., are not trying to make full-grown
human clones or human-cow
hybrids. Rather, the goal is to use the newly cloned
embryos as sources of
embryonic stem cells, a recently discovered kind of
cell that is thought to have the
potential to treat a host of chronic ailments,
including diabetes and Parkinson's
disease.
Nonetheless, the two programs are the first openly
concerted efforts to create
human embryos by cloning. They also appear to be the
first instances of scientists
creating human embryos explicitly for the purpose of
harvesting medically useful
cells -- a practice that President Clinton banned
among federally funded researchers
4 1/2 years ago but that remains legal in the private
sector.
Adding to the contentious nature of the work is the
widely held suspicion that the
new experiments will inevitably, and perhaps very
quickly, help others overcome the
remaining technical hurdles to cloning human beings.
After all, once someone
perfects the art of making healthy cloned human
embryos as a source of stem cells,
all that would be needed to make the world's first
human clone would be to place one
of those embryos in a woman's womb so she could give
birth to the resulting child.
That uncomfortable link between stem cell research and
human cloning is raising
difficult questions about how to draw legal and
ethical distinctions between cloning
young human embryos -- essentially balls of a few
hundred cells -- for medical
research, and cloning human beings as a reproductive
alternative.
For those who believe that life begins around the time
of conception, and that even
very young embryos deserve special respect and
protection, the cultivation of
embryos to harvest their cells is beyond the ethical
pale, said George Annas, a
bioethicist and professor of health law at Boston
University.
"They can make the argument that really what they're
doing is just culturing stem
cells," Annas said. "It's an argument, but it won't
fly with a lot of people."
But for those who believe, as many scientists do, that
an embryo does not become a
person until it is at least 14 days old, when the
first evidence of a nervous system
appears, experimentation on five- to 10-day-old human
embryos for stem cells is a
worthy endeavor.
"I think people don't realize that we're talking about
cells that have not become
anything yet. There's no hands and feet, and I think a
lot of this debate is over
mental images that words like 'embryo' portray," said
Michael West, president of
ACT. "To prevent science from using cells to cure
human diseases would be a
horrific step backward."
West said American regulators and the public need to
catch up with their European
counterparts, who have begun making a distinction
between "therapeutic cloning,"
in which embryos are cloned for their valuable cells,
and "reproductive cloning," in
which those cloned embryos are actually grown into
babies. Therapeutic cloning
may be ethically acceptable, he said, even as it
remains medically unsound and
ethically questionable to clone human beings.
In the United States, however, regulatory efforts
relevant to human embryo research
and cloning have not attained that level of subtle
distinction. Caught between the
desire not to support anything resembling abortion and
an equally strong desire not
to interfere with medical research, Congress has
repeatedly failed to muster the
votes necessary to pass legislation relating to
cloning in the private sector. A
congressional battle is also expected this fall over
the extent to which federal funds
should be used to study human embryonic stem cells.
To some extent, Congress has had the luxury of
complacency because cloning
techniques are still young and unreliable. A recent
study involving Dolly the sheep
found that the famous clone's chromosomes appear
worrisomely older than their
chronological age. Other studies have documented a
number of other abnormalities
in some cloned animals. Clearly, scientists say,
improvements need to be made
before cloning can be tried as a means of human
reproduction.
But cloning technology has become irresistibly
attractive to stem cell researchers
who want to replace failing tissues in patients.
That's because stem cell transplants
would probably be rejected if they came from
unrelated, leftover embryos from
fertility clinics -- the current source of human
embryonic stem cells. So researchers
want to clone their patients -- not with the intent of
raising fully grown duplicates,
but to grow genetically identical embryos whose stem
cells could be harvested for
transplantation.
That's what scientists supported by Geron and ACT are
hoping to do. The approach
is controversial because it involves the creation of
human embryos that would
otherwise never have been formed, with the express
purpose of destroying them to
harvest their cells. Religious leaders from several
denominations have spoken out
against the practice, as have members of President
Clinton's National Bioethics
Advisory Commission and others.
The Geron research involves taking genetic material
from a human cell, such as a
skin cell, and inserting it into a human egg whose own
DNA has been removed.
Under the proper conditions, that newly created entity
will start dividing as if it were
a young embryo genetically identical to that of the
person (in practice, the patient)
who donated the original skin cell.
Geron's chief scientific officer, Calvin Harley, said
that in the long run the company
hopes to learn how to derive stem cells from sources
other than embryos. However,
he said, "we don't know how long it's going to take to
be able to do this in a system
without eggs." So for now, he said, the company will
work on human cloned
embryos.
The work is not going on at Geron's headquarters in
California but in the laboratory
of a scientist who is funded by Geron, Harley said. He
would not say who or where
that was or how advanced the work was.
ACT's approach to making embryos is a little different
from Geron's. Researchers
there are taking cells from people and fusing them
with cows' eggs, which are easier
to obtain than human eggs.
The company first tried the method in 1995, using a
skin cell taken from a
researcher's mouth and a cow's egg whose own genes had
been removed. The work
drew controversy when it was made public last year, in
part because of the
possibility that a few bovine genes may remain in the
eggs, creating cross-species
genetic hybrids that many found conceptually
repulsive.
West, ACT's president, told a congressional committee
last year that the company
had suspended the research pending more public
discussion about the ethics of the
work. But he and Jose Cibelli, the company's director
of cell biology, said in recent
interviews they have now resumed the work.
"We don't let [the embryos] go beyond, I'd say, 10 or
12 days before we destroy
them," Cibelli said. He said the human cells had been
donated by adults who had
given consent for their cells to be used in the
research. "We're looking at what are
the best cell types to use" to make healthy embryos,
he said, "and we're trying to
improve the efficiency."
It's that improved efficiency that worries people who
are opposed to human cloning.
If progress in the field continues apace, some experts
said -- and if a sufficiently bold
doctor proves willing to place a cloned human embryo
into a woman's womb -- then
the first human clone could be born very soon, perhaps
within the next two years.
But scientists at Geron and ACT said the potential
benefits of the work outweigh
that theoretical concern.
"It's true of all technologies that are useful for
humankind that they can be turned
toward unethical applications," Harley said. "It's the
responsibility of society to
understand the technology and make sure appropriate
safeguards are in place."
Cibelli of ACT said he hoped that the prospect of
widespread public opprobrium
would prevent scientists from applying their findings
to the cloning of human
beings.
"There's too much of a controversy over human cloning
to put your job on the line,"
Cibelli said.
"Then again," he added, "the human mind is
complicated."
© Copyright 1999 The Washington Post
Company
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