To mine stem cells from human embryos

Date accessed: 02 August 2001

Monday, July 16, 2001 – Print Edition, Page A12

Globe and Mail

The question of creating human embryos specifically for medical research is no longer theoretical. Six months after the British Parliament passed a law permitting such research in Britain, a clinic in the United States says its own work is well under way.

The Virginia-based Jones Institute for Reproductive Medicine has broken no law, but its announcement last Tuesday has increased the pressure on President George W. Bush to take a stand. During last year's campaign, he promised not to permit federal funding of such experiments.

In Canada, the news may speed the deliberations of the Commons standing committee on health, which, at the request of Health Minister Allan Rock, is mulling over proposals for a law on reproductive technology.

At issue is the combining of a human egg and sperm in the laboratory to create a zygote, the early stage of a human embryo. This practice is a staple of in vitro fertilization, the procedure used to help infertile couples reproduce. What is new is the creation of zygotes purely for research. Scientists at the Jones fertility clinic are bringing embryos to life in order to kill them and remove their stem cells -- the building blocks of life, which have the potential to become hair, blood, bone or any other part of the human body.

Is this horrifying? Certainly it could be, if it led to such abominations as human reproductive cloning, an attempt to replicate a specific human being whatever the cost in malformed and short-lived false starts. Certainly it could be, if these zygotes were allowed to survive more than 14 days. Fourteen days, wrote Canada's Royal Commission on New Reproductive Technologies in 1993, "marks the development of the primitive streak, which fixes the individual identity of the embryo and forms the basis for its nervous system."

Up to that point, the zygote has no consciousness and feels no pain. It is the living putty that, if successfully implanted in the womb and allowed to grow, would produce a human being; but up to 14 days it is the rumour of a human being.

This is not to dismiss the beliefs of those who, on ethical grounds, cannot support any creation of life for the harvesting of stem cells -- a view echoed in Mr. Rock's draft proposals. Some of them would make an exception for research on zygotes left over from in vitro fertilization, though to our mind this is a false distinction, since those zygotes are created in the knowledge that many of them will be surplus and will be killed.

But there are others -- we among them -- who believe the qualms about creating zygotes for research are countered by the scientific advances their stem cells may make possible. The use of such cells, in combination with the DNA of an ill or disabled person, has the potential to repair spinal-cord damage, defeat cancer, check Alzheimer's disease and spur other medical advances.

Are such advances certain? No. Might other avenues lead in the same direction, such as the harvesting of stem cells from adults, who would survive the operation? Possibly. But assuming certain ground rules are legally in place, the creation of earliest-stage human embryos with the goal of saving the lives of human adults seems to us defensible. Those ground rules would include the mandatory killing of the zygotes by the 14th day and, as is the case in the Jones clinic's research, the informed consent of the donors of both sperm and eggs. (Another element of the Jones research -- the payment to donors of $2,000 [U.S.] for eggs and $50 for sperm -- needs close examination.)

Howard W. Jones Jr., founder of the Virginia clinic, said last week in defence of the new research, "The attitude of this institute has been that if we believe something is for the benefit of all and if we are persuaded after mature consideration that it is ethically correct, we are not afraid to go ahead." The Commons health committee should use the same reasoning, and seriously consider permitting the closely regulated creation of, and harvesting of cells from, human zygotes for medical research.

Category: 31. Stem Cells