Tuesday, June 07, 2005

Stem cell resolution coming? They say yes

I hope you're not getting bored with the stem cell issue, because I have no plans to quit writing about it. It is truly one of today's cutting edge issues, and one that needs to be resolved.

Although people and groups on both sides of the abortion issue have taken positions on stem cells, the issue is not as clear-cut, even for the churches, the AP's Richard Ostling reports. Unlike abortion, on which emotions run high 30+ years after Roe v. Wade, the stem cell issue may have a shorter run. We can only hope.

Two very different opinion pieces I read yesterday reach the conclusion -- for very different reasons -- that the stem cell debate may not be long-lived, and that resolution may be coming.

Tom Still, president of the Wisconsin Technology Council, believes that ethical guidelines are making it more difficult for opponents of embryonic stem cell research to win the argument. He points to votes in the Congress and Wisconsin's Joint Finance Committee as evidence that public officials may be getting in step with public opinion.

And Still says guidelines from the National Academies of Science also take the edge of the arguments. Those guidelines include:

--Stem cell donors (couples who have created excess embryos at in vitro fertilization clinics, or egg and sperm donors) have provided consent, acknowledging that their embryos may be used to produce stem cells.

--Donors are not paid.

--Donors are informed they have the right to withdraw their consent at any point before a stem cell line is derived.

--Donors are informed that research involving their stem cells may have commercial potential, but they will not have in any financial benefit.

--Researcher should not ask fertility doctors to create more embryos than necessary for reproductive treatments.

--Each institution involved in stem cell research should create an advisory board to oversee the work.

"Those guidelines (which are essentially identical to what’s already taking place at UW-Madison) are inspiring confidence among policymakers who fear that practices used in some nations might become the norm here," Still says. "It may also explain why recent polls have shown that two-thirds of Americans support human embryonic stem cell research, so long as it takes place under ethical guidelines."Still's article on WisBusiness.

Meanwhile, science writer Rich Weiss at the Washington Post writes that scientific advances may be what changes or even ends the debate.

Weiss reports:

In recent months, a number of researchers have begun to assemble intriguing evidence that it is possible to generate embryonic stem cells without having to create or destroy new human embryos.

The research is still young and largely unpublished, and in some cases it is limited to animal cells. Scientists doing the work also emphasize their desire to have continued access to human embryos for now. It is largely by analyzing how nature makes stem cells, deep inside days-old embryos, that these researchers are learning how to make the cells themselves.

Yet the gathering consensus among biologists is that embryonic stem cells are made, not born -- and that embryos are not an essential ingredient. That means that today's heated debates over embryo rights could fade in the aftermath of technical advances allowing scientists to convert ordinary cells into embryonic stem cells.

Obviously, that is some time in the future, if it comes true. But Weiss knows his subject, and offers a new perspective as we continue to wrestle with this contentious issue. Weiss column.

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