ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
Thursday, Nov. 29 2007

Breakthrough signals a path to ethical cures
By Colleen Carroll Campbell

Christmas came early for scientists seeking a cease-fire in the stem cell wars.
When research teams in the United States and Japan announced last week that
they had produced human cells with the traits of embryonic stem cells without
using human eggs or embryos, scientists responded with breathless enthusiasm.

Dr. Kenneth Chien of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute hailed the breakthrough as
"seminal" and "potentially Nobel-level." Dr. Robert Lanza of Advanced Cell
Technology said it inaugurated "a new era for stem cells" and amounted to "the
Holy Grail" and "the biological equivalent of the Wright Brothers' first
airplane." Ian Wilmut, the Scottish "father of genetic cloning" who created
Dolly the sheep, said the innovation has convinced him to abandon attempts at
cloning human embryos and pursue this research instead.

Known as somatic cell reprogramming, the technique at the heart of the hoopla
uses genetic triggers to make ordinary human body cells assume the
extraordinary flexibility of embryonic stem cells. That flexibility, or
pluripotency, tantalizes scientists because cells that possess it can make
virtually any kind of cell or tissue and potentially could produce treatments
for a wide variety of diseases. And unlike embryonic stem cells, these
reprogrammed cells are a perfect genetic match to the patient who donates the
original body cells, so tissue made from them would not be rejected by the
patient's immune system.

This innovation solves a host of problems posed by embryonic research. Until
now, pluripotent cells had been harvested only from human embryos that were
destroyed in the process — a troubling fact for many ethicists and ordinary
Americans. Even more troubling were attempts by some scientists to use somatic
cell nuclear transfer, a cloning technique, to expand the supply of human
embryos for research. Although the exorbitant number of women's eggs required
for cloning experiments posed practical and ethical problems, scientists
justified their as-yet-unsuccessful cloning efforts by noting that stem cells
from cloned embryos would be uniquely valuable because they could provide a
perfect genetic match to patients.

In the face of the reprogramming breakthrough, such justifications no longer
stand. There now appears to be an efficient, cost-effective way to produce an
unlimited supply of genetically matched, pluripotent cells without exploiting
women or cloning and destroying embryos.

Stem cell pioneer Dr. James Thomson, who led the U.S. team behind the
reprogramming breakthrough, told The New York Times that this advance will
render the embryonic research debate "a funny historical footnote." Noting his
own ethical concerns about isolating the first human embryonic stem cells in
1998, Thomson said it feels great "to start a field and then to end it."

The impending obsolescence of embryo-destructive research and cloning does not
please everyone. President Bush's critics have bristled at the news that
Thomson's breakthrough was funded partly by the National Institutes of Health
after Bush mandated federal funding for reprogramming research, which his
political opponents derided as a distraction. Similarly, some proponents of
Missouri's Amendment Two — which made research cloning a constitutional right —
have scrambled to downplay the breakthrough and assure the public that the
search for cures still depends on the destruction of embryonic human lives.

After investing their fortunes and reputations in promoting special protections
for embryonic research and caricaturing their opponents as anti-science
Luddites, the most partisan of Big Biotech's boosters now find themselves
blindsided by scientific progress. The sudden obliteration of their main
rationale for embryo-destructive research — that the highly flexible "miracle"
cells it supplies are accessible through no other means — is an ego-crushing
blow.

Happily, most Americans have no such investments in research that clones and
kills human embryos. For them, this breakthrough is unadulterated good news and
reassuring proof that ethical science is not an oxymoron.

Colleen Carroll Campbell is an author, television host and St. Louis-based
fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. Her website is
www.colleen-campbell.com.