While the federal government lurches toward ignoring patients and wasting more taxpayer dollars on unethical, unsuccessful embryonic stem cell research, there are some bright spots in several states where ethics, and real adult stem cell treatments, are being promoted.

LOUISIANA

Prohibiting Human-Animal Hybrids
SB 115 has been sent to Gov. Jindal for his signature (expected); it is a bill that would outlaw attempts to create a human-animal hybrid; transferring a human embryo into a nonhuman womb; or transferring a nonhuman embryo into a human womb.

Prohibiting State Funds for Human Cloning
In June 2008, the state passed a law to prohibit the use of any state money, or federal money channeled through the state, for the practice, known as somatic cell nuclear transfer (cloning).

You can read the rest of the good news here.

Following President Obama’s March 9 executive order, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has proposed guidelines for federally funded embryonic stem cell research. The guidelines would – for the first time – use taxpayer funds to encourage the killing of embryonic human beings for their stem cells.

This marks a new chapter in divorcing biomedical research from its necessary ethical foundation, respect for human life at all stages.

Embryonic stem cell research treats innocent human beings as mere sources of body parts, as commodities for our use.

Even if, like the embryos targeted by the NIH policy, an embryo may be at risk of being abandoned by his or her parents in a fertility clinic, that does not give researchers or the government a right to kill that human being – much less a right to make the rest of us subsidize that destructive agenda.

Some in Congress and the Administration want an even broader policy. They want to obtain stem cells by destroying human embryos specially generated for research through in vitro fertilization (IVF) or cloning procedures – a “create to kill” policy.

Neither of these policies is ethical or promotes responsible science.  They both violate the fundamental right to life.

Patients suffering from devastating illnesses deserve our compassion and our committed response – but not at the cost of innocent life.  The Church supports ethical stem cell research and treatments that do no harm and respect the inherent dignity of persons – cutting-edge medical advances that are already benefiting patients with dozens of conditions in clinical trials.

It is time to focus on cures and treatments we can all live with.

Go Catholic bishops!

Question: Where are those Lutherans?!?

Two House members who were the chief backers of legislation to expand embryonic stem cell research are working on a new bill that would codify President Obama’s recent executive order allowing greater federal funding for the research. Their legislation will also contain language allowing the National Institutes of Health to invest in other kinds of research into human cell biology, perhaps including what is known as ‘therapeutic cloning. . .

Rep. Diana DeGette , D-Colo., who is drafting the new stem cell research legislation with Rep. Michael N. Castle , R-Del., said that she does not seek to order the NIH to fund research based on therapeutic cloning. But she hopes to encourage it.

‘I hope the NIH (National Institutes of Health) will allow SCNT (somatic cell nuclear transfer; human cloning) to move forward with federal funding,’ DeGette said. ‘But if they don’t do that right now, what our bill will do is allow them to change that in the future if research shows it is a necessity and can be done ethically.’

HT: Wesley J. Smith at Secondhand Smoke.

And yet, attorney and bioethicist Wesley J. Smith speculates that while the 2009 NIH Guidelines for Stem Cell Research may prohibit human cloning for now, that could change in the next few years. Says Smith,

. . . as I have reported at SHS previously, the political campaign has begun to destroy the Dickey Amendment. Should that happen, it would be legal for the Feds to fund human cloning, the making of embryos for research, and just about anything “the scientists” wanted to do in this regard. Once that happened, the NIH would likely revise these guidelines to permit funding for those activities.

I think Mr. Smith is right. According to a report issued by the the RAND Corporation, there are about 400,000 frozen embryos. Of those, only 2.8 percent (or 11,000) have been designated for research. Says RAND,

Although the 11,000 embryos designated for research might seem like a large number, the actual number of embryos that might be converted into stem cell lines is likely to be substantially lower. Because assisted reproductive technology clinics generally transfer the best-quality embryos to the patient during treatment cycles, the remaining embryos available to be frozen are not always of the highest quality. (High-quality embryos are those that grow at normal rates.) In addition, some of the frozen embryos have been in storage for many years, and at the time that some of those embryos were created, laboratory cultures were not as conducive to preserving embryos as they are today. Some embryos would also be lost in the freeze-and-thaw process itself.

RAND believes that only 275 embryonic stem cell lines can be created from available and viable frozen embryos. “Even this number is probably an overestimate,” the report notes.

Thus, it appears we’re already stimulating demand in order to necessitate supply. If the Dickey amendment is not renewed next year, it will only take the signature of our Commander in Chief on a new bill permitting federal funds to be used to create, and kill, human clones.

Writes Ertelt,

The NRLC letter says “there is a substantial chance that you will soon see an attempt to ram through the House of Representatives, on short notice, legislation that would authorize federal funding of research on human embryos created specifically to be used in research.”

The DeGette embryo destruction bill would “open the door to federal funding of human cloning and human embryo farms,” the pro-life group told LifeNews.com.

The letter explains that, contrary to assurances given to members of Congress in the past, the DeGette bill “will not limit the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to the use of human embryos who are donated by their parents after being ‘left over’ at in vitro fertilization clinics.”

Instead, the measure would “empower NIH to use human embryos created especially to be used in research, including embryos created by human cloning,” NRLC indicates.

Carefully read this from “California Stem Cell” (CSC), a company that apparently sells stem cells and host of complementary products to aid in ESCR and treatment.

Note their definition of SCNT on this “Education” page: a nucleus is injected into an oocyte (egg) in order to produce stem cells (paragraphs 2 and 4). While blastocyst is mentioned (paragraph 4), there’s no admission on this page that the result is an embryo. (To be fair, CSC mentions this on other pages on its site).

Look carefully at the last paragraph:

There’s a world of difference between reproductive cloning – the use of cloning technology to create a child – and therapeutic cloning, the transplanting of a patient’s own DNA into an unfertilized egg in order to grow stem cells that could cure devastating diseases. With therapeutic cloning, the blastocyst can never develop into a person, because there is no fertilization of the egg by sperm, no implantation in the uterus and no pregnancy.

I hope that our feminist friends don’t read that last sentence. Because, if I’ve read it correctly, it takes a sperm to be a person.

On another page on CSC’s site, note the haunting realization that IVF “discards” will not be enough to satiate the scientific beast. We’re going to need more and more embryos, more and more clones:

New cell lines created from fertility treatment discards as well as, in the future, new technologies such as iPS and SCNT, will expand the scope and practicality of treatments based on embryonic-type stem cell derivatives.

Welcome to California.

Bill: Robert, I think I’ve found the source of the confusion. I gather that, for you, the term SCNT refers to an entire process that, by definition, results in a clone.”

Robert: Bill, I’m working with the definition of SCNT provided by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Note that SCNT results in an embryo:

Somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT)—A technique that combines an enucleated egg (nucleus removed) and the nucleus of a somatic cell to make an embryo. SCNT can be used for therapeutic or reproductive purposes, but the initial stage that combines an enucleated egg and a somatic cell nucleus is the same. See also therapeutic cloning and reproductive cloning.”

Bill: When I first learned the term SCNT from a class, it was presented to me as strictly denoting the act of removing a nucleus from a somatic cell and placing it inside another, enucleated cell (not necessarily an oocyte). In this latter sense, SCNT does not refer to the overall process of cloning (which I oppose), but only to the transfer of a nucleus in general.”

Robert: OK. Must have been an interesting class. If you’re aware of research going on in which nuclei are being inserted into enucleated non-oocytes, I would be interested in reading more about it.

Bill: Consider a hypothetical point in the future in which scientists have learned how to manipulate an enucleated oocyte such that when the donor nucleus arrives, the host oocyte reprograms it to express the genes of a self-renewing target cell, such as an adult stem cell, a progenitor cell, or even something like a pancreatic beta cell. The question is: is this modified-oocyte-plus-donor-nucleus an embryonic cell? I would say no, because it’s gene expression and developmental potency would be nowhere near that of an embryonic stem cell. No blastocyst or embryonic stem cells would result from the division of the cell in question. Such a process would involve literal SCNT, but would not constitute SCNT-cloning because no embryo results from any step in the process.”

Robert: Now I think I understand. You’re confusing types of cells. In layman’s terms, an oocyte is an egg. In your example, in which a nucleus is injected into an oocyte, you are perfectly describing SCNT, which results in an embryonic clone. Embryonic stem cells taking from such a clone in the blastocyst stage of the development would not need to be further developed into adult stem cells. We can harvest adult stem cells already, without destroying embryos, and use these cells therapeutically. In fact, we’ve been doing that for more than 40 years.

Further, I think (hope?) that what you’re trying to support is not “literal-SCNT,” as you coin it, but using Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells (iPSCs), which are artificially created from adult cells and do not require the destruction of embryos, as does ESCR. The iPSC process uses viruses to transfect genes to a non-pluripotent adult cell. Wiki describes the process. This research is occuring now. Again, a definition of iPSCs from the NIH:

Induced pluripotent stem cells—Adult cells reprogrammed to an embryonic stem cell–like state by being forced to express factors important for maintaining the “stemness” of embryonic stem cells (ESCs). Mouse iPSCs were first reported in 2006 (Takahashi and Yamanaka), and human iPSCs were first reported in late 2007 (Takahashi et al. and Yu et al.). Mouse iPSCs demonstrate important characteristics of pluripotent stem cells, including expressing stem cell markers, forming tumors containing cells from all three germ layers, and being able to contribute to many different tissues when injected into mouse embryos at a very early stage in development. Human iPSCs also express stem cell markers and are capable of generating cells characteristic of all three germ layers. Scientists are actively comparing iPSCs and ESCs to identify important similarities and differences.

Bill: I emphatically hope you see that I have tried to be as transparent as possible and am not using any deceit to obscure the situation and smuggle in an immoral practice under the fog of confusion. Above all, I want to honor God by pursuing the truth.”

Robert: I appreciate your transparency and your desire to continue this conversation. Further, as I have caused offense, I ask for your forgiveness for the sake of Christ. By His grace, may all of us join in discovering and proclaiming the truth of the Lord of all Life in this “culture of death.”

What Bill is proposing is that DNA be extracted from a person needing a transplant, say, for a liver. That DNA would be placed in an enucleated oocyte. Embryonic stem cells harvested from this clone (Bill objects to this terminology; let’s call him “Fred”) in the blastocyst stage would be used to generate an organ (like a liver) or tissue. Thus, deprived of life, Fred would be dead.

Bill notes that generating human organs this way “is not yet a medical reality.” In fact, as Bill surely knows, it’s more like untenable science fiction. If you want to get closer to reality, follow the money trail. The real scary (but profitable) stuff is in a) creating clones; b) designating them as non-human, non-persons; and then b) harvesting their complete organs.

My guess is that once we’ve raided the fridge at in vitro fertilization clinics, we’ll be dumpster diving for aborted fetuses.

You can follow the entire discussion, following M.Z. Hemingway’s excellent March 3 article,  here.