By Susan Brinkmann, OCDS
Staff Writer
The world’s first license to created cloned human embryos for research has been granted by the Australian government to an in vitro fertilization (IVF) in Sydney.
According to the Globe and Mail, Sydney IVF has been granted a license and given access to 7,200 human eggs with which to create cloned human embryos for the purpose of obtaining embryonic stem cells.
Dr. John Findlay, chair of the organization that granted the license, the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC), said the research will be closely monitored.
“They have been given a license to do therapeutic cloning,” Dr. Findlay said, adding the scientists are not licensed to reach the fetal stage.
“They can go to the stage called blastocyst. They must stop at that point,” he said. The blastocyst is a very early-stage embryo not yet implanted into the womb.
Dr. Findlay said scientists will try and create stem cells from patients who have abnormalities or create stem cell lines which will be compatible with patients which have given the cells.
Initially, any stem cells extracted would be used to test new drugs to fight diseases such as muscular dystrophy and Huntington’s disease, and later therapeutic cloning would be used to produce body tissue matched to patients.
Sydney IVF claims they plan to use only eggs that are unusable for IVF because they are immature or had not been fertilized properly, and which donors had given consent for.
However, critics say the issuing of this license opens the door to a “Pandora’s Box” that will teach others how to conduct the research.
“We have regulations in Australia that the abuses of cloning wouldn’t happen here, we will not get live birth cloning,” said David van Gend, director of Australians for Ethical Stem Cell Research.
“We won’t get cloning right through to the fetal stage in order to use them for organ transplants, but if we teach the world how to clone you can be quite sure it will be used in less rigorous jurisdictions.”
The process of extracting stem cells from human embryos kills the embryos and many say this kind of destructive research is no longer necessary thanks to advances in stem cell technology.
For instance, scientists are now able to create stem cells that behave remarkably similar to embryonic stem cells through a process known as somatic cell nuclear transfer. This technique removes DNA from the nucleus of an unfertilized egg and replaces it with the nucleus of an adult cell such as a skin cell.
Thus far, embryonic stem cell research has been riddled with problems from the ethical dilemmas it poses to the propensity for these cells to be rejected or cause tumours in laboratory experiments. For this reason, embryonic stem cell research is considered too dangerous for human testing.
On the other hand, adult stem cell research is already being used in humans to treat more than 70 different diseases.
© All Rights Reserved, Living His Life Abundantly/Women of Grace. http://www.womenofgrace.com
In our show, “Embryonic Stem Cell Research: Why Not?” a panel of experts explain the facts about the most controversial medical research of our time. Available in our store at http://womenofgrace.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=335
