SYDNEY, August 6, 2002 (LSN.ca) - A political debate in Australia has let the cat out of the bag on another horror behind the manufacture of human embryonic stem cells. Australia’s foremost scientist, Professor Alan Trounson, has enraged the Prime Minster by revealing that human embryonic stem cells are to be fed with tissue from aborted babies. Scientists have grown the stem cells on “feeder layers” made up of fetal tissue from animals, mostly mice. However, scientists have known that feeder layers which involve animals have a chance of contaminating the human embryonic stem cells, thus making them very risky for later transplantation into humans. Using aborted baby tissue as a feeder layer would eliminate the xeno (animal-derived) risk. The full details on the “human feeders” are revealed in the latest issue of Nature Biotechnology in an article entitled, “Human feeders support prolonged undifferentiated growth of human inner cell masses and embryonic stem cells” by Mark Richards, Chui-Yee Fong, Woon-Khiong Chan, Peng-Cheang Wong & Ariff Bongso. (Published online: 5 August 2002, doi:10.1038/nbt726)
See the coverage in the Sydney Morning Herald: http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/08/05/1028157895589.html