LifeSiteNews.com Life, Family and Culture News

Email: "“Embryo-Friendly” Stem Cell Technique Defended with Bogus Ethics"

Your Email:

Your Name:

Send To Email:

Subject:

Message:
BY LifeSiteNews.com By Hilary WhiteWORCHESTER, Massachusetts, January 14, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Massachusetts based Advanced Cell Technology (ACT) has claimed to have created five batches of stem cells using a method it called "ethical" and has called on President Bush to endorse their method. ACT, however, has a history of making spurious claims of ethical embryo research; the new method itself has already been denounced by pro-life groups.Dr. Robert Lanza, ACT’s scientific director, told the news agency Reuters that the method provides a way to create embryonic stem cells in quantity without harming a human embryo. Reuters ran the headline "Embryo-friendly technique produces stem cells"."This is a working technology that exists here and now. It could be used to increase the number of stem cell lines available to federal researchers immediately," Lanza said by e-mail. "We could send these cells out to researchers tomorrow." As a private company, ACT stands to make millions by selling the products of its experiments to other labs.But the method, called blastomere separation, is already well known and, because it can result in the death of the embryo, has been condemned by pro-life spokesmen. Dr. Lanza has become a regular media spokesman in support of the use of embryos for research. In 2005, Lanza’s company first claimed that it had developed this method of creating "ethical" embryonic stem cells, in which a single cell is removed from an early stage embryo and cultured separately. This method has long been a standard procedure in IVF facilities, being used to test embryos for possible genetic abnormalities. In 2005, Dr. John Shea, medical advisor to Canada’s Campaign Life Coalition, said that while it is often possible to remove a cell from an embryo without harming it, this is not guaranteed. "The point is that to take the risk without benefiting the embryonic human being is unethical according to the standards established by the Nuremberg Code."The pro-life position that prompted President Bush’s ban on the use of embryos for stem cell research is based on the scientifically supported fact that the embryo is a human being and therefore the inheritor of the full sovereign rights of every other human being. International agreements on using human beings for research, including the Nuremberg Code, agree that to use a human being without his consent for research that is of no direct benefit, to the subject, must be illegal.Shea said after the first ACT announcement in 2005, "They just refuse to admit that the embryo is a human being and so all the rules regarding medical research on human beings have to be applied. You have to get consent, and no parent can consent to allowing medical research on a child that is not intended to benefit the child."Shea pointed out that the entire process is unethical from the start, even without putting the embryos at risk. "The embryos should never have been created by this artificial process in the first place. The child has a fundamental right to be conceived naturally by two parents within marriage. That’s the basic starting point."Read related LifeSiteNews.com coverage:"New Ethical" Embryonic Stem Cells Not New and Not Ethicalhttp://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2005/oct/05101810.html http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/embryo-friendly-stem-cell-technique-defended-with-bogus-ethics/

Please enter the word you see in the image below: