Latest Supposedly Ethical Embryonic Cell Technique Condemned by U.S. Bishops’ Conference

By Hilary White
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  WORCESTER, August 24, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) –Â The stem cell research community has, since President Bush announced it in 2001, been diligently working to find a way around the US federal funding ban on embryonic research.
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  In the latest development, Advanced Cell Technology (ACT), a private, Worcester, Massachusetts biotechnology firm, has announced it has developed a means of acquiring embryonic cells that it says will put to rest the ethical concerns about this type of research.
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“We hope this method can be used to increase the number of stem cell lines available for federal funding – and thus give the field a badly needed jump-start,” the study’s lead author, Dr. Robert Lanza said.
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  In a study published online in the journal Nature on Wednesday, ACT researchers claim to have retrieved single cells of 2- to 3-day-old human embryos (consisting of 8 to 10 cells) to produce 2 new stem-cell lines. This process, they say, would leave the embryos themselves intact and able to survive “in most cases.”
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  The process to which the study refers, however, is not news and is known to be used in the IVF industry, mainly for pre-implantation genetic diagnosis but also for what is called ‘twinning.” Called blastomere separation, the cells removed from the early a stage embryo can, in some cases, to begin to divide and develop as separate embryos.
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  Lanza admitted that the process was difficult to develop, saying, “We had to work out a different technique and initially we weren’t sure that it was going to work. It was pretty tough. Eventually it worked like a charm.”
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  But the difficulty, which means an unrecorded number of embryonic human beings killed in the course of the research, is enough to condemn the work, points out Richard Dorflinger, head of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops’ pro-life office. Dorflinger said, “It does not solve the ethical dilemma. It’d be irresponsible to claim now that this is totally safe.”
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  The study says the team created two stable human embryonic stem cell lines that behaved like conventional embryonic stem cell lines. “They’ve now been growing for over eight months, are entirely normal genetically and they were able to generate all of the cell types of the body,” Lanza said.
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  William Hurlbut, a Stanford University professor and member of the President’s Council on Bioethics, points out that the study does not explore what, if any, long-term effects the removal of a blastomere might have on a human body at such an early stage of its development should the individual survive to birth.
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“It might be serious effects, it might be minor changes it might be nothing. We just don’t know,” Hurlbut said to Newsweek.
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  The ethical principle of concern to pro-life advocates, as old as the ancient Greeks’ Hippocratic Oath, is that human beings cannot be subjected to treatment that might harm them unless there is some medical benefit to be had.
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  Lawyer and bioethics commentator, Wesley J. Smith, writes, “it strikes me that if such a procedure did harm the later-born baby, it would constitute immoral human research, and perhaps would be criminal. At the very least, there would sure be one hell of a lawsuit.”
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  See LifeSiteNews.com’s Stem Cell Watch page:
https://www.lifesitenews.com/features/stemcellembryo/index.html