LONDON, Aug 3, 2001 (LSN.ca) – PPL Therapeutics PLC, the British firm that helped clone Dolly the sheep, is claiming that it will be able to “avoid the destruction of human embryos” for stem cell research by taking adult cells from a patient and return it to their embryo-like state. However, Dr. John Shea, MD, who has looked into embryo research in depth, suggests that the new announcement is “more smoke and mirrors.” Dr. Shea, suggests that the new process is merely human cloning in a different package.
Dr. Shea explains that with cloning, the nucleus of an ovum is removed from the cytoplasm and then the adult somatic cell replaces the nucleus. The new British method for reverting somatic cells to their ‘embryo-like’ state, takes an adult somatic cell and injects it, or dabs it with cytoplasm from an ovum. Dr. Shea suggests that the difference is similar to offering “bacon and eggs instead of eggs and bacon.”
The use of cloning for stem cell research was a necessary development for embryonic stem cell research since scientists know that the embryonic stem cells are, for the most part, rejected by the immune system of the patient who receives and thus would require lifelong use of immunosuppressant drugs. To circumvent this human clones made from somatic cells from the patient could be used, thus eliminating the immune system’s rejection of the stem-cell created tissue since the embryo used to create the tissue is a clone of the patient. The cloned human embryos could be implanted in a womb and born, as was the case with the cloned sheep Dolly.
(New Technique May Help Create Stem Cells Without Using Embryos, Wall Street Journal, Aug 3, 2001)
(with files from Pro-Life E-News)