Embrionic Stem Cell Research

Research on human embryonic stem cells is legal

  Because a certain segment of the population believes that embryo, or actually the zygote – that is the conceived egg – but certainly the embryo is entitled to if not all the protections of an adult human being than certainly most of protections. In other words, they do not see any significant moral distinction between an adult human being and an embryo. Therefore to take any action that will result in the destruction or the harming of an embryo is, for them, deeply immoral.

  Sure. The Dickey-Wicker amendment prohibits the use of any federal funds that would result in the creation of an embryo for research purposes or would result in the destruction or injury of an embryo. So it’s clear, for example, that a scientist cannot receive a ten-million-dollar grant with the idea that he would use that money to fertilize eggs, create embryos that would then be used for whatever research purpose that would be prohibited under current federal law. What’s not clear and what some of the recent litigations have been about is that law also prevents the federal government from funding research on embryonic stem cell lines. The courts now have decided the law doesn’t prohibit that. That is done by a company, let’s say, and they do that with their own money, they then try to generate a stem cell line from that. That is, if the line of basic stem cells continues proliferating, they are allowed to do research on different types of organs because stem cells, of course, can turn into any type of organ in the body. And that research is what the federal government would like to fund. And now the courts have decided that, yes, they can fund that.

  The process is that if the zygote is conceived, allowed to mature to a certain stage, typically, to an eight-cell stage called the blastocyst – and many of these embryos for research purposes are acquired from in vitro fertilization procedures, and what typically happens is that you generate a lot more embryos, or blastocysts, if you will, that can be used, because they like to have a surplus. Then, once the couple actually succeeds in getting one implanted in the woman, we have surplus embryos, or blastocysts, and the question arises what you do with them. Companies would like to use them and the government would like to use them or support research on them in ways that would help the general public. Or the alternative would be to simply throw them out in the trash. So, you have these blastocysts and what is done is that a cell or cells are removed from the blastocyst, which means that it would be prevented from further development. And then those cells are cultivated, and if the cultivation is successful, they are put in fluid, which allows them to maintain vitality. If the cultivation is successful they will begin to divide and multiply. Theoretically, they are immortal, or the line is immortal, in other ways you can keep going on and on and on with them. The reality is that after a certain number of years they tend to develop some mutations that are not useful for research or for other purposes. But, theoretically, they can keep dividing forever. Because in this early blastocyst stage there’s been no differentiation in terms of what purpose they might have ultimately served, if they had developed further, they can’t in fact be turned into different types of organs with the proper stimulation, the proper types of boost that the scientists would use to carry out the research. So, you start off the stem cell line, you can mix it, as you will, with muscle cells or nerve cells, with other types of tissue that can be part of a lung or a kidney and it’ll start to acquire the characteristics of that organ because it has that power called “pluripotency”, meaning that it has the power to turn into a number of different things. One of the things that people who are very much opposed to embryonic stem cell research tend to overlook is that you need a uterus – it’s like the role of woman is just completely blanked up. An embryo on its own is not going to develop into a fetus and then perhaps a baby. It needs an environment to do that and a uterus is not a passive receptacle – it provides a lot of nutrients and other genetic information that allows the embryo to turn into a fetus and then possibly to develop. So, if embryos are on their own, if there are excess embryos from IVF research, they are not going anywhere, they are not to develop into anything, that is to say they will be thrown into the trash.

Judge dismissed lawsuit against funding embryonic stem-cell research

Alliance Defense Fund senior counsel Steven H. Aden had been among the attorneys representing researchers Theresa Deisher of AVM Biotechnology in Seattle and Dr. James Sherley of the Boston Biomedical Research Institute, who said the Obama administration’s decision to expand federal funding of embryonic stem-cell research would harm their chances of obtaining funding for their own adult stem-cell research. “We believe that the language and history of federal statutory law on embryo research fully supports a final ruling against” the National Institutes of Health guidelines that permit federal spending on embryonic stem-cell research, said Richard Doerflinger, associate director of the USCCB Secretariat for Pro-Life Activities, after a three-judge panel of the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia lifted the ban on such funding April 29 and sent the case back to Lamberth.

Guidelines for human embryonic stem cell research

The human embryonic stem cell debate, science, ethics, and public policy

Embryonic stem cell research

Human embryonic stem cells

The National Academies' guidelines for human embryonic stem cell research, 2008 amendments