WASHINGTON (BP)–Pro-life bioethicists are rejecting recent claims by scientists that they have developed embryonic stem cells without destroying human embryos.
Advanced Cell Technology (ACT), a firm based in Worcester, Mass., reported Jan. 10 it had developed five embryonic stem cell lines, or colonies, without killing embryos using a technique sometimes utilized for screening products of in vitro fertilization. The research, as a result, should receive federal funding, according to ACT.
A single cell was removed at the eight-cell stage from each of 43 embryos in the experiments, according to an ACT news release. Researchers cultured each of the removed cells in an attempt to develop an embryonic stem cell line, and the embryos, each minus a cell, were allowed to mature for several days before being frozen.
The technology “could be used to increase the number of stem cell lines available to federal researchers immediately,” said Robert Lanza, head of the research team and ACT’s chief scientific officer. “We could send these cells out to researchers tomorrow. Too many needless deaths continue to occur while this research is being held up. I hope the President will act now and approve these stem cell lines quickly.”
The method, however, is not as harmless as it sounds in not just one way but possibly two ways, opponents of destructive research said. Some of the embryos did not survive, and it remains uncertain if a surviving embryo suffers harm as a result of having a cell removed, pro-lifers pointed out.
Nine of the 43 embryos died after cells were removed, said Yuval Levin, director of the Washington-based Ethics and Public Policy Center’s program on bioethics. “[E]mbryo biopsy does seem to significantly increase the risk of harm to the embryos involved,” Levin wrote on National Review Online.
The President’s Council on Bioethics studied such a proposal in 2005 but unanimously concluded it was “ethically unacceptable in humans,” said Levin, who formerly served as the council’s executive director. The technique probably would not qualify for federal funds, he wrote, because the Dickey Amendment, a 1995 law, bars such grants for research in which human embryos are “knowingly subjected to risk of injury or death greater than that allowed for research on fetuses in utero.”
Bioethicist David Prentice agreed ACT’s technique falls short of being ethical and said Lanza’s claim is “patently false” that needless deaths are occurring from various diseases.
“Honest embryonic stem cell research authorities have taken pains to point out that any treatments are decades away at best, and that is not because of ethical constraints but because of real problems with embryonic stem cells forming tumors, failing to make and sustain specialized cell types, and transplant rejection,” Prentice said, according to LifeNews.com.
Most pro-lifers oppose embryonic stem cell research because the extraction of the cells from an embryo destroys the tiny human being. Despite their potential, embryonic stem cells have yet to treat any diseases in human beings and have been plagued by the development of tumors in lab animals.
MICHIGAN NO. 1 PRO-LIFE STATE AGAIN — Michigan is the best, and Oregon is the worst, when it comes to providing legal protection for life, according to Americans United for Life (AUL).
It marked the third consecutive year that Michigan gained the top pro-life ranking among the 50 states. Following it in the top 10 were: Louisiana, Pennsylvania, Texas, Kansas, South Dakota, Mississippi, Arkansas, Oklahoma and Virginia.
Oregon, the only state with legalized assisted suicide, finished 50th, leading these states in the bottom 10: California, Connecticut, New Jersey, Vermont, Hawaii, New Hampshire, Iowa, Alaska and New Mexico.
Released Jan. 15, AUL’s ratings were based largely, though not exclusively, on the states’ attempts to provide meaningful restrictions on the extremely liberal abortion regime instituted by the Supreme Court in 1973.
“We are making progress, state by state and law by law,” said Denise Burke, AUL’s vice president and legal director, in a written release. “In states that have passed these types of laws, the abortion rates have declined by up to 20 [percent] over the past 10 years.”
CHINESE DEFY POPULATION CONTROL POLICY — China’s notorious population control program is facing apparently increasing resistance within the borders of the world’s most populous country.
Hundreds of thousands of Chinese are refusing to abide by the communist giant’s repressive policy, according to Cybercast News Service (CNS). In Hubei, one of China’s 22 provinces, 93,000 people broke the “one-child” rule in 2007, the province’s family planning commission reported, according to CNS.
Meanwhile, a Chinese court — reportedly for the first time — will hear a case against officials who forced abortion upon a mother. A regional court will consider Jin Yani’s suit against county family planning authorities in Hebei province. In 2000, Jin was nine months pregnant when officials forced her to an abortion center, where her baby girl was given a lethal injection and removed dead two days later, according to The Telegraph of London.
Jin, who was in the hospital for nearly a month and a half with complications from the abortion, has since been unable to conceive, according to the newspaper. “Our baby will never come back,” she said. “We just hope this kind of thing will never happen again.”
The family planning policy generally limits couples in urban areas to one child and those in rural areas to two, if the first is a girl. Penalties for violations of the policy have included fines, arrests and the destruction of homes, as well as forced abortion and sterilization, though such physical coercion has been outlawed by the national government. Infanticide, especially of females, also has been reported.
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Tom Strode is the Washington bureau chief for Baptist Press.
