Therapeutic cloning will be useless in clinical medicine, says one of Britain's leading stem cell biologists. Professor Austin Smith, of the University of Cambridge, says that "Its prominence is out of proportion to the significance of what's being done, and there are real question marks about whether it has any utility at all."
Cloning research has been oversold to the public and has gained an unreasonably high profile. In fact, says Professor Smith, it has limited potential for treating disease and adds little to scientific understanding. In theory, it may be possible to treat people with cloned embryonic stem cells, but the technical barriers would be insurmountable in practice, he told the London Times.
Dollars-and-cents calculations have become part of the debate over assisted suicide and euthanasia, argues a British doctor in the journal Bioethics. Dr Miran Epstein says that bioethicists esteem autonomy so highly that any decision which patients make with full knowledge and full consent must be respected. By virtue of the fact that something has been freely chosen, it must be a legitimate decision, regardless of the reasoning behind it.
Bioethics "has been largely silent about [economic] pressures, when in fact it has been willing to legitimize individual and social end- of-life decisions even if they reflected such pressures," he says. Two reasons which are often cited in cases of assisted suicide, fear of becoming a burden on others and fear of loss of control and independence, may often be, fundamentally, economic considerations. Contemporary families are so busy and pressured by the "rat race" that they cannot afford the quality of care that the elderly deserve. And in fact, he…
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Scratching your head over where to find versatile but non- controversial stem cells to replace the embryonic kind? Keep on scratching. Researchers at the Medical College of Wisconsin have found that stem cells in the bulge of hair follicles seem to be able to differentiate into many kinds of cells and can multiply rapidly. Their results have been published in the journal Stem Cells.
The lead scientist, Dr. Maya Sieber-Blum, says: "We see the potential for cell replacement therapy in which patients can be their own donors, which would avoid ethical issues and reduce the possibility of tissue incompatibility." Her colleagues have done some preliminary research on mice with spinal cord injuries. These cells, called epidermal neural crest stem cells, grafted into the spine and survived.
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Fathers will not be required for IVF children under a proposed shake- up of Britain's fertility legislation. The Blair Government feels that a revision is needed because of changing social mores and the galloping pace of developments in reproductive technology. Its most controversial provision will allow single women and lesbians to access IVF. Both would be recognised as the parents.
Outspoken Liberal Democrat MP Evan Harris welcomed the proposal. He said the existing act was "unjustifiable, discriminatory and vindictive. It was also unsustainable in human rights and equality terms. The evidence suggests children do very well brought up by lesbian couples and solo parents, so good riddance."
Dr Calum MacKellar, of the Scottish Council on Human Bioethics disputed this: "It is possible that these children may only become aware of any psychological problems when they become adults or consider having children of their own."
With 94,000 Americans on an ever-lengthening list of candidates for organ donation, transplant surgeons are eager to expand the pool of potential donors. An op-ed in the New York Times contends that one way is donation after cardiac death.
"The propriety of donation after cardiac death is so well established and its potential to ease organ shortages is so great that the Health Resources and Services Administration has deemed it an important goal for the nation," writes Dr Francis L. Delmonico, the medical director of the New England Organ Bank.
Since it is a fundamental ethical rule that patients must be dead before their organs are transplanted, the problem is defining when they actually die. The normal criterion is strict: brain death, even in the brain stem. In other words, no brain function at all. This is less common than cardiac death which occurs when a person's heart stops beating. Lungs, livers and kidneys remain viable after cardiac death.
Four centres of excellence should be established to carry out experiments on primates because they are essential for medical research, claim UK experts in an independent report. "We felt there was a strong moral scientific case" for their use in research, says medical scientist Sir David Weatherall.
He led an independent working group that carried out an 18-month study of how non-human primates such as marmosets, tamarins and macaques are used in research. "We are not calling for an expansion in non-human primate research," Sir David said. "Focusing research at specialised centres would have huge scientific and welfare benefits. There is a scientific case for careful, meticulously- regulated non-human primate research, at least for the foreseeable future, provided it is the only way of solving important scientific or medical questions and high standards of welfare are maintained."
Although animal welfare groups immediately slammed the report, Sir David insisted that non-human primates are the only way to ensure that medications are…
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Disgraced stem cell researcher Hwang Woo-suk is making a quiet return to scientific research, even though he is still in the middle of a trial over faked articles in Science, embezzlement and bioethics violations. With the help of an unknown financial backer, he has shifted to a new lab about 50 kilometres south of Seoul and is working on animal cloning with the help of about 30 researchers. He hopes to return to human therapeutic cloning eventually.
Koreans are split over Hwang. Some feel that he is a victim and that the real culprit is his former associate Kim Sun-jong. Others think that he was brought down by American researchers who were jealous of his success. Professor Park Se-pill, of Cheju National University, does not agree with either theory, but admires his competence and want to see him back in the lab. "Hwang and his men have unrivalled technologies for cloning," he told the Korea Times. "Korea should not scrap…
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Convicted murderer and euthanasia activist Jack Kevorkian has been granted parole. He has promised not to participate in any more assisted suicides. Kevorkian was convicted in 1999 in Michigan of second-degree murder after helping a man with Lou Gehrig's disease to die -- a death which he videotaped and screened on the CBS show 60 Minutes. He claims to have helped at least 130 people to die.
"You can put any conditions you want on me," he told the parole board. "I'm not going to do it again. Anything that will bring me back to prison I will avoid. Prison is not a place to live." However, he will continue to press for the legalisation of assisted suicide. Kevorkian has served 8 years of a 10 to 25-year sentence; his parole begins in June.
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Serial killers: At least 90 health care professionals have been prosecuted for killing more than 2,000 patients since 1970, according to a study in the Journal of Forensic Sciences. They occurred in 20 different countries, primarily in the US and Europe.
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An upcoming article in the journal Fertility and Sterility shows that some disabled parents in the US are using pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) to create children like themselves. The two disabilities mentioned are deafness and dwarfism. A survey of 190 American IVF clinics recently found that 3% had deliberately used PGD at some stage "to select an embryo for the presence of a disability".
Most IVF clinics turn down such requests, but two leading IVF specialists were quoted in the New York Times as saying that they would refer families to more obliging doctors. The Times interviewed Mary Ellen Little, a dwarf who has two daughters with dwarfism. The second was deliberately selected. Some disabled parents feel that having children who share their problems will strengthen family ties.
"The small number of PGD centers selecting for mutations doesn't bother me greatly," writes Dr Darshak M. Sanghavi in an op-ed article. "After all, even natural reproduction is an…
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