BioEdge: Some stem cell lines unethical, researchers learn

It has taken American scientists seven years to wake up to the fact that some of their human embryonic stem cell lines were created without adequate informed consent. Back in 2001 President Bush authorised government funding for human embryonic stem cell research on lines which were already in existence. He thought that there were about 60 of these. However, over time, this figure dwindled to 21. And now a University of Wisconsin at Madison bioethicist has discovered that five of these were created unethically.

The ethically-tainted lines were developed by a Swedish company, Cellartis, and an American company, Bresagen. (Bresagen was originally Australian and is now owned by the American company Novocell.) Apart from other defects in the consent forms, neither company informed couples that the embryos which had been created for them in IVF clinics would be destroyed in the course of research. “It didn’t occur to us that we should get the consent forms to look at them,” an official of the US National Academy of Sciences told Nature News.

The Bresagen and Cellartis lines are the least used of the 21 authorised lines, but they have been sent to dozens of researchers. Furthermore, none of the other lines conformed strictly to government guidelines. Who is responsible for the embarrassing error? Not surprisingly, there seems to be a bit of finger-pointing going on. Given the importance of informed consent in stem cell research, one would have thought that the various bureaucrats and researchers involved would have double-checked. But some of them now blame – who else? – the perfidious Bush Administration. “It shows the lengths to which the administration pushed the [National Institutes of Health] to get as many lines on record as it could,” says Jonathan Moreno, a bioethicist for the Center for American Progress. “It shows that it’s time to move on.” ~ Nature News, July 28