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No Fairy Tales, Just the Truth

California Company's False Claims to Ethical Embryonic Stem Cell Research

BY KIRK KRAMER

On August 24, the journal Nature, the Los Angeles Times, and other major newspapers announced a new technique for the development of embryonic stem cell lines which, it was claimed, would be acceptable to those who have objected to such procedures on moral grounds. The company that developed it, Advanced Cell Technology of Alameda, claimed that the technique developed by its scientists "could enable stem-cell lines to be generated without the destruction of human embryos," in the words of an article in Nature.

"Could" turned out to be the operative word in the announcement. Within a week, the claim of a scientific -- or an ethical -- breakthrough fell apart. "The biotech company that grabbed headlines last week for sparing human embryos while creating precious stem cells in fact destroyed all 16 embryos used in the experiment," wrote the August 31 Philadelphia Inquirer.

Richard Doerflinger, executive director of the U.S. Catholic bishops' Secretariat for Pro-Life Activities, was thoroughly unimpressed with the whole episode. "The destructive nature of the technique was integral to what was achieved," he said by telephone from Washington, D.C. "They have not proven they could have produced cell lines by taking only one cell from each embryo while allowing the original embryo to live."

The new technique draws on an old procedure variously referred to as pre-implantation genetic diagnosis, or embryo biopsy. Pre-implantation genetic diagnosis/embryo biopsy involves removing a single cell from an eight- to ten-celled human embryo. That single cell is tested for genetic defects.

In their experiments, Advanced Cell Technology researchers made use of pre-implantation diagnosis for a new purpose. They removed a single cell from a human person in the embryo stage of development, then used that single cell to create a new line of embryonic stem cells for research purposes.

Catholic ethicists in United States and abroad with whom I spoke raised many objections to the Advanced Cell Technology procedure.

"In order to achieve some success with such procedures, many embryos will no doubt be sacrificed," Anthony Fisher, auxiliary bishop of Sydney, Australia, who holds a doctorate in bioethics from Oxford University, told me by e-mail. "Just as with in-vitro fertilization, we can expect a pragmatic attitude that willingly expends many early human lives in order to achieve a few successes. I have seen estimates that, to date, something like 19 out of 20 IVF embryos have never seen the light of day."

The existence of these "spare" embryos has led to some dubious moral arguments by proponents of embryonic stem cell research, according to Dr. John Brehany, executive director and ethicist for the Philadelphia-based Catholic Medical Association.

"They say that thousands of frozen embryos are just sitting there," he said. "Nobody's going to implant them [in a womb], they're going to die anyway -- why not use them up?"

Brehany answered their argument himself.

"Hospitals are full of people who are going to die next week. We don't experiment on them without their consent, or kill them, just because they are going to die," he said.

According to Father Tad Pacholczyk of the National Catholic Bioethics Center in Philadelphia, who holds a doctorate in neuroscience from Yale, the removal of the single cell in pre-implantation genetic diagnosis can mimic what sometimes happens in normal embryonic growth.

"The extracted single cell may itself be totipotent, that is to say, it may be a new human being, now able to grow into an adult on its own," Pacholczyk writes on the bioethics center website. "Early embryos are so flexible that occasionally when a cell breaks off from them, an identical twin can form. While this can certainly occur at the two- and four-cell stage of the embryo, it may even be possible at the eight-cell stage, though there is ongoing debate about this question."

John Brehany spoke of the science, and the morality, of this possibility.

"Most cells in the body serve a very specific purpose -- for example, red blood cells carry oxygen to human tissues and then carry out carbon dioxide. But some cells are the source of new cells: we call these stem cells. The most 'powerful' stem cells exist at the beginning of human life, since all human beings begin life with one cell, which then develops into trillions of specialized cells.

"Advanced Cell Technology takes one of the eight cells from the embryo. They culture the one cell and get it to grow. It divides into two, four, eight cells -- a new human embryo. At four or five days' gestation, they suck out the inner cells and use them for research. They end up destroying the new embryo to get the cells. That's another human being who's destroyed by this procedure."

Some scholars raise concerns about the long-term effects of removing a single cell from the embryo.

"It's not only produced like it's a piece of cotton candy, but the original may be fouled up," said Nick Bagileo, associate dean of the Washington, D.C. campus of the John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family. "You don't know how it harms the original embryo later in life.

"What a bunch of animals."

Dr. Sara Deola, a visiting fellow at the National Institute of Health in Washington DC, echoed Bagileo's concern.

"You wouldn't put your son's life at risk [at the embryonic stage] by taking out one cell for just any purpose," she said. "You wouldn't say to your son, 'you have a probability of dying or developing abnormally if I take away this cell. But I can do research with this cell. In 50 years, this might make it possible to create new liver tissue.'

"The procedure is so risky it's not ethically acceptable. If you donate blood, they make sure your iron is not too low, for example, or that you won't faint. Only then will they take your blood. Why not take the same precautions when your body just has eight cells? If your body is only eight cells, each cell is important at that stage."

Benedictine Father Luke Dysinger, a physician and theologian who teaches at St John's Seminary in Camarillo, mentioned a practical consideration that endangers the life of an embryo who has undergone pre-implantation genetic diagnosis.

"What is the fate of the embryo from which the cell is removed? Do they intend to allow it to grow into an [adult] human being? Probably not. Scientists who do this research are not the ones who do in-vitro fertilization for infertile couples. The effect of this procedure is likely to be the creation of tumors, not the discovery of useful medical or scientific information."

The embryos who are subjected to pre-implantation genetic diagnosis are the result of either in-vitro fertilization or cloning. The August 24 Los Angeles Times article that reported on the Advanced Cell Technology "breakthrough" quoted a professor at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, who saw a connection to in-vitro fertilization.

"I remember when IVF came along and there was tremendous opposition," said Dr. Joe Leigh Simpson, "and the opposition disappeared once the usefulness of the technique won people over."

That assertion was sharply contradicted by several people I interviewed, including Father Tad Pacholczyk of the National Catholic Bioethics Center in Philadelphia. "Opposition has not disappeared," he said. "The Catholic Church is one voice that opposes in-vitro fertilization as an ethical way to bring a new generation into the world."

Indeed, Father José Granados, a professor of theology at the John Paul II Institute in Washington, says that a fundamental problem with creating new embryonic stem cell lines for research purposes is the use of embryos obtained by in-vitro fertilization.

And he takes issue with Simpson's utilitarian approach to morality.

"[He's] measuring a technique by its usefulness -- 'this is good because it is solves a problem,'" said Granados. "What about the different conception of human life it introduces? The child does not come as the fruit of human love, within the bond of love between man and woman. [These techniques] involve a change of the culture, in the way we consider the dignity of human life. They consider the child as something I can produce, something I have a right to."

But John Brehany pointed out that those ethical considerations are sometimes forgotten because of the emotional difficulty of explaining the Church's teaching about in-vitro fertilization to married couples who are unable to conceive a child.

"Infertility is a huge and growing problem in the U.S.," said Berhany. "Infertile couples are so desperate they cannot think through these ethical issues. They often don't even hear about the Church's teaching until they are desperate enough to pursue artificial reproduction. At that point, emotion can overwhelm their ability to consider thoughtfully and accept the Church's teaching. Nobody talks about [in-vitro fertilization] anymore because it seems so heartless. But look where it got us -- people are buying and selling human eggs and sperm on the internet, and now scientists want to destroy frozen (but living) human embryos in research."

In his email to me, Bishop Fisher from Sidney also addressed the question of in-vitro fertilization.

"IVF was sold to the public on the understanding that embryos would never be created for destructive purposes. No, we were told again and again, it is so that infertile couples can have babies. No one can be against couples having babies. At the time a few 'pessimists' dared to say that if we go down this track, our respect for procreation will diminish and early human life will be cheapened. Sure enough, a generation later, we are talking about creating human embryos by IVF or cloning with the sole goal of using them to derive medical or other products, and then discarding them if they are no longer useful. Now, we are told, some might still be able to be implanted. But the attitude change towards our own procreative capacity and our newly conceived children is very evident."

Bishop Fisher also commented on another passage in the August 24 Times article. Ronald Green, an ethicist at Dartmouth College who is chairman of the ethics advisory board for Advanced Cell Technology, was quoted as saying, "it's extremely unusual for a scientific development to resolve an ethical problem, and this is one of those very rare occasions where that's happened."

Fisher responded, "I think we should be suspicious of ethicists employed by the embryo industry. I suspect it is rather like ethicists employed by big tobacco or the arms industry. They might be objective. But they might also see their job as essentially providing a justification for whatever the industry wants to do or suggesting ways of presenting things that are easier to sell to an uneasy public."

In at least one respect, the bishop finds Advanced Cell Technology's announcement and the ensuing discussion encouraging.

"I think we must applaud the attempts of some stem-cell scientists to find non-lethal ways of deriving stem-cells," wrote Fisher. "While public opinion (and thus government funding) may be the main driver here rather than a real concern for ethics, it may also be that the message is at last getting through that there is a genuine ethical problem with killing some human beings to save others."

Father Dysinger also raised the question of funding.

"No one has demonstrated any therapeutic value from embryonic stem cell research -- none. The economics of [such research] are pertinent. The state must fund it, because businesses won't fund it. It's not profitable. Adult stem cells, on the other hand, are a proven commodity."

And a morally acceptable one.

According to an August 28 report from the Rome-based news agency ZENIT, Bishop Elio Sgreccia, president of the Pontifical Academy for Life, questioned the need to use human embryonic stem cells "when we already know that stem cells for therapeutic use can be obtained through normal stem cells of an adult individual, which we find in the umbilical cord or in different parts of the human body."

In a speech delivered in Rome on September 15 at an international congress co-sponsored by the Holy See, Richard Doerflinger spoke of an ethical problem associated with the issues raised by Bishop Sgreccia: deception in the field of embryonic stem cell research, of which Advanced Cell Technology's false claim of having discovered an ethical means of conducting such research is an example.

"Examples of exaggeration and misrepresentation on behalf of 'miracle cures' from embryonic stem cells in the political debate are also numerous," said Doerflinger. "Many speeches, news stories, and advertisements, for example, have declared that these cells offer a cure for Alzheimer's disease -- despite the nearly universal scientific consensus that they do not. One expert at the National Institutes of Health explained this discrepancy between political message and scientific fact by commenting: 'to start with, people need a fairy tale.'

"In fact, we do not need a fairy tale. We need the truth. But a fairy tale is what we are sometimes getting -- not only from politicians and entrepreneurs but from respected scientific journals. This must change, or science itself will lose credibility.

"The authentic path to progress lies in a sober and realistic account of the promise and problems of stem cell research and in a commitment to morally sound ways to realize that promise. Many avenues toward the treatment of devastating disease, for example, are showing great promise using non-embryonic stem cells, obtained without harming anyone. These are not miracle cures, but they offer realistic reasons for hope -- a hope that respects the human person and the demands of the truth."

On September 21, the Los Angeles Times ran another front-page story about another breakthrough in stem cell research. The headline: "Adult Stem Cells Help Weakened Hearts." Said the Times story, "using stem cells harvested from patients' own bone marrow, researchers improved cardiac function in heart attack patients months, years -- and even decades -- after the attacks.... Though the researchers are uncertain why the therapy works, the findings are a sign that the long-touted regenerative powers of stem cells may be gradually moving from the laboratory into viable human therapies.... The advantage of bone marrow stem cells is that they are easy to extract and can be collected from the same patients they will be used to treat, avoiding problems of tissue rejection."

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