071001Scientists Create Scores of Embryos to Harvest Stem Cells
WASHINGTON, July 10 — Breaking a taboo against creating human embryos
expressly for medical experiments, scientists at a Virginia
fertility clinic have mixed donated eggs and sperm to derive
embryonic stem cells, the primordial cells at the crux of a national
debate over federal research funding.
The experiment was conducted at the Jones Institute for Reproductive
Medicine in Norfolk, Va., a privately financed clinic that pioneered
in vitro fertilization in this country.
It is not a major scientific advance, experts say, because stem
cells have already been isolated from frozen embryos that were no
longer wanted by the couples who created them to have children.
But the work will undoubtedly have political ramifications because
it comes as President Bush is weighing whether taxpayers should
finance research on embryonic stem cells. That delicate question
pits patient advocates, who say the cells hold promise for treating
disease, against abortion opponents, who object because the embryos,
which they regard as nascent human life, are destroyed.
Dr. William E. Gibbons, who oversaw the work at the Jones Institute,
said the procedure offered several advantages over using frozen
embryos. Donors were informed of the research goal before the
embryos were created — "the purest way to obtain the highest quality
of informed consent," he said — and received psychological and
medical evaluations. In addition, younger egg donors could be used,
possibly yielding more robust embryos.
He also said several ethics panels had approved the work, but
declined to name the ethicists involved.
"We're not trying to make people mad," he said, noting that the next
step was for the scientists to use the cells to study treatments. He
added, "We opened the door up" to ethical scrutiny.
Abortion opponents denounced the experiment today; one called the
work "ghoulish." The research also drew criticism from some medical
ethicists and leading stem cell researchers who worried that it
would hurt their cause.
"I am a bit perplexed by this," said Dr. John Gearhart, who
researches stem cells at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. "You
will hear none of the scientists who are involved in this work talk
about making embryos to destroy them in any way. We don't think it's
necessary."
Experts in academia and industry said the experiment might be the
first time in the United States that a human embryo had been created
solely for research. The American Society for Reproductive Medicine,
which represents the fertility clinics, has said creating embryos
would be morally justifiable in certain cases.
"It is not inappropriate," said Dr. Michael Soules, an infertility
expert at the University of Washington who is the society's
president. But he added: "Their timing could not have been worse."
Stem cells, extracted from microscopic embryos, have the ability to
grow into any cell or tissue in the human body. Scientists say they
may someday be used to repair or replaced damaged tissue or organs.
But Congress has imposed a ban on federal financing for research
involving human embryos.
The issue before Mr. Bush is whether to make an exception to that
ban so that taxpayers could finance studies on cells derived from
frozen embryos that would otherwise be discarded. The experiment by
the Jones Institute, which is affiliated with the Eastern Virginia
Medical School, would fall outside such an exception, because no
federal money was involved.
The experiment is reported in this month's issue of Fertility &
Sterility, a journal published by the reproductive medicine society.
It was led by Dr. Gary Hodgen, an infertility researcher who is
perhaps best known for using in vitro fertilization to screen
embryos for genetic disease.
For the stem cell experiment, Dr. Hodgen and his colleagues selected
12 women who had already volunteered as egg donors and two men who
had volunteered as sperm donors. The women, who were given hormone
injections to increase their egg production, were paid the
institute's customary fees for egg donation, $1,500 apiece. The men
were paid the customary sperm-donor fee of $50.
The donors have been kept anonymous. Dr. Gibbons said all were told
that their gametes would be used for research, and not to conceive a
child. The experiment resulted in three new variants, or lines, of
stem cells. But Dr. Gibbons said the researchers did not know if the
cells would be of any greater therapeutic benefit than those already
in existence.
"We haven't asked that scientific question," he said.
The scientists retrieved 162 eggs from the donors; when those eggs
were fertilized in the laboratory with the sperm, 110 embryos
resulted. Of these, 50 grew for six days to become blastocysts —
clusters of 100 to 300 cells that, if they could be seen with the
naked eye, would look only like a particle of dust. The researchers
successfully extracted stem cells from 18 blastocysts. Ultimately,
the three new stem cell lines were created.
The Jones Institute began its experiment in 1997, a year before Dr.
James A. Thomson, a developmental biologist at the University of
Wisconsin, made headlines by becoming the first person to isolate
embryonic stem cells.
Dr. Thomson said today that while it was theoretically possible that
newly created embryos would yield superior stem cells, he believes
that "the promise of embryonic stem cell research can be achieved
without having to create embryos."
There are thousands of human embryos in frozen storage at
infertility clinics around the country. In a 1999 report on the
ethics of stem cell research, the National Bioethics Advisory
Commission said that while an embryo should not be accorded the
rights of a full person, it did deserve "respect as a form of human
life." John Robertson, a professor at the University of Texas law
school who heads the reproductive society's ethics committee, said
he was impressed with the care the institute took in thinking about
whether to go forward with the work.
But Patricia A. King, a bioethicist at Georgetown University, said
that in her view, the Jones Institute gave too much consideration to
the rights of the gamete donors, without enough regard for the
embryo.
"I know the argument that you get better embryos," she said. While
she favors the right to abortion, she added, "I think the early
embryo is not nothing. I don't think of it as just tissue. And I
think in terms of keeping a consensus about controversial research,
it is important that science proceed in a way that does the least
damage ethically."
In 1994, Ms. King sat on a panel that examined embryo research for
the National Institutes of Health. The panel concluded, over Ms.
King's objections, that creating embryos for certain experiments
might be justifiable. President Clinton immediately distanced
himself from the report, and the recommendations led to the current
Congressional ban.
Despite the debate over federally financed stem cell research, even
some ardent opponents of abortion say they favor the studies as long
as the embryos used would otherwise be discarded. Senator Orrin
Hatch, the Utah Republican, holds this view, as does Connie Mack,
the former Republican senator from Florida. This is the
justification that Dr. Thomson, of Wisconsin, provides for his own
work.
But abortion opponents said the new research demonstrated flaws in
that line of thinking.
Richard Doerflinger, associate director of the secretariat for
pro-life activities at the United States Conference of Catholic
Bishops, said the work was unconscionable, and "crosses a very
important line in terms of treating life merely as an instrument for
others."
And Douglas Johnson, a spokesman for the National Right to Life
Committee who called the experiment ghoulish, said: "Those who have
advocated destructive embryonic stem cell research have been
assuring people and assuring President Bush that they only want to
kill the so-called leftover embryos. This report shows how phony
those assurances are."
Experts say that, in the future, there may be reason to create human
embryos to derive stem cells — not for research, but for treatment,
so that a person suffering from a disease could be treated with
cells that are an exact genetic match. Such embryos would be created
using cloning technology, an issue that is itself hugely
controversial. Congress is considering a ban on such work.
How, and whether, the Jones Institute experiment will affect Mr.
Bush's decision and the cloning debate remains to be seen. Some
believe it may create a backlash against the work. But a coalition
of patients and scientists in favor of embryonic stem cell research
say it simply illustrates the need for the government to be
involved.
"This research demonstrates the urgent need for federal oversight,"
said Lawrence Soler of the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, a
patient advocacy group that is leading the coalition. The diabetes
group today began a series of television and newspaper ads to
promote the benefits of stem cell research. But, Mr. Soler added,
"Federal oversight will only come hand in hand with federal
funding."
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