Wednesday, October 5. 2011
The Washington Post story headline says "Scientists report possibly crucial advance in human embryonic stem cell research." The story says upfront:Scientists reported Wednesday that for the first time they used cloning techniques to coax human eggs to generate embryonic stem cells containing the genes of specific patients.
The step, published in the journal Nature, marks a long-sought, potentially pivotal advance toward the goal of creating genetically matched embryonic stem cells that could be used to treat many major diseases.
So it SOUNDS as though the New York scientists were able to clone an embryo and extract embryonic stem cells from it that are an exact match to the patient that could potentially be used to treat that patient. That would be what many people refer to as therapeutic cloning. But reading further we find that that IS NOT what these researchers at the New York Stem Cell Foundation and Columbia University did at all. In traditional cloning, the nucleus of an egg from a female egg donor is removed and replaced with the nucleus of a somatic cell (i.e. skin cell) of the patient to be cloned. The egg is made to think it was fertilized and a cloned embryo is created and allowed to divide. That cloned embryo could be implanted into a uterus and grown into a baby, which is often referred to as reproductive cloning, or torn apart and destroyed for stem cells, which is referred to as therapeutic cloning.This technique of removing the nucleus of the egg and replacing it with the nucleus of another cell has been difficult to accomplish in humans and has not really produced any results. What these researchers did INSTEAD was leave the nucleus of the egg, with its 23 chromosomes, and place the 46 chromosomes of the patient in as well, creating an embryo that has 69 chromosomes. The resulting embryos had the 23 chromosomes of the woman who donated the egg AND the 46 chromosomes of the patient that was "cloned." These embryos grew and then were destroyed for stem cells that have, not 46 chromosomes, but 69 chromosomes, making the harvested cells totally useless for treatment. A fact pointed out only near the end of The Washington Post story:The cells, however, contained an extra set of gene-carrying chromosomes — one set of 23 chromosomes from the egg and the usual two sets of 46 chromosomes from the diabetics who provided their genes. That makes them useless for treating anyone.
These researchers went beyond just cloning human embryos and destroying them. They intentionally created human embryos with triploidy, a genetic condition where a person has 3 copies of each of the 23 chromosomes instead of two. While triploidy is often fatal, some children with triploidy do survive to birth and beyond. I cannot emphasize this enough. These scientists intentionally created human lives that they knew would have a devastating genetic condition and then destroyed them for cells the researchers knew could never be used to treat anyone. This is beyond morally offensive, it is downright evil.The worst part is, there is no need to clone these embryos at all. Scientists can already take a somatic cell like a skin cell and reprogram it back to pluripotency (the intent of therapeutic cloning) without using eggs or creating embryos. The technology is called induced pluripotent stem cells and it has been around for years and is quickly becoming a standard tool in stem cell research. Induced pluripotent stem cell technology does the same thing as therapeutic cloning, makes pluripotent stem cells from cells like skin cells, but does it without creating and destroying any human embryos.It is time that the federal government outlaw cloning in humans, even just for research purposes. This cannot continue. Please contact your congressional representative in the House and in the Senate and beg them to pass a COMPLETE ban on somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) in humans as many other countries have done. Ask them to put a stop to the intentional creation of human life to be used and destroyed for research that will never treat a single patient.
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