Who is Dr. Jose Cibelli and why should you care? Dr. Jose Cibelli is a co-author on Dr. Hwang's now retracted Science paper where the South Korean claimed to have created cloned human embryos and extracted embryonic stem cells. How does this make him remarkable?
Well, Dr. Cibelli has been a fascination for me since I read Dr. Michael West's book The Immortal Cell. Cibelli was a researcher with West at Advanced Cell Technologies, the Massachusetts company that is trying to win the human cloning race. He is permanently stuck in my mind because he secretly cloned his DNA into a cow egg. When West found out about it, he was understandably upset. Here is the passage where West writes about the exchange on page 174:
"Jose, in those hearings the Congress asked me whether anyone had actually performed nuclear transfer with human cells," I said. "I told them no. The last thing this controversy needs right now is to hear that it has been done, performed in secret, and that the egg cells were not human, they were cow!"
Jose just shrugged his shoulders.
Cibelli just shrugged his shoulders. I asked myself what kind of person can just shrug his shoulders at the creation of a human-cow hybrid? I am not the only one interested in Dr. Cibelli. Diane N. Irving Ph.D. recently wrote about him in this article from LifeIssues.net
What I find illuminating about Cibelli is that he is a veterinarian (D.V.M.), as is Woo Suk Hwang, as is James Thomson, embryonic stem cell pioneer. That interesting fact is almost always left out when the media reports about their achievements. I am in no way diminishing the veterinary field. I have a good friend who is vet. I just doubt that they have had any training in the ethics of research on human beings as an M.D. would have. Maybe Cibelli just shrugged his shoulders because he doesn't see humans as any different than the animals he trained on.
Of course, if you continue reading Dr. West's (also not an M.D.) book on page 174, he describes why he was upset with Cibelli:
I was concerned, though -- not about the [human-cow] embryo, but about the way it had all been done. If the story ever leaked to the media, and was told by someone less than sympathetic to our cause, the result could be disastrous...
We had enough problems in the biotechnology industry raising capital for risky long term projects...The last thing we needed was a scandal that, if handled the wrong way, could measure 9.0 on the Richter scale and put all kinds of burdensome regulations on our work.
It is nice to know that these men who are tinkering with human life do so with the highest of ethical concerns in mind! Notice that West calls therapeutic cloning a "risky long-term project".
Read The Immortal Cell by Dr. Michael West. It is FULL of such gems. Meanwhile, keep your eyes on Dr. Jose Cibelli.
This story from Monsters and Critics is supposed to be funny, but I find it frustrating and sad. It seems that this statement from Bush's State of the Union, has sparked a "craze": "Tonight I ask you to pass legislation to prohibit the mos
Tracked: Feb 03, 15:32
I've been watching Advanced Cell Technology in Massachusetts for a while now. They caught my eye when I read Dr. Michael West's book The Immortal Cell which is a must read. It is a telling look into the mind of a scientist whose hubris is beyond imagina
Tracked: May 08, 09:09
From New Scientist:You don’t have to destroy an embryo to create stem cells for medical research. An American biosciences company has succeeded in deriving the cells from embryos without killing them, raising hopes that President Bush will reconsider his
Tracked: Aug 24, 15:08
Awhile back I wrote an entry on Dr. Jose Cibelli. Read the entry then come back because I have been watching Cibelli as I wrote I would and he has been up to some very interesting research. Now that you know what Cibelli has done, it is interesting to di
Tracked: Sep 09, 10:35