December 2007
Reprogramming Cells: Moving Stem Cell Research Forward without Jeopardizing Women’s Health
By M. L. Tina Stevens and Diane Beeson
Last month, independent research teams from Japan and the University of Wisconsin announced that they had successfully reprogrammed adult skin cells to function as embryonic stem cells (ESCs.) This means that researchers need not engage in cloning for the purpose of deriving ESCs; and, importantly, there’s even less good reason to subject women to the health risks of ovarian hyperstimulation to extract the eggs needed to do the cloning. Further, one of the Wisconsin researchers, James Thompson, who also happens to be one of the pioneers who first derived ESCs, confesses now that he had always been uncomfortable doing ESC research. According to a bioethicist he consulted, the “technological power” of the research was disturbing. What would happen, for example, if someone were to place human stem cells into a rat’s brain? For Thompson, then, reprogramming adult cells came as a relief. Similarly, Ian Wilmut, one of the researchers responsible for cloning the sheep, Dolly, is so taken with cell reprogramming that he intends to give up cloning. “It seems we should all focus our efforts on reprogramming,” said Wilmut. So why does the California Institute of Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) insist that cloning research must continue?
The justification for continuing ESC cloning seems to be that the new technology of cell reprogramming is too new and untried. Reprogrammed cells must prove themselves to be “pluripotent” (i.e. capable of maturing into other cell types) and safe. But truth be told, ESC cloning research is itself new and highly speculative. And its safety is far from certain -- ESCs cause tumors. So why should ESC research – relatively new, highly speculative and of questionable safety -- be held as standard bearer? Could it be that the potentially lucrative link between cloning and human genetic engineering accounts for the reluctance to drop cloning? The fact is that CIRM already has dedicated funds to conduct cloning research and millions of dollars in patenting opportunities are at stake. If CIRM cared more about women’s health it would stop funding cloning research and invest solely in the less socially fraught enterprise of cell reprogramming.
M. L. Tina Stevens, PhD and Diane Beeson, PhD are Co-founders of Alliance for Humane Biotechnology
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