STEM CELLS AND CONTROVERSY

Quilting, early career

The Navajo rug in the background was purchased in Arizona, for a lot of money

Not a good investment, it turned out..

 

 

The little news magazine The Week (“all you need to know about everything that matters”) sometimes almost lives up to its preposterous subtitle.    Take this week (May 31, 2013) for instance.  In only about 240 words they succeeded in educating me, rousing my enthusiasm, and pissing me off.  All at once.  The title of the bit is  “Creating human stem cells by cloning”.  You should read it.

Biological background:  When an egg is fertilized to form a “zygote” it is said to be “totipotent”, which means that it can turn into every kind of cell in the organism, as well as the placenta (in mammals) needed to nurture the embryo.  After a few cell divisions these baby cells become "pluripotent":, they still can turn into any cell in the body, but not the placenta.  As they  continue to divide and multiply they gradually lose “potency”, until at last they can only divide and produce more copies of themselves. 

Unless you live on the moon you will have heard of the controversy over “embryonic stem cells”.  These  are cells in the pluripotent stage (I think).  Heretofore they could only be obtained from living embryos.    In theory they can be used to cure all manner of human maladies, specifically those that result from damaged tissues such as neural cells.  Conceivably they could be used to allow paraplegics walk, cure MS – and lots more things besides.  They aren’t yet proven to be the greatest boon to medicine since sterilization, but they could be.

The trouble, of course, is that, until recently they have to be “harvested” from human embryos.  Lots of people object to this moral grounds and, although I disagree, I understand.

Now, however, there seem to be several clever ways out.. 

The first way out was discovered by two Japanese scientists, Shinya Yamanaka and his student, Kazutoshi Takahashi.   These gentlemen succeeded in turning fully developed (“non potent”) cells back into the equivalent of embryonic stem cells by much fiddling, using four proteins that they laboriously tracked down.  They have a lock on the Noel, even before me.  This work was done in 2006, and you probably have heard of it.

The second way out is described  in The Week.  Scientists at the Oregon Health and Science University (Portland) have done the following.  They have taken a skin cell (fully differentiated; not  ”potent”) from an  8-month-old baby and inserted  into an unfertilized egg that has had its nucleus removed.  The two cells “fuse” (I think this is a reporter talking, not a scientist), resulting in a pluripotent cell.  They then proceeded to clone these cells and use them to form various specialized cells – liver, kidney, heart, ski n, etc.  Damn, another group in line ahead of me.

 

I am speculating here, but I think that both of these methods are especially useful in that they produce cells that are "us", from the standpoint of the rest of the body.  Thus, they have no trouble with immune rejection processes - unlike transplants, for instance.

So, why am I pissed?  Well, the Catholic Church objects.  To quote one Cardinal O’Malley, the research is “immoral”.  “Human cloning treats human beings as products, manufactured to order to suit other peoples’ wishes”, says the Cardinal. 

Okay, I don’t like abortion and I understand why so many people treat it as a terrible sin.  I don’t agree, but I understand.  But if a means exists to use a person’s own cells, together with an unfertilized egg  (unfertilized and thus not a “person”), how can any  rational person object?    What tortuous logic exists to conclude  that God would object to science using a person’s own skin cells to repair his severed spinal column?  Other peoples' wishes are not involved.  No scientist or doctor forces health on you; it's up to you.  I don't get it; where is the sin here?

I may get some replies to his.  Stay tuned.