Re: What are the negatives about Stem Cell Research and Cloning?

Stem Cell Research Question:

You ask an interesting question which is aimed at the negatives about a 
technology that has not been allowed to test itself. Therefore, both the 
positives and negatives are unknown. We can only speculate about them. 
Dreams can lead to positive images of the potential of Stem Cell Research 
and Nightmares can lead to negative images of the same Research. I am an 
optimist. I can be skeptical about my optimism but I see the potential or 
hopes of this research as intrinsically positive. 

It appears that the negatives of this research are conditioned by the 
same kind of dogmatic conservatism that would have prevented the 
development of surgical techniques and vaccines that began in the late 
19th century, use of antibiotics in the mid 20th century, and other 
revolutionary concepts that changed society.

We SHOULD be experimenting with Stem Cells so that the benefits and risks 
can be known. To argue that we shouldn't experiment with Stem Cells is an 
argument to prolong ignorance and deny knowledge. Such a concept might be 
more appropriate to the pre-"Adam & Eve" period of human develpment. That 
Eve encouraged Adam to taste the apple brought knowledge of a nutritious 
fruit that may have been essential to the prolongation of their 
offspring. On the other hand, such knowledge broke the magical 
circumstances they were living in and brought them knowlege of pain, 
shame and indications of their own inadequacies. 

It is important to know both the good and the bad things about something 
new so that the good can be pursued and the bad avoided. 

I think the emphasis on finding negatives about any kind of research is 
fear of the unknown. Such fear also prevents the finding of positivs. 
When Stem Cell research is projected into the political arena, the 
negatives or at least the conjured fears that are presented as negatives 
by politicians are presented to pander to the interests of conservatives 
who have already made up their minds that such activity is negative. The 
same kind of intellectual prejudice that might declare a person who looks 
different to be give assumed attributes that are negative compared to one 
who looks like you or me. Or the same kind of intellectual prejudice that 
might declare a person of one religion somehow of less human value that 
an other person whose religion is different and that difference isn't 
even one in the majority. 

I choose to keep my mind open and to ask the question. What can I learn 
about the positives and negatives of Stem Cell research? What are the 
risks and benefits? From what preliminary research has been conducte, can 
I learn how to maximize the benefits and minimize the risks? And on.

Without evidence of some kind...all any decisionmaker can do is act on 
his own prejudice or the prejudice put forth by the loudest most 
persistent interest group.
 http://www.
georgetown.edu/research/nrcbl/nbac/pubs.html

During the Clinton presidency, the National Bioethics Advisory Commission 
[NBAC] held meetings to discuss what is known about Stem Cell Research 
and what potentials and pitfalls might be associated with it. This 
esteemed body comprised of liberal and conservative scientists, ethicists 
and people of prominence (representing the diversity of opinions in teh 
U.S.) concluded that Stem Cell Research should be pursued. The present 
administration disbanded the NBAC and appointed the President's Council 
on Bioethics which was headed by a socially conservative ethicist and 
comprised of a majority of members holding similar conservative views. It 
in no way represented the diversity of views, scientific or 
philosophical, that exist in the U.S. today.

The rest of my answer speaks in general about stem cell research.

When people talk about stem cells they are referring to cells that are 
not yet committed to being any specific cell type like a liver cell or 
nerve cell. Stem cells retain the ability to become any cell given the 
right environmental signals. 

Most scientists believed until recently that real stem cells only existed 
in embryos. It is now known that some stem cells circulate in the blood 
even in adult individuals but they are difficult to purify many of them 
from blood. They can be isolated them from blood or tissues like bone 
marrow or muscle using negative selection techniques followed by positive 
selection. In negative selection you use reagents that bind cells that 
exhibit markers that indicate differentiation toward a specific cell type 
like a neuronal cell or one of the cells of the blood that produce 
macrophages. All the cells lacking differentiation markers pass through. 
Those that don't get stuck in the filter. Then, with the ones that passed 
through you culture them to see if they express differentiation markers 
or not. The ones that don't may express a marker specific for stem cells. 
Let's say something like CD34 (a code name for a specific monoclonal 
antibody that binds to proteins on stem cells) that is a marker for stem 
cells found in the blood system. However, it is much easier to isolate 
totipotenial stem cells from embryos in early stages of development.

Current knowledge about how to identify stem cells, how to keep them 
alive in culture and reagents produced by scientists interested in stem 
cells have reached a high point that makes using them possible. One way 
to test if this complicated process results in purifying stem cells is to 
take a putative stem cell isolated from blood forming tissues and put it 
into an environment where neuronal cells live. If the blood stem cell 
becomes a nerve cell this is a good argument for your having success in 
isolating a stem cell. 

We use the term embryonal stem cells because each of the cells that 
develop during the first few rounds of division after an egg is 
fertilized by a sperm are totipotential, meaning they have the ability to 
differentiate into any cell type. 

Later in embryonal development the position a cell is in has some role in 
causing it to become differentiated. Embryos of this age would be too old 
to use. However, embryos of 4 - 16 cells could easily yield stem cells 
for research. At this time, the embryo would be just a ball of cells with 
no layers and no shape changes that would cause it to look like any 
living thing.

How can stem cells help us? Now that we know there are such cells as stem 
cells we can think of ways these cells can be used to replace cells that 
have died that our body needs. Fore example, there are pigmented cells in 
the substantia nigra of the brain that make dopamine, a neurotransmitter 
substance. Patients who lack dopamine suffer from Parkinsons disease 
which causes them to tremor and become stiff because their muscles are in 
spasm. Being able to get new dopamine producing cells by injecting stem 
cells into that part of the brain could cure these patients. There are 
many other similar ways stem cells can be used to replace important cells 
that are missing because of disease or harsh treatment like irradiation 
or chemotherapy.

The procedure of isolating stem cells is controversial because the 
success rate in obtaining stem cells is greatest if very early embryos 
are used. To get them sperm and eggs must be put together in tissue 
culture media like what would be done if doctors were assisting a couple 
in becoming pregnant by performing in vitro fertilization. In fact, one 
plan of scientists was to request that fertilized human eggs be used if 
they were left over (i.e. frozen and stored in liquid nitrogen) after the 
couple succeeded in becoming pregnant. Because every fertilized egg has a 
potential of becoming a baby if implanted in a woman's uterus, this 
procedure would require that the people from whom the sperm and egg were 
taken should give their permission or consent for the embryo to be used 
the way the scientist proposes. There are also people, not necessarily 
the man and woman from whom the sperm and eggs came, who would hold moral 
objections to this use of a fertilized egg because it is different from 
what might happen if nature took its course. 

If embryos that are older, old enough to be called fetuses, are used to 
isolate embryonal stem cells that would require that the baby be taken 
through a process of surgical abortion. Some people have moral objections 
to abortion regardless why it is done or whether there are any benefits 
to anyone. The medical scientists feel that with adequate information, 
consent of the man and women and a use that will benefit someone or many 
the procedure may be justified. Hospitals have ethics committees that 
meet to discuss these moral and ethical issues and they would have to 
rule on any proposal a scientist would put forward to do something like 
this. There are also national bodies like the National Bioethics Advisory 
Commission whose members advise the President and National Governing 
bodies about whether it is right and good to do things like this and what 
the risks and benefits are.

There are many misconceptions among the public about this kind of 
research. Some of these come about because people don't know very much 
about the science. Some of these come about because some people with 
specific vested interests (such as anti-abortionists or pro-life people) 
have a way of slanting information so that it appears that to do this 
research you would be killing a baby. This is a misrepresentation that 
serves the interest of that person because what the scientist is working 
on is a ball of cells, it isn't yet an embryo, a fetus or a baby. A lot 
of cell division and growth must take place inside the uterus for a baby 
to be formed. That would not happen in tissue culture. Furthermore, there 
is data that show that 60% of all fertilized eggs die before a baby is 
formed. This is the normal loss of pregnancies that occur in families who 
want to have children. Embryos must get an optimum start in dividing, 
implant in the right part of the uterus, become connected to the mother's 
blood supply via a placenta and a lot more before it can survive. There 
are many things that can go wrong and the embryo monitors its environment 
as it develops. If there are serious genetic or metabolic problems it 
actually kills itself biologically rather than grow up to be defective or 
deformed. 

Other misconceptions are that it is as easy to isolate stem cells from 
grown embryos as it is from newly formed embryos. It is not easy. The 
only totipotential stem cells we know of are those in the early 4-16 cell 
embryo. There is suggestive data that stem cells may exist in older 
embryos and even adults but it is not proven and it certainly cannot 
assure that the promised medical benefits have as much chance of 
happening as it could if early embryos are used. It is also a 
misconception that the so called "cell lines" that already have been 
produced from stored embryos taken from left over in vitro fertilizations 
are sufficient to allow this science to advance. This clearly is not 
true. Tissue culture cell lines fail very commonly. Someone could forget 
to replenish tanks of gases needed to keep the incubators going, power 
failures could cause the cells to get cold and die, and the cells 
themselves could get infected or just fail to thrive. Because cell lines 
often fail 60 to 100 cell lines is not enough.

You ask about my opinion on the point at which a human is 
actually 'alive'. At the point where stem cells are isolated I do not 
feel we are talking about a human or a person. We may be talking about an 
embryo but clearly this embryo only has "potential" for becoming a human. 
Even if it was implanted in a prepared uterus, its chance of developing 
into a human would still be very small. I will speculate that that would 
be a chance of 1/100 to 1/1000. The chance that good knowledge and/or 
cell products that may help scores to hundreds of people will be produced 
from this research is far better. 

Stem cells are alive and contain all the genetic individual needed to 
create a new embryo exactly like the one from which the stem cell is 
removed. Since living stem cells are what will be transplanted in 
therapeutic experiments to replace cells in the substantia nigra of the 
brains of patients with Parkinson’s disease, it is important that they 
remain alive because their activity and ability to differentiate into 
dopamine producing cells depends on their being alive. Discarding 
(destroying) unused embryos from in vitro fertilization guarantees that a 
life is terminated. In contrast, use of embryonal stem cells to cure 
another person’s disease is analogous to Heart Transplantation where the 
tragedy in one life provides a blessing to another and this allows both 
lives to persist in combination.

If you accidentally slice some skin off your finger while cutting 
vegetables the cells in that slice may remain alive for a while also. 
Even if you put this skin into tissue culture it won't develop into a 
fetus but it may stay alive as long as you keep the culture growing. 
Indeed, some cells from a cervical cancer taken from a patient at Johns 
Hopkins named Helen Lane (or something like that) were put into tissue 
culture and these cells are still dividing as HeLa cells that you can buy 
from research supply houses. HeLa cells have been used in scientific 
research for the past 80 years, or so. The cells have reached immortality 
but they are not stem cells and they never became a human.