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Bioethic information and analysis newsletter

Following Letter

N°81 - September 2006

The announce
On 23 August 2006, Pr Robert Lanza and his Advanced Cell Technology (USA) team announced on the website of the journal Nature they had succeeded in creating human embryonic stem cell lines without destroying the embryos1. Until now, researchers have used 5-day-old embryos at blastocyste stage (composed of hundreds cells), which led the embryos to be destroyed. Pr Lanza’s team worked on embryos of 8 to 10 cells at blastomere stage. Thus, they selected embryos from in vitro fertilization on which they sampled a unique cell, and after culturing these unique cells, they would have created two embryonic stem cell lines. Original embryos have been destroyed but since within the framework of preimplantation diagnosis, one cell is taken from the embryo at blastomere stage before implanting the healthy embryo, the authors of the experiment deducted that the development of embryos is not obligatorily affected by the sampling of a cell at a so early stage. It is just a deduction, this has not been proved.

An ethical practice?
If it is possible not to destroy the embryo, is this technique legitimate?
- This method is based on an in vitro manipulation of an embryo conceived by in vitro fertilization, which causes some ethical problems.
- The implantation in a woman of an embryo "amputated" of a cell represents an experiment contrary to ethics.
- Finally, it is likely that a cell taken from the embryo at this early stage (8 to 10 cells) is totipotent; if it is, by developing, it could give an embryo, and then a child. Then the research performed on this cell would be as less ethical as the one made on an embryo.
The promoter’s objective of this technique is that all States, authorising preimplantation diagnosis but prohibiting research on embryo that generates its destruction, accept the creation of embryonic stem cell lines.  

1. Human embryonic stem cell lines derived from single blastomeres, I. Klimanskaya, Y. Chung, S. Becker, S.J Lu and R. Lanza, in Nature, doi:10.1038 / nature05142, published online 23/08/06.

Fagniez report recommends legalization of research cloning

Mr Fagniez, French MP, published on 27 July 2006 his report “Stem cells and ethical choice” which recommends in particular the legalization of scientific cloning.

To widen research on embryo
First of all the report proposes to authorise on principle and no longer by dispensation, the research on embryonic stem cells. Nevertheless, if Mr. Fagniez acknowledges that "given current scientific knowledge, it is not possible to seriously envisage the development of treatments in the short term”, he stresses that research on embryonic stem cells is indispensable for fundamental research and that it represents “a significant industrial stake, with the possibility to patent inventions”.
Finally, He asks for authorizing the “nuclear transfer” (cloning) because this technique would allow, according to him, obtaining stem cell in quantity, circumventing the immunological barrier and accessing to pathological stem cells.

New definitions
The report recommends to modify the terminology and to replace the term cloning by “somatic nuclear transfer” for more transparency in debates... Mr. Fagniez proposes also to abandon the expression "therapeutic cloning” for "non reproductive cloning" which reflects more the current realities of research and avoids giving false hopes regarding therapeutic perspectives”, he specifies.
He defines an embryo as "the real potential to give birth to a person". Consequently, he thinks we should now only talk about an embryo when it is implanted in a woman's uterus. Questioned as a catholic over the Church teaching which reminds that an embryo does not have to be considered as a material but respected from its conception, Mr Fagniez acknowledges that the “product” of cloning has a humanity but we can guarantee that it will never be a young man. Therefore, it is not an obligation to respect it as if it is an embryo which is intended to come to the world, and within this perspective, research cloning is not a violation of humanity. In his view, if there is transgression, “it is less than an abortion which destroys an embryo whose life has already begun”.

Prime Minister asked Ministers of Health and Research to give him before end of October 2006 “proposals to reinforce information and training on ethical stakes of life science evolution”.

Ferry’s report: authorising “scientific” cloning?

“Authorising scientific cloning? The stakes of research on stem cells”¹, is the subject of the last note of the Conseil d’Analyse de la Société (Society Analysis Council) of which Luc Ferry is the delegate chairman.

Disappointing news about stem cells
The report presents an inventory relatively pessimistic on what can be expected from adult, foetal or embryonic stem cells from in vitro fertilization. Even if the transplantation of cells derived from supernumerary embryos is conceptually attractive, the risk of rejection cannot be excluded and technical problems are still numerous.
Authorising cloning
However, writers do not hesitate to state: “for us it seems to be necessary to amend the law in order to authorize scientific cloning” to develop the fundamental research on embryonic stem cells, the pharmaceutical research and the comprehension of genetic ill patients, expecting, in a further future, a therapeutic application of cloning.

Supplying oocytes
Faced with the risk of exploiting women and the merchandising of oocytes necessary for cloning, the authors of this note point out that, within the framework of their pluripotency, embryonic stem cells are able to give birth to sexual cells; thus there would be a potentially unlimited source of oocytes which would resolve ethical and technical problems related to their availability. Moreover, in France, several thousands of supernumerary oocytes would be available for research; René Frydman, interviewed within the framework of the report, considers there is not oocyte deficit for cognitive research and that “we can put in ethical battle order to obtain sufficient number”, inciting donations or even by taking from cadavers…

Few scientific arguments
As the therapeutic argument cannot be used (as cloning is not therapeutic), R. Frydman resorts to the decisive argument of going ahead: “if we do not resort to these experiments, we do not participate in the scientific trend of our time”. However, Claude Huriet does not misunderstand and condemns the lobbying in favour of research on embryonic cells: “…the non scientific approach consists in saying that adult stem cells will do not lead to anything. These reactions are first ideological. They often obey to economical and financial considerations: international firms, which invest significant amounts in research, are worried about the development of alternative solutions that could modify the market opportunities. (..) The market of stem cells used in regenerative medicine is worth more than $ 15 billions.”

1. Faut-il autoriser le clonage scientifique ? Les enjeux de la recherche sur les cellules souches, Rapport de M. Desnos, P. Menasché, J. Reiffers, suivi de deux entretiens avec C. Huriet et R. Frydman, Documentation Française, sept. 2006.

Rome Convention: the therapeutic efficiency of adult stem cells

Whereas in France above-mentioned reports ask for the legalization of scientific cloning, two conventions were hold on mid-September, one in the French Academy of Sciences in Paris, the other one in Rome at the initiative of the Pontifical Academy for Life, the International Federation of Catholic Medical Associations and the Jérôme Lejeune Foundation. Participants in the Convention of French Academy of Sciences acknowledged that there are few therapeutic hopes with embryonic cells and no hope at short term. Rome Convention presented significantly therapeutic advances with adult stem cells and umbilical cord blood cells.

Therapeutic efficiency proved
These adult stem cells and umbilical cord blood cells are the first and the only ones to prove an indisputably therapeutic efficiency in different forms of infantile leukaemia. Pr McGuckin (Newcastle, GB) obtained from cord blood cells cultures of neural, endothelial and hepatic cells. He referred to the establishment, with NASA, of an innovative system enabling the culture of cord blood cells in 3 dimensions. Pr Stauer (University of Düsseldorf, Germany) revealed promising results: bone marrow stem cells transformed then injected in patients with infarct allowed an improvement in cardiac functions. Pr David Hess (Medical College of Georgia, USA) provided an overview of current neurology trials, on strokes, Parkinson’s disease… carried out either with bone marrow stem cells or growth factors to stimulate endogenous stem cells or neurones. Pr Yamanaka (University of Kyoto, Japan) identified the factors which generate pluripotent stem cells from fibroblasts.

An ethical research
Receiving the participants, Pope Benedict XVI declared that “the research on stem cells deserve to be approved and encouraged when it successfully combines scientific knowledge, state-of-the-art technology and ethics which call for respect of human being at all stages of its existence”. It condemned research on embryonic stem cells which leads to the destruction of human life and over which there is neither compromise nor hesitation.