embryonic stem cell colonies from the lab of developmental biologist James Thompson
Source: University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Used with permission © University of Wisconsin Board of Regents
South Korean research team led by Professor Hwang Woo-suk has created 11 lines of therapeutic human embryonic stem cells using adult cells of diseased and injured patients
A team of researchers led by Hwang Woo-suk from Seoul National University announced in February 2004 that this team had cloned a human embryo for the first time.
Today they announced that they had successfully created 11 lines of human embryonic stem cells (hESC) derived from donated eggs and the somatic (adult) cells of 11 patients with serious medical conditions.
Given that these stem cells are genetically virtually identical to those of the patients from whom the somatic cells were taken, if these stem cells can be coaxed into becoming the types of cells required for the treatment of each patient's condition, a major breakthrough in medical research and treatment will have been achieved.
Dr. Hwang's team's technical success may heighten debate over the ethics of "therapeutic cloning"
Despite the technical breakthrough represented by this work by Dr. Hwang's team, and in addition to the moral qualms surrounding the harvesting of the vast quantities of eggs for this research, the question of the ethical standing of destroying human embryos to derive these and future human embryonic stem cells remains, and hovers over the entire enterprise, at least in the United States, like a dark cloud.
Intense efforts are now underway to devise methods of deriving human embryonic stem cells while not violating the morality of those who believe that taking the cell mass out of a days-old blastocyst to furnish forth a glass container with a fresh batch of human embryonic stem cells is ethically wrong.
Those interested in learning more about this issue are well-advised to take a look at a white paper entitled
"Alternative Sources of Pluripotent Stem Cells," prepared by a conscientious and thorough, but as-yet-uncredited, author and published in May, 2005, by
the President's Council on Bioethics.
This paper discusses in meticulous detail four ways that may allow for the generation of "a potential source of personalized, immuno-compatible regenerative therapies" without harming any human embryonic stem cells in the process. The upshot of the discussion is that the "dedifferentiation" of adult somatic cells offers the most ethically-attractive path to this result, just so long as the "dedifferentiation" process is not allowed to regress adult cells back beyond the "pluripotent" stage (where they can develop into any type of human cell) to the "totipotent" stage (where they could develop into an entire human being), thereby re-raising the same issues that these alternative methods of creating human embryonic stem cells are intended to resolve.
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