Dana Cody, executive director, LLDF------Bill Lockyer, Attorney General of California
a pair of quagmires
Just as the "misleading" statements (i.e., "lies") of the Bush Administration have dragged the United States into the quagmire of Iraq, the "misleading" statements of Robert Klein and other supporters of Proposition 71 have dragged California into the current quagmire of controversy and contradiction involving embryonic stem cell research.
In both cases, the misleading proponents of a now-failed policy appealed to core values and deeply-felt emotion and backed up their preferred and self-serving policy recommendations with exaggerations and tricky language, which were widely trumpeted and, at the time, largely unchallenged in the mainstream media.
Bush claimed that Saddam Hussein was, essentially, responsible for the tragedy of 9-11 and also was poised to nuke American cities unless he were "taken out" by a military invasion. People as intelligent and well-informed as a majority of the United States Senate were taken in by his false claims and voted to support his deeply-disruptive and counter-productive foreign adventure.
Klein claimed that giving him and his Stanford-based cronies $3 billion (to be paid back with around $6 billion in taxpayer money) would not only lead speedily to miraculous cures for diabetes, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and other terrible diseases, but would (or so he paid a
Stanford medical economist to say) return directly back to the State of California.(and its taxpayers) in the neighborhood of $1 billion in royalty payments on patents developed with these taxpayers' money.
The terrible dilemma now faced by the United States in Iraq (pull out now and leave Iraq on the brink of becoming a failed state and a massive incubator of the very jihadist terrorism the invasion claimed it would destroy or stay and continue the policies (including the use of torture and chemical weapons [e.g. white phosphorus] that were raised as core reasons for deposing Saddam Hussein) that have seriously degraded living conditions in Iraq; set the stage for civil war; led to the death of over 2,000 Americans; and lowered the U.S.'s global reputation to previously-unheard of depths, is worse than the lesser dilemma now faced by California as a result of
its vote to approve Proposition 71 back in November, 2004, but, then, again, the stem cell project initiated by Proposition 71 was, however grandiose, less massive and less expensive, as well as less discussed, than the War in Iraq. Also, it has had less time thus far to unravel and not as many critics have busied themselves examining its shortcomings, more intimate details, and ethical dead-ends.
Touted as a bonanza for suffering patients and their families, a boon to the California economy, and a cash cow for the State treasury, Proposition 71 and its progeny are now mired in a collection of
court actions,
legislative hearings, and
self-serving attempts by the bio-tech sector to renege on the promise of cash for the state that helped propel this initiative to victory at the polls, as industry advocates and their allies argue that letting those who are putting up $6 billion of their money to finance this effort get any money back from it would so discourage the private companies getting that public money that they would refuse to create the life-saving and life-extending treatments and cures promised to voter/taxpayers.
from "$1 billion in revenues for the State of California" to a few "accessible and affordable" crumbs
Politicians, such as California State Senator Deborah Ortiz, and even prominent watchdog/critics of Proposition 71, such as the
Center for Genetics and Society, seem to have
given up any hope of getting any money back for the state and are now focusing on trying to convince the Masters of the Stem Cell at the Independent Citizens' Oversight Committee (ICOC) to provide any, or some of the, eventual Proposition 71-funded stem cell-derived treatments and cures to low-income Californians in an "accessible and affordable" way.
scrambled oocytes
And now, as a result of Pennsylvania-based stem cell researcher
Gerald Schatten's abrupt
withdrawal from his collaboration with leading stem cell pioneer and local (in South Korea) "rock star"
Hwang Woo-suk and his "World Stem Cell Hub" (which the
South Korea government continues to support in spite of that schism) due to some ill-defined and mysterious issue involving
possibly-coerced egg "donations" from Dr. (of veterinary medicine) Hwang's adoring research assistants or possibly-purchased-on-the-black-market human eggs, the can of worms at the heart of the embryonic stem cell research project, the "recruitment" of viable oocytes, or human ova, from human women, has suddenly moved into the spotlight, threatening to scuttle the whole enterprise.
You can find a collection of previous articles from various
Etopia Media News Network web sites about "egg recruitment" and its discontents by clicking on the title of the most recent of those articles, published on November 15, 2005, entitled
"Oocytes hit the fan as Schatten ends cooperation with Hwang over alleged unethical "egg recruitment" for cloning research."
According to an article in the current edition of the
San Francisco Bay Guardian by Tali Woodward entitled
"Scrambled eggs--Could an international stem cell consortium make San Francisco the center of an emerging market in human ova?":
"It's illegal to sell body parts in the United States, but fertility centers almost always pay the women who give up their eggs – they say the money is compensation for time and discomfort and not really a payment for eggs. The going rate in California is about $5,500 per surgery, but some women get far more. At elite universities, student papers are stuffed with ads seeking eggs from accomplished, attractive women presumed to have superior DNA. In a
1999 article in the New Yorker, Rebecca Mead described an ad that appeared throughout the Ivy League offering $50,000 for eggs from a tall and athletic donor who had scored at least 1,400 on the SAT….
"They warned that poor women would be vulnerable to offers of cash reimbursements and pointed out that since each egg used in nuclear transfer has its genetic material sucked out and discarded, the bias toward more educated, privileged women that currently exists among egg banks would evaporate."
a crying need for massive numbers of human eggs from human women
Stanford Professor Hank Greely, in an answer to a question about whether egg recruitment issues might have an adverse impact on the California stem cell project, replied, in a November 15, 2005,
California Politics Today article entitled
"Stanford Law Professor Hank Greely answers some questions about the anti-Proposition 71 lawsuit now pending in Alameda County Superior Court," said:
"No, although it might slow down CIRM-funded research that required fresh eggs, as opposed to the bulk of the hESC [human embryonic stem cell] research, which would work with frozen or fresh embryos. Also, it seems to me far too early to draw any conclusions about what has been really going on, in Korea or with Schatten."
President Bush talks to the nation about stem cell research from Crawford, Texas, Thursday, August 9, 2001. White House Photo by Eric Draper.
However, while the first phase of embryonic stem cell research (currently
ineligible for federal funding by order of President Bush as of August, 2001, which order served to precipitate Proposition 71) "would work with frozen or fresh embryos," and while the culmination of hESC research might be to discover ways to "re-program" adult cells back into their stem cell form without using embryos at all, the more advanced (even if only intermediate) stage in hESC research necessarily involves the creation of cloned human embryos through the process of "somatic cell nuclear transfer," in which human ova are "de-nucleated" (their original nucleus being removed) and then "re-nucleated" with a donor nucleus (eventually that of hESC patients) in order to create an embryo and, following the destruction of that embryo and the siphoning off of its "cell mass," in order to produce customized embryonic stem cells unlikely to be rejected by the original nucleus donor, whose nuclear DNA (but not his or her mitochondrial DNA) would be identical to that in the therapeutic stem cells derived from this process, and followed by further steps (still unknown) taken to generate the particular type of cell (heart, nerve, pancreatic) to be used in his or her treatment.
where the stem cell meets the Petri dish
It is precisely this process that was involved in Dr. Hwang's
breakthrough research intended to create "therapeutic human embryonic stem cells" customized for individual patients and designed to avoid rejection by their own immune systems when (hypothetically) they are put back into the patients, by means of the creation of cloned human embryos through the process of "somatic cell nuclear transfer" (SCNT).
As reported in the May 19, 2005,
Etopia Media Medical News Network article entitled
"Korean team led by Hwang Woo-suk creates 11 lines of human embryonic stem cells from afflicted patients; ethical issues remain,":quoting from a
TIMES ONLINE article entitled
"Race to find new cures speeds up as Britain clones human embryo":
"The Korean group have produced 11 colonies of embryonic stem cells from 31 cloned blastocysts and 185 eggs. Their success rate was 16 times better than last year, when 242 eggs were needed to make a solitary stem cell line."
It was the need for so many fresh oocytes, or human ova, that may have prompted Dr. Hwang, in the view of U.S. observers of his work, at least, to cut ethical corners to get them and, as a result, alienate his chief U.S. collaborator, Dr. Gerald Schatten.
fresh (human) eggs for sale?
eBay, where you can buy or sell almost anything, prohibits the use of its site to
buy or sell human eggs.
Nevertheless, as mentioned above, there is already a flourishing trade (offline and perhaps elsewhere, surreptitiously, online) in one of the most prized human body parts, namely, reproduction-ready human eggs.
As pointed out in Ms. Woodward's
San Francisco Bay Guardian article
"Scrambled eggs--Could an international stem cell consortium make San Francisco the center of an emerging market in human ova?" and in the August 9,.1999,
New Yorker article by Rebecca Mead referenced in it (
"Eggs for Sale," supertitled "Annals of Reproduction," the eggs of high-achieving and/or attractive women fetch quite a high price in the illegal but thriving global human egg market.
As also pointed out in Ms. Woodward's article
Scrambled Eggs, the existence of a research entity entitled to spend $3 billion to further the type of bio-medical research (hESC) which would seem to absolutely require mass numbers of human oocytes in order to carry on its work cannot help but generate financial, social, or even political pressure on cash-strapped women to put their eggs on the market and their health in jeopardy.
a separate-but-related way in which bio-medicine run amok endangers the health of women for profit
a comparison of blood-sucking vampires and egg-sucking bio-medical research institutions
Vampires and vampirism are such compelling literary and cinematic subjects, at least in part, because of the simultaneous abhorrence and fascination with which many people view the idea of a creature who lives by consuming the life force of others, in this case through sucking their blood.
It can be argued, however, that even while law and custom seem to pose a significant barrier to actually sustaining oneself by consuming the non-renewable body parts of another person (or event their quite renewable blood), the emerging field of embryonic stem cell research provides a complex but cunning work-around for this problem.
And like mythical vampirism, it opens the door to eternal life, and even eternal youth.
The degenerative diseases, and hence, aging itself, which Proposition 71 purports to treat (or cure) through as-yet-unrealized discoveries involving human embryonic stem cells all derive, in one way or another, from the unfortunate tendency of living cells to reproduce increasingly imperfectly over time ("things fall apart, the center [of the cell] cannot hold").
The promise of human embryonic stem cell research is that by creating fresh new stem cells, capable of producing nice new fresh healthy cells of any type, and ones that won't set off the immune alarm in the bodies into which they are introduced, it will be possible to replace old, dysfunctional insulin-producing cells, heart tissue, and brain cells, among others, with fresh, fully-functional ones.
The human body is, in a way, a "standing wave," the parts of which may be sloughed off, wear out, or die, but because they are replaced by new skin, blood, or other cells, the pattern that is uniquely each one of us remains, and life goes on.
The problem that human embryonic stem cell research is designed to address is how to keep that process going beyond what "naturally" occurs, how to "regenerate" fresh new brain, heart, and insulin-producing cells in order to replace those damaged and no longer functioning, due to Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, diabetes or other ravaging degenerations of the body.
Or due to the aging process itself, whatever it really is, or turns out to be.
Discovering a way to replace malfunctioning brain, heart, and insulin-producing cells in order to treat degenerative diseases also means finding a means to replace slightly sub-optimally-functioning brain cells, heart cells, skin cells and the organs they comprise with optimal versions of almost identical cells.
This would allow for the constant replenishment of every human organ and, thereby, the potential immortalization of the body (and mind) of the "patient" or more broadly, the "recipient" of these replenishing infusions of stem cell-generated vitality.
Not just the replenishment and maintenance but the augmentation and, if not the "perfection," certainly the constant improvement of the cell population, organs, systems, body, mind, and performance of the recipient person, as stem-cell and related genomic research yield increasingly precise and powerful understanding and means to control the structure and properties of the transplanted cells.
Some opponents of human cloning do so on the basis that that technology could be used to create replicas of patients who might then be nurtured only until their organs would be ripped out to be used to rejuvenate their "owners" aging and/or deteriorating body. This scenario provides the plot of (look away now if you don't want to know this) plot of
The Island, a sci-fi flick where human clones played by Scarlett Johansen and Ewan McGregor wake up to this reality and struggle thrillingly to avoid being chopped up.
Clearly, a system or society such as that portrayed in this fictional entertainment, where the rich and sick/old prey upon the poor healthy/young clones that they've special ordered is one based on what can best be described as a form of vampirism, and, as such, is both thrilling and disgusting.
Wherein then, lies the ethical distinction between that that fictional society based on "organ vampirism" and one in which, rather than sucking out a young clone's organs and having it transplanted into yourself at Cedars-Sinai or UCLA Medical Center, this procedure regrettably requiring the demise of the clone, poor women at home and abroad "volunteer" to have their oocytes sucked out of them, after undergoing dangerous procedures that will at least make them nauseous and, regrettably, possibly kill them?
Can you say "cellular vampirism"?
details of drug-induced "egg recruitment"
For details of the "egg harvesting" procedures in place in 1999 and still today, click
here.
"bond anticipation notes"
In an article published in today's
San Francisco Chronicle, which briefly covers today's proceedings in the Proposition 71 "consolidated reverse validation action"/constitutionality hearing at the Hayward Hall of Justice which are reported on in depth in the
California Politics Today article entitled
"Attorneys from both sides talk about today's hearing on Proposition 71's constitutionality at the Hayward Hall of Justice in Alameda County Superior Court," Paul Elias, the Associated Press' top biotechnology writer, reports, in that article's final paragraph:
"Stem cell agency chairman Robert Klein said outside court Thursday that he's negotiating with charitable organizations and wealthy benefactors to loan the agency up to $50 million until the lawsuits are resolved."
For more about the possible sale of "bond anticipation notes" to "charitable organizations and wealthy benefactors" who would see their "loans" converted to "gifts" if the ICOC is eventually prevented from raising and spending its $3 billion in general revenue bonds, see
"No filings yet from ICOC for any bond, or bond anticipation note, sales" (August 26, 2005) and
"ICOC Chair Robert Klein offers incomplete and misleading comments about human cloning, stem cell research, and bond anticipation notes" (August 25, 2005).
another promise unlikely to be kept
Geoff Joyce, Senior Economist, RAND Corporation
For an interview with a leading medical economist at the RAND Corporation in Santa Monica about the likelihood that another promise made by Proposition 71 proponents during the run-up to the November 2, 2004, election where it was approved, that discoveries financed with the $3 billion in general revenue bonds (to be paid back with around $6 billion in taxpayer funds) authorized by Proposition 71 would significantly lower health care costs to the State and people of California, click on the title of the September 28, 2005,
California Politics Today article entitled
"Geoff Joyce, senior economist at RAND Corporation, says of bio-medical breakthroughs, including ones funded by Proposition 71, "generally…many of these technologies are wonderful but they are not cost-reducing."
public finance/bond sale structuring for fun and (personal) profit
(click on photo to activate video clip)
Robert Klein, ICOC Chair, urges opposition to anti-human chimera legislation
as if all this weren't enough
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