LIFE DIGEST: New research not harmless, pro-lifers say
- Jan 14, 2008 - comment
Scientists report they have developed embryonic stem cells without destroying human embryos in research they believe should quickly receive federal funding.
Not so fast, pro-life bioethicists are saying.
Advanced Cell Technology (ACT), a Worcester, Mass.-based firm, reported Jan. 10 it had developed five embryonic stem cell lines, or colonies, without killing embryos using a technique sometimes utilized for screening products of in vitro fertilization.
A single cell was removed at the eight-cell stage from each of 43 embryos in the experiments, according to the report. Researchers cultured each of the removed cells in an attempt to develop an embryonic stem cell line, and the embryos, each minus a cell, continued to mature before being frozen.
The technology “could be used to increase the number of stem cell lines available to federal researchers immediately,” said Robert Lanza, head of the research team and ACT’s chief scientific officer. “We could send these cells out to researchers tomorrow. Too many needless deaths continue to occur while this research is being held up. I hope the President will act now and approve these stem cell lines quickly.”
The method, however, is not as harmless as it sounds, opponents of destructive research said.
Nine of the 43 embryos died after cells were removed, said Yuval Levin, director of the Washington-based Ethics and Public Policy Center’s program on bioethics.
“[E]mbryo biopsy does seem to significantly increase the risk of harm to the embryos involved,” Levin wrote in a weblog on National Review Online. “We have seen in the past few months that ethical and uncontroversial ways to get these kinds of cells are not only possible but are being actively and successfully developed. But this particular technique seems like it’s probably not one of them.”
The President’s Council on Bioethics studied such a proposal in 2005 but unanimously concluded it was “ethically unacceptable in humans,” said Levin, who formerly served as the council’s executive director. The technique probably would not qualify for federal funds, he wrote, because the Dickey Amendment bars such grants for research in which human embryos are “knowingly subjected to risk of injury or death greater than that allowed for research on fetuses in utero.”
Bioethicist David Prentice agreed that ACT’s technique falls short of being ethical and said Lanza’s claim needless deaths are occurring is “patently false.”
“Honest embryonic stem cell research authorities have taken pains to point out that any treatments are decades away at best, and that is not because of ethical constraints but because of real problems with embryonic stem cells forming tumors, failing to make and sustain specialized cell types, and transplant rejection,” Prentice said, according to LifeNews.com.
Stem cells are the body’s master cells that can develop into other cells and tissues, giving hope for the development of cures for a variety of diseases and other ailments.
Most pro-lifers oppose embryonic stem cell research because the extraction of the cells from an embryo destroys the tiny human being. Despite their potential, embryonic stem cells have yet to treat any diseases in human beings and have been plagued by the development of tumors in lab animals.
Chinese defy population control policy
China’s notorious population control program is facing apparently increasing resistance within the borders of the world’s most populous country.
Hundreds of thousands of Chinese are refusing to abide by the communist giant’s repressive policy, according to Cybercast News Service (CNS). In Hubei, one of China’s 22 provinces, 93,000 people broke the “one-child” rule in 2007, the province’s family planning commission reported, according to CNS. The news service also reported 500 members were kicked out of the Communist Party of China as a result, citing Xinhua News Agency.
Meanwhile, a Chinese court will hear reportedly for the first time a case against officials who forced abortion upon a mother. A regional court will consider Jin Yani’s suit against county family planning authorities in Hebei province.
In 2000, Jin’s waters had broken nine months into her pregnancy when officials forced her to an abortion center, where her baby girl was given a lethal injection and removed dead two days later, according to The Telegraph of London. She had become pregnant by her fiancé five months before they were married, which occurred when she was 20, the legal minimum for marriage.
“I got on my knees and begged them after they took me to the clinic and said I wanted to give birth to my daughter,” Jin said, The Telegraph reported.
Jin, who was in the hospital for nearly a month and a half with complications from the abortion, has since been unable to conceive, according to the newspaper.
“Our baby will never come back,” she said. “We just hope this kind of thing will never happen again.”
Officials in many parts of China have practiced a forced family planning program for nearly three decades in an attempt to curb the birth rate. A law codifying the policy throughout China went into effect in 2002.
The policy limits couples in urban areas to one child and those in rural areas to two, if the first is a girl. Other exceptions have been made in some provinces, and enforcement of the policy has varied among regions. Penalties for violations of the policy have included fines, arrests and the destruction of homes, as well as forced abortion and sterilization, though such physical coercion has been outlawed by the national government. Infanticide, especially of females, also has been reported.
Couple refuses ‘selective termination,’ has quintuplets
All five tiny Artamkin girls are doing well, thanks to the grace of God, the generosity of a family friend and the refusal of their parents to eliminate any of them while in the womb.
The babies, the daughters of Russian couple Dimitri and Varvara Artamkin, were born 14 weeks prematurely in Oxford, England. They ranged in weight from 1 pound, 13 ounces to 2 pounds, 2 ounces at birth Nov. 10, but they all weighed 3 pounds, 3 ounces as of Dec. 30, according to The Daily Mail of London.
When it was discovered Varvara was pregnant with quintulplets, Russian doctors urged the residents of Moscow to abort two or three of the children, a method labeled “selective termination,” to help the others survive.
“We just said no as soon as they told us,” Dimitri told The Daily Mail. “We prayed to be given children and God granted our prayer – to kill them would be totally against everything we believe.
“We could see all of them on the ultrasounds and each one was a little person. It was not something we even had to discuss.”
The Artamkins, members of the Russian Orthodox Church, were told they should leave Russia to receive better treatment for Varvara and the babies, according to The Mail. Oxford’s John Radcliffe Hospital was recommended to them.
A family friend has paid for the Artamkins’ health care and living costs since they arrived at Oxford in late August.
“We believe God has given them to us as a gift and sent us here, to Britain, to give them the best possible chance,” Dimitri told the newspaper.
High court rejects appeal of Michigan ban
The U.S. Supreme Court denied Jan. 7 a request for it to review a lower court’s ruling against a Michigan ban on partial-birth abortion.
The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati, Ohio, had invalidated the 2004 law because it was overly broad.
The Supreme Court upheld a federal prohibition on partial-birth abortion last year. Michigan pro-life advocates said they hope to enact a ban that more closely resembles the federal version, according to the Detroit Free Press.
Partial-birth abortion is a procedure in which, as typically used, an intact baby is delivered feet first until only the head is left in the birth canal. The doctor pierces the base of the infant’s skull with surgical scissors before inserting a catheter into the opening and suctioning out the brain, killing the baby. The technique provides for easier removal of the baby’s head.
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