Using embryonic stem cells without destroying embryos?
We interrupt the most-thrilling recounting of bone marrow transplant details to bring you news of the latest fig leaf. According to the Washington Post, a thin fig leaf is something designed to take the attention from the ethical dilemmas of possibly approving more federal funding of embryonic stem cells by proposing an alternative way to get pluripotency without asking when does life begin?
The most recent previous attempt was a suggestion that cells could be removed from an embryo and used to develop embryonic stem cells without destroying embryos.
Today is the report that fusion of an embryonic cell with a skin cell resulted in reprogramming of the skin cell to its embryonic state. Wonderful! So, at least three immediate problems jump to mind:
- Wasn't one of the two cells an embryonic stem cell? How does fusing it with another cell avoid using embryonic stem cells? The Harvard crew used one acceptable embryonic line and one newly developed line for parallel experiments. I don't know whether both experiments succeeded.
- Human cells with just one small extra chromosome (the 21st) are terribly mixed up. So far, I haven't heard of any successful tetraploid (two times a normal set of chromosomes) humans running around.
- The existing embryonic stem cell lines (about 9-20 left depending on the source you read) are all presumably contaminated with the mouse cells used to grow them. Are these cells still around?
Anyway, it seems like an interesting ploy to deal with the stem cell issue in the public eye. Keep adding alternatives likely to be successful or not and no one will know what to do. Again, the more YOU learn, the better informed your opinion will be.
Your comments are very welcome!!
Marie Godfrey, PhD