THE NATION’S NEWSPAPER
Collegiate
Case
Study
www.usatodaycollege.com
The real face of
cloning
By Tim Friend
1-4
Group's claim of cloned
human unleashes
'ground zero' debate
By Tim Friend
5-6
Stem-cell debate splits
in two
By Dan Vergano
HS2003-02
7-9
Stanford plans
controversial
stem-cell work
The Science and Ethics
of Cloning
While the announcement of a group unaffiliated with a major research
institution touched off a flurry of controversy with their December 2002
announcement of a successful human cloning, there has been little
subsequent proof to back the claim. Nonetheless, scientists discussing the
issue note that the reality of cloning, in direct contrast with the ease of its
portrayal in science fiction movies, is likely to foster a string of casualties
associated with scientific attempts. In a more modest branch of genetic
research, scientists are using stem cells for a variety of experimental cures,
although the debate over embryonic vs. adult cells remains unresolved.
While critics are calling for a complete ban on cloning, scientists see the
principled application as medically beneficial. This case study explores
medical myths and realities associated with the debate, and elucidates the
primary areas of concern.
Cover Story
By Elizabeth Wiese
10
Discussion Questions
and Future Implications
11
USA TODAY Snapshots®
Most Americans oppose human cloning
If human cloning becomes possible:
The real
face of
CLONING
By Tim Friend
USA TODAY
89% of Americans
say it should
not be allowed
By Mike Tsukamoto, USA TODAY
9%
say it should
be allowed
2%
say they
have no
opinion
Source: Gallup Poll of 1,012 adults May 10-14.
Margin of error: ±3 percentage points
What will the world look like if renegade
scientists persist in their experiments to
clone a human? Experts say that it won't
be pretty -- and that the era of human
cloning might not last long.
By William Risser and Sam Ward, USA TODAY
Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved.
AS SEEN IN USA TODAY NEWS SECTION, FRIDAY THROUGH SUNDAY, JANUARY 17-19, 2003, PAGE 1A
The Raelians, a religious group that believes space aliens
created life on Earth, grabbed headlines with their day-afterChristmas claim that they had helped bring the first human
clone into the world. That claim remains unproven, and most
experts consider it a hoax.
Lanza says techniques are improving for purposes of
medical research but not enough for reliably creating
healthy babies.
But as the dust settles from the carnival atmosphere of the
past few weeks, other claims that clones are coming remain.
The day of the clone may still be at hand.
If cloned babies start showing up in hospital nurseries, scientists predict that they will be hooked up to respirators
because their hearts and lungs will have been deformed.
Feeding tubes also might be necessary for infants who have
brain damage and cannot suckle. Others might have extensive physical abnormalities. Even those born with a normal
appearance probably would experience epilepsy, autism or
behavioral abnormalities.
"People will keep claiming
to have created cloned
babies and eventually
someone will succeed, but
at what cost? A lot of
damaged children and
disappointed parents."
- Bioethicist
Thomas Murray
"It is absolutely
inevitable that
groups are going
to try to clone a
human being. But
they are going to
create a lot of
dead and dying
babies along the
way," says
bioethicist
Thomas Murray,
president of the
Hastings Center,
a bioethics think
tank in Garrison,
N.Y.
Lost in the hype surrounding claims of human cloning are
hard scientific facts that show cloning animals is fraught with
perils both before and after birth. Scientists are able to clone
sheep, cattle, pigs, goats and mice, but not without significant
errors that commonly result in oversized fetuses, placental
defects, lung, kidney and cardiovascular problems, brain
abnormalities, immune dysfunction and severe postnatal
weight gain.
Efforts to clone primates have proven even more difficult
and might be impossible with current methods, scientists
say. Of particular concern are embryos that appear normal
and healthy but at the genetic level are a "gallery of horrors,"
says Tanja Dominko, who conducted primate cloning
research at the Oregon Regional Primate Research Center in
Beaverton.
Advanced Cell Technology of Worcester, Mass., is the only
scientific group that has acknowledged making cloned
human embryos for research purposes. ACT medical director
Robert Lanza says he hopes one day to create cures for diseases such as Alzheimer's based on cells harvested from
cloned embryos. But his team has found that cloning human
embryos is no simple task. Only one has reached the six-cell
stage, and it had significant genetic abnormalities.
'Devastating birth defects'
"All of the data on animal cloning demonstrates exceptionally high rates of fetal loss, abortion (and) neonatal deaths,
and many cloned animals have devastating birth defects,"
says Gerald Schatten, vice chairman of obstetrics, gynecology
and reproductive science at the University of Pittsburgh
School of Medicine.
"When people are working with farm animals or laboratory
mice and there is a newborn that is suffering, veterinarians
can euthanize the animal. Are people who are attempting to
clone humans going to euthanize suffering children?"
Two fertility specialists, Severino Antinori of Rome and
Panos Zavos of Lexington, Ky., have announced independent
efforts to clone humans. Antinori announced in March that a
clone would be born around January. Zavos was to have
begun his cloning efforts last fall. Antinori, Zavos and
Brigitte Boisselier of Clonaid, the Raelian company that
claims to have brought two cloned babies into the world,
have made dozens of television appearances, and to the
chagrin of some critics, have acquired an air of legitimacy
by being invited to testify before Congress and the National
Academy of Sciences.
Yet none of these people has provided evidence of the ability to actually clone a human safely, Murray says. When asked
how they plan to avoid the types of deformities found in
cloned animals, all three repeatedly have stated that the scientists who clone animals don't know what they are doing.
"If you are doing it the way of the animal cloners, yes,
there is a risk," Zavos told USA TODAY in August when he
introduced an anonymous couple who said they plan to
have a cloned baby. "We have the science of maternal
fetal medicine, and we will be monitoring the pregnancies
very carefully."
Many of the birth defects observed in cloned animals are
similar to the gross physical deformities and mental retarda-
Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved.
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Cloning Case Study
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Skeptical scientists point to dangers
of a genetic 'gallery of horrors'
tion found in rare genetic disorders caused by a phenomenon
known as genetic imprinting, says Arthur Beaudet, professor
of genetics at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston.
These disorders arise when the genes of the mother and
father do not align for embryonic development as
nature intended.
Here's how imprinting occurs: At the moment of natural
conception, the 30,000 genes in the DNA of the father must
combine in the fertilized egg with the 30,000 genes of the
mother. Then there are two copies of every gene, and together they form a master program to build an embryo cell by
cell, sometimes with genes from the father turned off to let
the mother's genes do the work, and other times the mother's genes stay silent to let the father's do their part.
Imprinting disorders arise when either the mother's or
father's genes imprint themselves on the program in places
where they should have been minding their own business -like mom and dad talking at the same time rather than taking turns. In other words, both copies of a gene are turned on
when one of them should be silent, and the result is a genetic
error that might cause a developmental disorder.
Perils of reprogramming
In cloning, a scientist plucks the DNA containing the copies
of all of the mother and father's genes from a fully formed
adult cell and inserts it into an egg that has been stripped of
its own nucleus of genes. Because there is no conception to
spark the creation of an embryo, scientists must somehow
reprogram that adult DNA back to the brink of embryonic
development as though fertilization had just occurred.
Reprogramming is perhaps the most active area of cloning
research, but scientists do not know how to do it. So they
must insert the DNA from adult cells into dozens or even
hundreds of eggs, give a little jolt of electricity to stimulate
the cell to divide and keep their fingers crossed. Most scientists agree that only about 1% to 2% of these attempts in animals lead to a live birth. Of live births, only about 20% appear
to be normal.
The prevalence of genetic disorders in cloned animals and
the lack of knowledge about reprogramming are the primary
reasons the scientists who work on cloning and issues of
reprogramming say they are skeptical that anyone can clone
a human without genetic errors, Beaudet and others say.
"Just from the scientific safety considerations alone, this is
completely appalling," says Schatten, who is leading efforts
to clone rhesus monkeys. These efforts have been unsuccessful. "Those of us actively engaged in research cloning have
invested years and years of dedicated efforts and have
encountered enormous difficulties in generating a single"
cloned embryo.
Congress introduced another bill Jan. 8 to make human
cloning in the USA illegal. But it has been unable to pass a
number of anti-cloning bills because the legislation has
included a ban on research using cloning techniques to
create stem cells.
Researchers want to create tiny pre-embryos -- a ball of
cells that has not yet taken any form -- as sources of stem
cells; this type of research is called therapeutic cloning.
Supporters believe these primordial stem cells hold promise
for treating a wide range of disorders including Alzheimer's,
cancer and diabetes. They say they fear that the bath water
will be thrown out with the baby and that Congress will ban
embryonic stem cell research.
Opponents say it is immoral to use human embryos for
research. Obtaining stem cells means destroying the embryo,
which many people consider the same as abortion.
But some experts believe the real stake in the heart of
human cloning will come the first time angry parents sue a
laboratory or a doctor over a genetically damaged cloned
child. A strong case for malpractice could be made. And the
same arguments that scientists are making today against
human cloning will become fodder for expert witnesses.
"People will forgive a health care provider for making a
mistake as long as enough basic information was provided in
advance, and the alternative to a treatment was death or a
miserable life," says Scott McMillen of McMillen, Reinhart
and Voght, malpractice attorneys in Orlando. "But in cloning
we're not trying to save a life. We're trying to create a life
from scratch, and to do that with negligence would be
actionable. And ultimately it is a jury that will decide
whether there was negligence."
Defense attorneys may be hard-pressed to find a sympathetic jury. A USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup PollJan. 3-5 shows 86%
of Americans say human cloning should be illegal.
Boisselier says the parents of the supposedly cloned children created by Clonaid all have "agreed to share the risk."
Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved.
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Cloning Case Study
AS SEEN IN USA TODAY NEWS SECTION, FRIDAY THROUGH SUNDAY, JANUARY 17-19, 2003, PAGE 1A
But Murray says parents can change their minds and sue, and
the people who are so eager to clone humans should recall
the Jesse Gelsinger case.
denying coverage if an infant is born as the result of a
procedure that mainstream science says is likely to cause
birth defects.
Headed to the witness stand
At the moment, however, insurers believe they might be
obligated to pay for costs. "Obviously this is a new area," says
Susan Pisano of the American Association of Health Plans,
which represents the managed-care community.
"Traditionally whether or not there has been some technology or procedure that has led to a pregnancy, the baby has
been covered as a dependent. It is important to look at the
safety aspects of this.
Gelsinger died Sept. 17, 1999, at age 18, four days after
entering a gene-therapy experiment at the University of
Pennsylvania to treat his inherited liver disorder. At first,
Gelsinger's parents were sympathetic to the scientists. But as
information emerged about risks and side effects that
Gelsinger and his parents were never told about, they sued
the hospital and everyone involved in the experiment.
Gelsinger's parents stated in the lawsuit that risks were
downplayed and that the doctors were negligent in performing the experiment. The university settled the suit for an
undisclosed amount.
McMillen says human cloning raises key questions of
informed consent. Boisselier and Zavos have testified before
Congress that human cloning in their hands is not as risky as
animal cloning and that they are unlikely to create damaged
babies. In a trial, those comments could come back to haunt
them as they face cloning experts as expert witnesses
for plaintiffs.
"I expect that the animal cloners who have said that it is too
soon to clone humans would rally to the witness stand,"
McMillen says.
What is unknown is whether parents can recover anything
from a group that has few assets, whether cloners that perform procedures outside the USA are liable or whether the
cloners will have malpractice insurance.
What is certain is that parents of cloned children who have
genetic defects will face high medical costs. Imprinting disorders that cause mental retardation and physical abnormalities carry medical costs of $1 million to $20 million over the
lifetime of the child, says Beaudet, who treats children with
imprinting disorders.
"There are many longer-term issues to be considered, such
as: If we in fact develop this human cloning technology, who
will have access to it, and who will pay for the procedures,
and who will pay for the medical care if these children are
born with medical defects?" asks Mark Rothstein, director of
the Institute for Bioethics, Health Policy and Law at the
University of Louisville.
Experts in the health insurance industry say the questions
have not been addressed on whether infants born with
genetic disorders caused by cloning would or should be covered. But legal experts say insurers might be justified in
"But I also think discussions about these new developments
need to be broad. This is an issue for all of society."
Several insurance companies declined to comment on the
record. But all suggested that unless changes are made to
specifically exclude cloned babies, the babies would be covered under group health plans. Individual plans could exclude
a high-risk clone.
Murray says he is concerned for the people who would
want to have themselves cloned. Boisselier, Zavos and
Antinori have said the couples seeking their business are
motivated by the desire to have a child who has their genes
or to re-create a child who died.
'Narcissism run wild'
Murray, whose daughter was murdered in 2000, says it
reflects "despair, grief and narcissism run wild. These aren't
wicked motives, but trying to spare yourself the grief reflects
a deep misunderstanding. Grief doesn't work that way, and
cloning will not bring back a child."
These parents must realize that a clone has a good chance
of being brain-damaged. A narcissist might end up with a
mentally retarded version of himself or herself.
Just a few years ago, human cloning appeared to be something that would be left to science fiction while mainstream
scientists pursued cloning techniques to create medical therapies. Scientists seem baffled that two fertility specialists and
the Raelians have commandeered the debate with unsubstantiated claims.
Murray says it is tragic.
"People will keep claiming to have created cloned babies,
and eventually someone will succeed, but at what cost? A lot
of damaged children and disappointed parents.
"That is the very sad baggage that cloning will carry into
the world."
Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved.
Page 4
AS SEEN IN USA TODAY LIFE SECTION, MONDAY, DECEMBER 30, 2002, PAGE 6D
Group's claim of cloned human
unleashes 'ground zero' debate
Scientists are skeptical, but sect promises proof
By Tim Friend
USA TODAY
human cloning should not be attempted until scientists better understand what they are doing; success appeared to be
based more on luck than on predictable techniques.
Regardless of the truth of last week's claim by the Raelian
religious sect that it has created the first cloned human,
experts say human cloning is inevitable. And based on promises by other would-be cloners, 2003 could become the year
of the clone.
Brigitte Boisselier, a bishop of the Raelians and managing
director of a Raelian company called Clonaid, announced the
birth of "Eve," the clone of a 31-year-old American woman,
on Friday. The Raelians believe extraterrestrials created life
on Earth. Boisselier said Sunday that the baby and its parents
would arrive today in the USA.
Boisselier said that another four clones would be born in
January or February and that two are the clones of dead children. She promised to provide proof of baby Eve's clone pedigree in nine to 10 days. Scientists and experts on cloning
expressed immediate skepticism.
"I'm skeptical in the extreme," says Arthur Caplan, director
of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania.
But the truth aside, Caplan is against cloning for one simple
reason: "It's not safe, so to use the technology right now
is dangerous."
But at least two other groups also claim to have clones
incubating in women's wombs at secret locations outside the
USA. One of those births could come as early as January, the
group says.
The human cloning train left the station on Aug. 7, 2001,
when the National Academy of Sciences invited Boisselier
and two controversial fertility specialists to a conference in
Washington, D.C. The academy, regarded as the most prestigious scientific body in the USA, held the conference to
examine scientific data from animal cloning experiments and
to determine whether enough progress had been made to
make human cloning feasible.
It concluded that the error rate in animal experiments was
too high and would result in significant losses of embryos,
high rates of miscarriage and potentially ghastly birth defects
in clones that are born. Ethics aside, the academy stated that
Boisselier, along with Severino Antinori, a fertility specialist
in Rome, and Panos Zavos, a fertility specialist in Lexington,
Ky., had publicly stated their intentions to clone humans. All
had been invited to testify on numerous occasions before
Congress. The academy invited them to the conference to
explain why they believed human cloning would be safe and
why they wanted to do it at all.
All three stated that none of the scientists conducting animal cloning knew what he was doing and that they themselves would not make the same mistakes.
More clones promised
Antinori announced officially last March at a conference of
fertility specialists in the United Arab Emirates that he would
produce a human clone by January 2003. Zavos announced
last August that he would begin cloning procedures with an
infertile American couple sometime in the fall. Boisselier,
Antinori and Zavos all have received wide publicity regarding
their claims and have not been required to provide any actual
proof of their abilities.
Proof or not, since Boisselier's announcement Friday, ethicists have begun sounding the alarms.
"Cloning is ground zero for the clash between reproductive
technology and ethics," says Robert Parham, executive director of the Baptist Center for Ethics in Nashville.
"Unfortunately, the crazy science of Clonaid presses the real
issue off the page of public discernment. The real issue is:
How do we think morally about a topic where science has
outstripped our traditional ethics?"
Many scientists have cast doubt on Clonaid's scientific
expertise. But others say creating a clone is technically not
that difficult. All that is needed is essentially the same setup
as an in vitro fertilization clinic. The infrastructure for human
cloning already is in place.
"Because of in vitro fertilization clinics, there's so much going
on in terms of collecting eggs, collecting sperm, fertilizing
Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved.
Page 5
Cloning Case Study
AS SEEN IN USA TODAY LIFE SECTION, MONDAY, DECEMBER 30, 2002, PAGE 6D
eggs and culturing embryos, that in fact a
lot of the technical problems you'd think
you'd have with humans probably don't
exist," says James Murray, a professor of
animal science at the University of
California-Davis.
Egg for egg, more work has been done and
more has been learned about handling
human embryos in clinics than anyone has
accomplished with animal embryos.
Techniques developed for cloning Dolly the
sheep -- the first mammal clone on record
-- have been widely published and available since 1997.
To create a baby via in vitro fertilization, a
technician inserts DNA from sperm into an
egg, where it is mixed with the egg's DNA.
To make a clone, DNA from a skin cell or
any cell in the body is inserted into an egg
that has been stripped of most of its own
DNA. Anyone can be trained to perform
either procedure.
The price of mistakes
How scientists can verify a cloning claim
A simple paternity test, which provides DNA “fingerprints” for comparison between
two people, is the most likely method to be used. DNA fingerprinting also is used to
match DNA evidence from a crime scene with a suspect.
Blood will be drawn from the mother and baby and DNA extracted.
Adenine
Cytosine
DNA is composed of four building blocks: adenine, thymine, cytosine
and guanine, which are represented by the letters A, T, C and G. These
letters make up the genetic code of everyone’s DNA. An A always pairs
with a T, and a C with a G. These are called base pairs. The DNA contains
3 billion base pairs.
Base pair
Thymine
Most of the code provides instructions
for making proteins. That coding is the
same in everyone. But 0.1%, about 3
million base pairs, occur randomly
and are unique to an individual.
Guanine
Comparison of these
random segments, known
as non-coding sequences,
should show they are
identical in the mother and
her baby, if that baby is
really a clone.
Challenges are large
Cloning research in different
animal species suggests that
even when many embryos are
produced, the number of live
births is few:
Cloned embryos produced
Live births
Non-coding
sequences
3,156
Sheep
50
8,600
Cattle
111
Mice
Monkeys
7,613
54
78
2
The real issue is how many mistakes a
cloner is willing to accept to generate a single healthy living clone. The problem lies with the DNA that
has been taken from a mature adult cell that will make the
clone. Genes in adult DNA are programmed for the daily
activities of adult living, but those necessary for instructing
an embryo to develop and become a fetus have been shut
down since embryonic development.
Sources: USA TODAY research, Scientific and Medical Aspects of Human Reproductive Cloning, National Academies Press, Associated Press
The people that clone animals have discovered that maybe
three to six out of 100 attempts at making a clone actually
proceed to a live birth, a rate that suggests a lot of luck. The
hottest area of cloning research is in "reprogramming" adult
DNA for embryonic development. The biotech industry is
pouring tens of millions of dollars into figuring this out.
Scientists such as Mark Westhusin, veterinarian and director
of the reproductive sciences laboratory at Texas A&M, and
Murray have spent years learning the special techniques
needed to get these microscopic clusters of cells to grow and
divide. Westhusin works with cattle; Murray with goats.
Cloning pioneer Ian Wilmut has established an institute for
studying reprogramming in Scotland.
Boisselier said that Clonaid achieved 10 pregnancies and that
five miscarried within three weeks. The Raelians have stated
that they have 50 female volunteers willing to carry cloned
By Dave Merrill, USA TODAY
embryos. The group claims 55,000 members and advertises a
business in buying and selling human eggs on the Clonaid
Web site. Scientists say that if the group created hundreds of
embryos and implanted those that were viable in enough
women, they could generate a living clone. What remains to
be seen, if the baby is confirmed to be a clone, is whether it
remains healthy. Some of the disorders in animals do not
appear until months or several years after birth.
Some scientists have challenged the claim based on the oddity of the Raelian movement. Its founder Rael, formerly known
as Claude Vorilhon, says he was taken aboard a UFO in 1973
and told that humans are a race of clones of space aliens.
On April 24, Clonaid announced in a press release on the Web
(www.clonaid.com) that "we have contacted Count Dracula
and hope to include him on our list of clients very soon."
There was no mention Friday whether Count Dracula, whom
Clonaid describes as a living noble descendant of the original,
had signed an agreement with Clonaid.
Last month, Rael announced his intention to have his body
skinned and vitrified -- turned to glass -- after he dies and to
be publicly displayed naked.
Contributing: Elizabeth Weise, Janet Kornblum
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Page 6
AS SEEN IN USA TODAY LIFE SECTION, THURSDAY, APRIL 4, 2002, PAGE 8D
Stem-cell debate splits in two
The adult vs. embryonic
controversy rages on
By Dan Vergano
USA TODAY
How to transplant a patient’s stem cells
Medical researchers foresee numerous ways to replace failing or damaged organs with stem cells. Two
ways start with a patient’s own stem cells to avoid tissue rejection.
Embryonic stem cells: During fetal development, these
cells give rise to virtually every type of tissue in the human body.
1
Cloning a patient’s cells
may create an embryo. The
United States is considering
banning cloning.
Within two weeks, stem cells will
speed into Kathy Duffey's bloodstream and begin to rebuild her
defective immune system.
Adult stem cells: In life, the
body uses these more specialized
cells to rebuild lost tissues.
1
Drugs trigger the release
of adult stem cells from
bone marrow into the
bloodstream.
2
A human embryo
at five days of
development after
fertilization is called a
blastocyst. It is a ball of
cells the size of a
pinhead.
2
Doctors “harvest”
the stem cells from the
bloodstream.
3
At Day 6, the inner stem
cell mass begins to form.
These embryonic stem cells
give rise to virtually all cells
of the human body. If
implanted in a womb, the
embryo could potentially
transform into a fetus.
Duffey, 38, from Prescott Valley,
Ariz., knows exactly what she wants
from this experimental treatment at
medicine's frontier.
4
Stem cells are extracted from
the blastocyst and put into
cultures. The process destroys the
embryo, raising ethical concerns.
"In the best case, there will be no
symptoms at all," she says. "To me,
that's a cure."
For 20 years an inflammatory
bowel syndrome, Crohn's disease,
has afflicted her. At times her weight
dropped to a life-threatening 75
pounds. Nothing has helped her case
of the disease, a syndrome that
affects more than 700,000 people
nationwide. "It's hard to remember a
time when I could stand up straight
without pain," she says.
For Duffey's treatment, doctors at
Chicago's Northwestern Memorial
Hospital will destroy her defective
immune system, which has turned
on her intestines, and then build a
new one with the help of her own
stem cells. Duffey consented to the
procedure only when she learned
doctors would use her own adult
stem cells, not those from a human
embryo. "To me, that (human
embryo) is another life," she says.
Her conflict mirrors the national
one, which grabs center stage next
week when the U.S. Senate is expect-
3
Stem cells are
put into culture.
4
To treat diseases of complex
organs, such as diabetes or
Alzheimer’s, stem cell biologists
may have to first “reprogram” the
cells into becoming, essentially,
embryonic stem cells.
Brain
5
5
Scientists say they can
trigger stem cells to grow
into many different types of
tissues, including heart cells
that beat in a petri dish.
Heart
6
The goal of stem cell research
is to one day use them as
sources of replacement cells
to treat diseases such as heart
failure, Alzheimer’s,
Parkinson’s, diabetes, spinal
injuries and cancer.
Brain
Heart
For other diseases,
such as multiple
sclerosis and some
cancers, experimental
re-infusions of adult
stem cells right now
can replace diseased
immune or blood cells
wiped out during
treatment. Some
researchers think adult
stem cells are flexible
enough to turn into
even more tissues
without first
“reprogramming”
them, perhaps
removing the need for
embryonic stem cells.
Heart
Liver
Spleen
Pancreas
Source: Research by
Tim Friend and Dan
Vergano, USA TODAY
By Julie Snider, USA TODAY
ed to take up competing bills on
cloning. All outlaw cloning babies.
One goes further and forbids
cloning human embryos for
stem-cell research, so-called
therapeutic cloning.
The focus of the debate is stem cells,
the raw materials out of which more
specialized tissues develop in the
body. The stem cells in embryos are
capable of evolving into any type of
tissue -- heart, skin, blood and so on.
In adults, stem cells are already specialized. They hide within organs,
ready to replace worn-out tissues.
Researchers hope to devise ways of
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Cloning Case Study
AS SEEN IN USA TODAY LIFE SECTION, THURSDAY, APRIL 4, 2002, PAGE 8D
using stem-cell transplants to cure
diseases such as diabetes, Parkinson's
and Alzheimer's. Many argue the
more flexible stem cells from
embryos hold the most promise for
making rejection-free transplantable
organs. But in extracting the cells, the
embryo is destroyed. Critics say therapeutic cloning of human embryos to
generate stem cells is unethical, likening it to abortion. The critics have no
problem with using adult cells, however, because that doesn't involve
destroying an embryo.
The politics of stem cells reached
national prominence with President
Bush's August decision to allow federal money to be spent on research on a
limited number of already existing
embryonic-stem-cell colonies. About
70 such collections of a single type of
stem cell now have approval. Bush
opposes the development of new
colonies but privately funded
researchers remain free to create
human embryonic stem cells made
the old-fashioned way, from sperm
and an egg. Most are now donated by
couples who have undergone in vitro
fertilization.
Politicizing the research
In the cloning debate, both sides are
using research on adult and embryonic stem cells as weapons.
In January, for example, an article in
New Scientist magazine touted
University of Minnesota research that
suggested adult stem cells may be
capable of turning into many kinds of
new tissue. The "Do No Harm" coalition, which opposes obtaining stem
cells from human embryos, sent out a
news release saying the article discredited a National Academy of
Sciences report that called for
research into therapeutic cloning.
And last month, two papers in the
journal Cell suggested that embryonic
stem cells had partially repaired a
defective immune system in mice. A
study author openly acknowledged
that the paper's release was meant to
influence the debate. In response, the
Americans to Ban Cloning (ABC) coalition sent out a news release titled
"Why the 'Successful' Mouse
'Therapeutic' Cloning Really
Didn't Work."
"I don't think I've ever seen a biomedical issue so politically loaded
and agenda-filled," says science
writer John Travis of Science News
magazine, who has written extensively about stem cells.
Emotions run high because the
debate touches on a potential treatment that involves where life begins
and where it ends. To make a cloned
embryo, researchers would hollow
out a donor egg, insert a patient's
cells, then zap the egg with chemicals
to shock it into dividing. After cells
divided for about five days, the
researchers would harvest the stem
cells, destroying the embryo in the
process. In theory, the cells would be
coaxed into becoming replacement
tissues, and because they would carry
the patient's
genes,
researchers
expect they
would not be
rejected by the
body's immune
system.
"There is no
question that
embryonic stem
cells can readily
turn into new
tissues of every
kind," unlike
adult stem cells,
says Robert Lanza, medical director of
Advanced Cell Technology (ACT) in
Worcester, Mass. "You only have to
compare them under a microscope to
see the vitality of one type compared
to the other."
Lanza confirmed reports, still
unpublished, that he and colleagues
have used therapeutic cloning to
create kidneys that were transplanted
into a cow. Nationwide, about 50,000
people are on waiting lists for a
kidney transplant.
Asked whether the political debate
has pushed the pace of study publications, Lanza says, "Well, yes. As a
matter of fact, we have been sitting
on a pile of data that proves therapeutic cloning works. We probably
should have published it a year ago."
On the adult-stem-cell side, tantalizing data suggest adult stem cells
can change their nature and bulwark
many tissues, says stem-cell transplant expert Richard Burt of
Northwestern Memorial Hospital,
who is Duffey's doctor. "That's kind of
where the excitement is," he says.
Burt and others point to research
such as the University of Minnesota
By Anne Ryan, USA TODAY
In Chicago: Physician Richard Burt holds the hand of Kathy Duffey
as she undergoes the preliminary stages of treatment for Crohn's
disease, using her stem cells.
Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved.
Page 8
Cloning Case Study
AS SEEN IN USA TODAY LIFE SECTION, THURSDAY, APRIL 4, 2002, PAGE 8D
report and another in The New
England Journal of Medicine that
suggest bone-marrow-based adult
stem cells can develop into heart
and brain cells.
ness problematic, Travis says, "I
haven't heard serious adult-stemcell researchers saying their work
eliminates the need for embryonic
stem cells."
However, like Catherine Verfaillie, a
well-known Minnesota researcher,
Burt supports allowing embryonicstem-cell research to proceed. In
Senate testimony on her research,
which remains partly unpublished,
Verfaillie complained her work
"was being misinterpreted to suit
legislative agendas."
One researcher who does oppose
therapeutic cloning, Micheline
Mathews-Roth of Harvard Medical
School, partly bases her stance on the
belief that adult stem cells will turn
out to be as flexible as embryonic
ones and partly on her opposition
to abortion.
While politicization of the research
has made weighing stem cells' useful-
"The fact is that any research that
involves early stages of human life
has to be treated with respect and
understood in moral and ethical
terms," says researcher Sally Temple
of the Albany (N.Y.) Medical College.
"Personally, I feel such research is
entirely justified," she says, given the
hundreds of embryos made daily in
fertility clinics, then frozen away forever amid the urgent need for cures
to devastating illnesses.
In the past, proving the usefulness
of a medical technology as new as
stem-cell therapy has taken decades.
While a stampede of various results
may appear in the coming weeks of
political debate, "I'd beware of any
big claims at this point," Travis says.
Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved.
Page 9
AS SEEN IN USA TODAY NEWS SECTION, WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 11, 2002, PAGE 3A
Stanford plans
controversial
stem-cell work
By Elizabeth Wiese
USA TODAY
Stanford University said Tuesday that it
plans to develop new stem cells
through a highly experimental scientific
method that some consider cloning. It
will be the first U.S. university to publicly embark on this controversial work.
The human stem-cell lines it develops
will be used to study diseases such as
cancer, diabetes, Parkinson's and Lou
Gehrig's disease. The research will take
place at Stanford's new Institute for
Cancer/Stem Cell Biology and Medicine.
It will be privately funded and will
avoid any conflict with President Bush's
policy against using federal fund to create new stem-cell lines. The research
will be led by Irving Weissman, a strong
proponent of stem-cell research and
acknowledged leader in the field.
Stem cells, found in all human embryos
at their earliest stages, are capable of
turning into any cells the body needs
for development. This gives them the
potential for replacing diseased or
defective cells in people. But creating
them requires the destruction of a tiny
ball of cells called a blastocyst, or preembryo, and many who believe that life
begins at conception consider this the
destruction of a human being.
Similar attempts to do human somatic
cell nuclear transfer have failed.
Researcher Roger Pederson at the
University of California-San Francisco
experimented with the technique in
2001 but in the end chose not to
publish his results. Many have
speculated that's because the
technique did not work.
Weissman denies that the method
researchers will use at Stanford, called
"somatic cell nuclear transfer technology," is cloning. Many scientists make a
distinction between this type of
cloning, which is only intended to create stem cells, and reproductive cloning
to create a new human being.
A Massachusetts company called
Advanced Cell Technology created a
furor when it claimed to have created
clones using the technology, but in fact
its embryos only were able to divide
into a few cells.
"We are unanimously against human
reproductive cloning," Weissman said.
In somatic cell nuclear transfer, the
same technique Scottish researchers
used in 1997 to create Dolly the sheep,
the nucleus is removed from a nonreproductive cell -- neither an egg nor a
sperm -- and inserted into a donated
egg cell that has had its nucleus
removed. A pulse of electricity causes
the inserted nucleus to fuse into the egg
and begin reproducing, creating at least
the beginnings of an embryo.
Michael Manganiello, president of the
Coalition for the Advancement of
Medical Research, which supports
stem-cell research, is encouraged by
the Stanford move. "They're going to
do it. It's just a matter of perfecting
the technique."
The creation of lines of human embryonic stem cells can't be done using federal money under a ban issued by Bush
in August 2001. Only research on stemcell lines created before that date is
eligible for federal funds. Bush has
repeatedly stated his opposition to
human cloning.
Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved.
Page 10
Future
implications
For discussion
1. Given the medical barriers and the genetic variations that
imperil human cloning, what rationale supports ongoing
funding of such efforts?
2. Opponents of human cloning cite the number of orphans
and refugee children available for adoption as a reason for
not funding cloning research. What is your position on the
ethics of ongoing research into cloning? Predict what the
socio-economic impact would be of ongoing research into
cloning.
If human cloning research
proceeds, what other
ethically-based medical
issues could be revisited?
Discuss euthanasia,
genetic modification
and possibilities for the
emergence of a superior
race of human traits.
3. Stem cell research seeks to identify and test interventions
to mitigate the impact of devastating disease. Discuss the
political implications for a ban on such research.
Additional resources
Advanced Cell Technology
Institute for Cancer/Stem Cell Biology
and Medicine, Stanford University
Americans to Ban Cloning
National Academy of Sciences
Baptist Center for Ethics
Cell
Center for Bioethics, University of
Pennsylvania
The New England Journal of Medicine
Hastings Center
New Scientist
Institute for Bioethics, Health Policy and
Law, University of Louisville
Science News
For more information, log on to www.usatodaycollege.com
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