Has a more repulsive and inhuman Bill ever been brought before the Australian Parliament?
Senator Patterson’s Bill does more than just allow the unethical cloning of human embryos with their destruction in mind. It allows scientists to create animal-human hybrid embryos, it allows scientists to create human embryos with more than two genetic parents, and it allows scientists to create human embryos where one of the parents is an aborted human foetus.
Under her Bill aborted baby girls could become mothers of human embryos that will themselves be killed for research!
This is sick science; this is a moral assault on our humanity, on the meaning of the human family, and on the inviolable right of any living human being not to be exploited and killed as subhuman material.
Senator Patterson is asking her colleagues to follow her lead in abandoning their united ethical position of only four years ago. In 2002 the Parliament voted to allow research on ‘spare’ IVF embryos who were ‘going to die anyway’, but it unanimously declared it was wrong to create new human embryos solely for research, whether by cloning or any other means. Paterson was amongst the most outspoken opponents of such an abuse.
She stated in 2002: “I believe strongly that it is wrong to create human embryos solely for research”, yet today she tables a Bill permitting the creation of human embryos, by a range of morally degraded methods, solely for research.
She stated in 2002: “It is not morally permissible to develop an embryo with the intent of truncating it at an early stage for the benefit of another human being”, but now what was impermissible is suddenly permissible – and no explanation for this ethical backflip is given!
She assured us in 2002 that there would be no slippery slope: that because “the Prohibition of Human Cloning Bill 2002 bans the creation of a human embryo for a purpose other than achieving a pregnancy” therefore “it is disingenuous to suggest that approving this research will open the door to further killing of living human beings”. Now she proposes the further killing of any number of living human beings – whether created by SCNT cloning, or from the eggs of aborted human babies, or hybridized with animals, or from multiple parents.
Our Parliament is faced with a clear choice: it can declare again, as in 2002, that it is wrong to create human embryos with their destruction in mind, or it can abandon this just and humane ethical position, instead supporting Patterson's barbaric proposal to create and kill human embryos on the altar of speculative science.
Tuesday, September 26, 2006
Tuesday, September 19, 2006
NATASHA OUT-LOCKHARTS LOCKHART WHILE KAY DOES A MORAL BACKFLIP
This is your guest blogger Richard Egan filling in for my colleague Dr David Van Gend.
At 6pm last Thursday, 14 September Senator Natasha Stott-Despoja tabled an exposure draft of the Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer (SCNT) and Related Research Amendment Bill 2006. The Bill is co-sponsored by Senator Ruth Webber.
According to Senator Stott-Despoja’s tabling speech the Bill is “for information and committee use”. That is to say, it is not intended to be voted upon. This is just as well as, besides the core ethical problems with this Bill, it is poorly drafted, and if passed in its present form would simply be unviable. More on this below.
The title of the Bill focuses on “somatic cell nuclear transfer”. The first object of the Bill (Section 3) is to “provide for the continuing national development of responsible medical research through the use of stem cells including innovative techniques such as somatic cell nuclear transfer”. Of course, somatic cell nuclear transfer is just a description of one method of cloning – the method used to produce our late and lamented woolly friend Dolly. It has not yet been used to produce a human embryo clone let alone one that has developed to the stage at which embryonic stem cells can be harvested.
The only claim still standing – after the six month hoax perpetrated by Korean scientist Hwang Woo Suk who persuaded the whole world, including the Lockhart Committee was exposed -- to actually have produced a human embryo clone is from the Newcastle team. This team didn’t use somatic cell nuclear transfer. Using 36 ova procured from women undergoing IVF they managed only to produce a single blastocyst by enucleating an ovum within one hour of collecting it from the woman and fusing it with an embryonic stem cell. This method seems to have been chosen because the nucleus of an undifferentiated embryonic stem cell would need less reprogramming by the ovum then a somatic or body cell. However, there doesn’t seem to be any possible practical application of this technique. Even if the blastocyst made this way had survived long enough for stem cells to be extracted all that would have been achieved would be cloning an embryo you had already killed for its stem cells in order to get more stem cells with the same DNA somewhat scrambled by the cloning process. What’s the point?
The Newcastle team has never had this research published in a peer review journal. Since then they have lost their lead researcher Dr Miodrag Stojkovic to the Prince Felipe Research Centre in Valencia.
As Gretchen Vogel noted in her review article Cell biology: picking up the pieces after Hwang would be human cloners “face two substantial hurdles: a limited supply of human oocytes and a lack of data on how to use them most efficiently”.
Natasha’s Bill maintains the current ban on giving any “valuable consideration” in return for human eggs. “Valuable consideration” is defined in relation to the supply of a human egg to include “any inducement, discount or priority in the provision of a service to the person”.
The Newcastle team were getting eggs by asking women undergoing IVF to hand over two of their eggs if they produce 12 or more in one treatment cycle. By this means they only netted only 66 eggs for research in 7 months. Not enough it seems to make any further advances in human cloning! They succeeded in getting the Human Fertility and Embryo Authority to issue a license permitting them to offer discounted IVF to women in order to up egg procurement rate. The Human Fertility and Embryo Authority is now considering a general change to the rules to allow payment for eggs.
Californian would-be cloner Renee Reijo Pera is also calling for a change to the rules to allow payment to women for their eggs. In the United States it is common practice to pay women to have their eggs harvested for use in creating IVF embryos for infertile women. The going rate is as high as $50,000. However, under Proposition 71, by which Californians voted $3 billion for stem cell research including cloning, payment to women for eggs for cloning is prohibited.
Some commentators have suggested that eggs which fail to fertilise during IVF procedures could be used. However, these have proved ineffective in cloning research. Good, fresh eggs are needed!
But it seems that women everywhere in the world are sensibly reluctant to undergo the risks of ovarian hyperstimulation, including death, simply to accommodate the demands of the would-be cloners.
As Dr Van Gend suggested in his most recent blog the only alternative to inviting women to risk death from ovarian hyperstimulation in order to keep the would-be cloners supplied with enough eggs to play with is to use animal eggs instead.
And it is here that Natasha out-Lockharts the Lockhart Review itself.
Recommendation 6 of the Review was that “Development of a human–animal hybrid or chimeric embryo should continue to be prohibited, except as indicated in Recommendation 17” Recommendation 17 was that “Certain interspecies fertilisation and development up to, but not including, the first cell division should be permitted for testing gamete viability to assist ART training and practice.” Additionally, (and in contradiction to Recommendation 6) Recommendation 24 was that “In order to reduce the need for human oocytes, transfer of human somatic cell nuclei into animal oocytes should be allowed, under licence, for the creation and use of human embryo clones for research, training and clinical application, including the production of human embryonic stem cells”.
The existing legislation prohibits the creating of either a chimeric embryo or a hybrid embryo. A chimeric embryo is defined as a human embryo into which a cell, or any component part of a cell, of an animal has been introduced. A hybrid embryo is defined as (a) an embryo created by the fertilisation of a human egg by animal sperm; or (b) an embryo created by the fertilisation of an animal egg by human sperm; or (c) a human egg into which the nucleus of an animal cell has been introduced; or (d) an animal egg into which the nucleus of a human cell has been introduced.
Lockhart explicitly recommended retaining a complete prohibition on creation of chimeric embryo. Natasha’s Bill allows the creation of chimeric embryos.
Lockhart only recommended allowing creating of hybrids by fertilisation [methods (a) and (b) above] up to the first cell division. Natasha’s Bill would allow a scientist to fertilise a human egg with animal sperm (or vice versa) and let the resulting embryo grow for 14 days before it was destroyed.
Lockhart did recommend allowing the creating of hybrid embryos by method (d) above. Natasha has adopted this recommendation despite the Chief Scientist Jim Peacock’s advice that such hybrids would be scientifically useless.
Lockhart did not recommend lifting the prohibition on creating hybrids by method (c), that is putting the nucleus of an animal cell into a human egg. Natasha is happy for scientists to try this one too.
I mentioned earlier that Natasha’s Bill was – like all attempts at human cloning to date –unviable. Her new Division 2 of Part 2 of the Prohibition of Human Cloning Act contains a list of things that are prohibited unless permitted by a license issued by the NHMRC Licensing Committee. This list includes: creating a human embryo clone; creating a human embryo other than by fertilisation; creating a human embryo with mitochondrial DNA from more than 2 persons; creating a human embryo with precursor cells taken from a human embryo or a human fetus (yes, this means fertilising the eggs taken from an aborted baby girl) and creating a chimeric or hybrid embryo.
However, the Bill makes no provision for the NHMRC Licensing Committee to issue licenses for creating any of these embryos. Rather the Bill merely provides for licenses to be issued for the use of such embryos. This is just one of the serious drafting flaws in the Bill.
In a section dealing with consent Natasha’s Bill (Section 17 of Schedule 2) requires consent from either (but not both) the egg donor or the somatic cell donor before a licensed embryo, for example, a human embryo clone, is used.
Oh well. Senator Stott-Despoja said her Bill was just for “information and Committee use.” This is just a dress rehearsal for the real show which is Senator Backflip Patterson’s Bill.
You remember!. The Senator who said in 2002 “I believe strongly that it is wrong to create human embryos solely for research. It is not morally permissible to develop an embryo with the intent of truncating it at an early stage for the benefit of another human being. However, utilising embryos that are excess to a couple's needs after a successful implantation is a very different matter. I believe it is disingenuous to suggest that approving this research will open the door to further killing of living human beings when the Prohibition of Human Cloning Bill 2002 bans the creation of a human embryo for a purpose other than achieving a pregnancy.”
Her only defence so far for her extraordinary moral backflip in now sponsoring a bill which will permit what she so recently told us so firmly was “wrong” and “not morally permissible” and will open the door to further killing of living human beings that she so self-righteously assured us was firmly shut has been that she is entitled to change her mind.
The latest word is that Senator Patterson may have her Bill ready by the end if this week – September 22. (I’ll believe it when I see it!) That will leave the people of Australia just twelve days to let the Senate Community Affairs Committee know by their October 4 deadline for submissions that unlike Senator Patterson we don’t believe that fundamental moral principles can change – let alone change in four years. It is still as wrong today as it was in 2002 to “create human embryos solely for research” and to “develop an embryo with the intent of truncating it at an early stage for the benefit of another human being”.
At 6pm last Thursday, 14 September Senator Natasha Stott-Despoja tabled an exposure draft of the Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer (SCNT) and Related Research Amendment Bill 2006. The Bill is co-sponsored by Senator Ruth Webber.
According to Senator Stott-Despoja’s tabling speech the Bill is “for information and committee use”. That is to say, it is not intended to be voted upon. This is just as well as, besides the core ethical problems with this Bill, it is poorly drafted, and if passed in its present form would simply be unviable. More on this below.
The title of the Bill focuses on “somatic cell nuclear transfer”. The first object of the Bill (Section 3) is to “provide for the continuing national development of responsible medical research through the use of stem cells including innovative techniques such as somatic cell nuclear transfer”. Of course, somatic cell nuclear transfer is just a description of one method of cloning – the method used to produce our late and lamented woolly friend Dolly. It has not yet been used to produce a human embryo clone let alone one that has developed to the stage at which embryonic stem cells can be harvested.
The only claim still standing – after the six month hoax perpetrated by Korean scientist Hwang Woo Suk who persuaded the whole world, including the Lockhart Committee was exposed -- to actually have produced a human embryo clone is from the Newcastle team. This team didn’t use somatic cell nuclear transfer. Using 36 ova procured from women undergoing IVF they managed only to produce a single blastocyst by enucleating an ovum within one hour of collecting it from the woman and fusing it with an embryonic stem cell. This method seems to have been chosen because the nucleus of an undifferentiated embryonic stem cell would need less reprogramming by the ovum then a somatic or body cell. However, there doesn’t seem to be any possible practical application of this technique. Even if the blastocyst made this way had survived long enough for stem cells to be extracted all that would have been achieved would be cloning an embryo you had already killed for its stem cells in order to get more stem cells with the same DNA somewhat scrambled by the cloning process. What’s the point?
The Newcastle team has never had this research published in a peer review journal. Since then they have lost their lead researcher Dr Miodrag Stojkovic to the Prince Felipe Research Centre in Valencia.
As Gretchen Vogel noted in her review article Cell biology: picking up the pieces after Hwang would be human cloners “face two substantial hurdles: a limited supply of human oocytes and a lack of data on how to use them most efficiently”.
Natasha’s Bill maintains the current ban on giving any “valuable consideration” in return for human eggs. “Valuable consideration” is defined in relation to the supply of a human egg to include “any inducement, discount or priority in the provision of a service to the person”.
The Newcastle team were getting eggs by asking women undergoing IVF to hand over two of their eggs if they produce 12 or more in one treatment cycle. By this means they only netted only 66 eggs for research in 7 months. Not enough it seems to make any further advances in human cloning! They succeeded in getting the Human Fertility and Embryo Authority to issue a license permitting them to offer discounted IVF to women in order to up egg procurement rate. The Human Fertility and Embryo Authority is now considering a general change to the rules to allow payment for eggs.
Californian would-be cloner Renee Reijo Pera is also calling for a change to the rules to allow payment to women for their eggs. In the United States it is common practice to pay women to have their eggs harvested for use in creating IVF embryos for infertile women. The going rate is as high as $50,000. However, under Proposition 71, by which Californians voted $3 billion for stem cell research including cloning, payment to women for eggs for cloning is prohibited.
Some commentators have suggested that eggs which fail to fertilise during IVF procedures could be used. However, these have proved ineffective in cloning research. Good, fresh eggs are needed!
But it seems that women everywhere in the world are sensibly reluctant to undergo the risks of ovarian hyperstimulation, including death, simply to accommodate the demands of the would-be cloners.
As Dr Van Gend suggested in his most recent blog the only alternative to inviting women to risk death from ovarian hyperstimulation in order to keep the would-be cloners supplied with enough eggs to play with is to use animal eggs instead.
And it is here that Natasha out-Lockharts the Lockhart Review itself.
Recommendation 6 of the Review was that “Development of a human–animal hybrid or chimeric embryo should continue to be prohibited, except as indicated in Recommendation 17” Recommendation 17 was that “Certain interspecies fertilisation and development up to, but not including, the first cell division should be permitted for testing gamete viability to assist ART training and practice.” Additionally, (and in contradiction to Recommendation 6) Recommendation 24 was that “In order to reduce the need for human oocytes, transfer of human somatic cell nuclei into animal oocytes should be allowed, under licence, for the creation and use of human embryo clones for research, training and clinical application, including the production of human embryonic stem cells”.
The existing legislation prohibits the creating of either a chimeric embryo or a hybrid embryo. A chimeric embryo is defined as a human embryo into which a cell, or any component part of a cell, of an animal has been introduced. A hybrid embryo is defined as (a) an embryo created by the fertilisation of a human egg by animal sperm; or (b) an embryo created by the fertilisation of an animal egg by human sperm; or (c) a human egg into which the nucleus of an animal cell has been introduced; or (d) an animal egg into which the nucleus of a human cell has been introduced.
Lockhart explicitly recommended retaining a complete prohibition on creation of chimeric embryo. Natasha’s Bill allows the creation of chimeric embryos.
Lockhart only recommended allowing creating of hybrids by fertilisation [methods (a) and (b) above] up to the first cell division. Natasha’s Bill would allow a scientist to fertilise a human egg with animal sperm (or vice versa) and let the resulting embryo grow for 14 days before it was destroyed.
Lockhart did recommend allowing the creating of hybrid embryos by method (d) above. Natasha has adopted this recommendation despite the Chief Scientist Jim Peacock’s advice that such hybrids would be scientifically useless.
Lockhart did not recommend lifting the prohibition on creating hybrids by method (c), that is putting the nucleus of an animal cell into a human egg. Natasha is happy for scientists to try this one too.
I mentioned earlier that Natasha’s Bill was – like all attempts at human cloning to date –unviable. Her new Division 2 of Part 2 of the Prohibition of Human Cloning Act contains a list of things that are prohibited unless permitted by a license issued by the NHMRC Licensing Committee. This list includes: creating a human embryo clone; creating a human embryo other than by fertilisation; creating a human embryo with mitochondrial DNA from more than 2 persons; creating a human embryo with precursor cells taken from a human embryo or a human fetus (yes, this means fertilising the eggs taken from an aborted baby girl) and creating a chimeric or hybrid embryo.
However, the Bill makes no provision for the NHMRC Licensing Committee to issue licenses for creating any of these embryos. Rather the Bill merely provides for licenses to be issued for the use of such embryos. This is just one of the serious drafting flaws in the Bill.
In a section dealing with consent Natasha’s Bill (Section 17 of Schedule 2) requires consent from either (but not both) the egg donor or the somatic cell donor before a licensed embryo, for example, a human embryo clone, is used.
Oh well. Senator Stott-Despoja said her Bill was just for “information and Committee use.” This is just a dress rehearsal for the real show which is Senator Backflip Patterson’s Bill.
You remember!. The Senator who said in 2002 “I believe strongly that it is wrong to create human embryos solely for research. It is not morally permissible to develop an embryo with the intent of truncating it at an early stage for the benefit of another human being. However, utilising embryos that are excess to a couple's needs after a successful implantation is a very different matter. I believe it is disingenuous to suggest that approving this research will open the door to further killing of living human beings when the Prohibition of Human Cloning Bill 2002 bans the creation of a human embryo for a purpose other than achieving a pregnancy.”
Her only defence so far for her extraordinary moral backflip in now sponsoring a bill which will permit what she so recently told us so firmly was “wrong” and “not morally permissible” and will open the door to further killing of living human beings that she so self-righteously assured us was firmly shut has been that she is entitled to change her mind.
The latest word is that Senator Patterson may have her Bill ready by the end if this week – September 22. (I’ll believe it when I see it!) That will leave the people of Australia just twelve days to let the Senate Community Affairs Committee know by their October 4 deadline for submissions that unlike Senator Patterson we don’t believe that fundamental moral principles can change – let alone change in four years. It is still as wrong today as it was in 2002 to “create human embryos solely for research” and to “develop an embryo with the intent of truncating it at an early stage for the benefit of another human being”.
Friday, September 15, 2006
Hybrids or hyperstimulation: the ugly choice of an inhuman science.
That is the choice faced by two advocates of cloning, Senator Stott-Despoya – whose draft Bill to allow human cloning was tabled Thursday – and Chief Scientist Peacock, who addressed MPs the day before.
There is no happy middle way for the supporter of cloning. Either we harvest from women the hundreds, or perhaps thousands, of eggs needed for each cloning experiment, or we harvest them from pigs or rabbits.
Thousands, in the case of Prof Hwang Woo-Suk, South Korea’s ‘Supreme Scientist’, who coerced his junior researchers into contributing to the two thousand eggs he needed to create the eleven cloned embryos that made him famous. Until it was found in December last year – the very week of the tabling of the Lockhart report – that he was a filthy fraud, his science a pile of lies, and the two thousand plus eggs had made not a single clone.
Perhaps only dozens, in the case of the Newcastle team who, around the same time as Hwang, claimed to have cloned a single embryo from three dozen eggs from eleven women. Perhaps… except their research was not published in a peer-reviewed journal, so in scientific terms it is not yet authenticated, and the team has had no further success.
It was unfortunate timing for the UK supporters of cloning, that just as officials in the UK agreed to permit discounted IVF if women donated eggs for research, a women died of complications from the ovarian hyperstimulation required to produce multiple eggs.
Hence the campaign, Hands off our Ovaries, launched on International Women’s Day, to protest the exploitation of women in this new biotechnology.
Chief Scientist Peacock came out against animal-human hybrids on the grounds that the mixing of DNA in the resultant embryo would make it a poor model for research into human disease. But in saying this, he is a lone voice against the consensus of IVF scientists and the Lockhart committee itself – which says we must use animal eggs, since there is no possibility of obtaining sufficient eggs from women.
As note in this Blog a very long time ago, August 28th, the Lockhart Review of our cloning laws itself recommends animal-human hybrid clones: “In order to reduce the need for human oocytes, transfer of human somatic cell nuclei into animal oocytes should be allowed”. See p.170 of the Report. And Senator Stott-Despoya wants to make Lockhart's animal-human hybrid fantasies law.
Likewise cloning advocate Prof Alan Trounson suggested using rabbit eggs to clone human embryos – a process which does indeed leave rabbit DNA in the embryo and makes the clone a human-animal hybrid.Trounson said last year, “Since there are plenty of rabbit eggs around, if we could make that work it would remove the concern about accessing human eggs in any numbers”.
There remain two options, then, for this wonderful new science of cloning: either commercialise women’s ovaries, putting at risk especially poorer women who will take money for their eggs – or settle for animal-human hybrid clones.
And all this for a science which is as redundant as it is wrong: a useless tinkering with embryos in order to get ‘patient specific stem cells’ that we can already get from our own adult tissues!
What really does drive scientists to lobby for cloning, given that the science is so shonky? What are we not being told?
That will be a topic for the week after next, when you regular Blogger returns.
But next week, guest Blogger Richard Egan, DO NO HARM’s agent in WA, will delve deeper into this critical issue of eggsploitation, and continue conscientiously to expose, rebut, and show due contempt for the strategy of the cloning lobby in Australia...
There is no happy middle way for the supporter of cloning. Either we harvest from women the hundreds, or perhaps thousands, of eggs needed for each cloning experiment, or we harvest them from pigs or rabbits.
Thousands, in the case of Prof Hwang Woo-Suk, South Korea’s ‘Supreme Scientist’, who coerced his junior researchers into contributing to the two thousand eggs he needed to create the eleven cloned embryos that made him famous. Until it was found in December last year – the very week of the tabling of the Lockhart report – that he was a filthy fraud, his science a pile of lies, and the two thousand plus eggs had made not a single clone.
Perhaps only dozens, in the case of the Newcastle team who, around the same time as Hwang, claimed to have cloned a single embryo from three dozen eggs from eleven women. Perhaps… except their research was not published in a peer-reviewed journal, so in scientific terms it is not yet authenticated, and the team has had no further success.
It was unfortunate timing for the UK supporters of cloning, that just as officials in the UK agreed to permit discounted IVF if women donated eggs for research, a women died of complications from the ovarian hyperstimulation required to produce multiple eggs.
Hence the campaign, Hands off our Ovaries, launched on International Women’s Day, to protest the exploitation of women in this new biotechnology.
Chief Scientist Peacock came out against animal-human hybrids on the grounds that the mixing of DNA in the resultant embryo would make it a poor model for research into human disease. But in saying this, he is a lone voice against the consensus of IVF scientists and the Lockhart committee itself – which says we must use animal eggs, since there is no possibility of obtaining sufficient eggs from women.
As note in this Blog a very long time ago, August 28th, the Lockhart Review of our cloning laws itself recommends animal-human hybrid clones: “In order to reduce the need for human oocytes, transfer of human somatic cell nuclei into animal oocytes should be allowed”. See p.170 of the Report. And Senator Stott-Despoya wants to make Lockhart's animal-human hybrid fantasies law.
Likewise cloning advocate Prof Alan Trounson suggested using rabbit eggs to clone human embryos – a process which does indeed leave rabbit DNA in the embryo and makes the clone a human-animal hybrid.Trounson said last year, “Since there are plenty of rabbit eggs around, if we could make that work it would remove the concern about accessing human eggs in any numbers”.
There remain two options, then, for this wonderful new science of cloning: either commercialise women’s ovaries, putting at risk especially poorer women who will take money for their eggs – or settle for animal-human hybrid clones.
And all this for a science which is as redundant as it is wrong: a useless tinkering with embryos in order to get ‘patient specific stem cells’ that we can already get from our own adult tissues!
What really does drive scientists to lobby for cloning, given that the science is so shonky? What are we not being told?
That will be a topic for the week after next, when you regular Blogger returns.
But next week, guest Blogger Richard Egan, DO NO HARM’s agent in WA, will delve deeper into this critical issue of eggsploitation, and continue conscientiously to expose, rebut, and show due contempt for the strategy of the cloning lobby in Australia...
Sunday, September 10, 2006
“IT’S ME PROSTATE, DOC!” – YOUR WEEKEND DOSE OF EMBRYONIC SNAKE-OIL
It is pitiful, reading the weekend papers, to see the pseudo-science of embryonic stem cells clinging like a tick to the back of adult stem cell science.
The embryo / cloning lobby’s endless tricks with rats have no prospect ever of moving to humans, and they know it, because the very nature of embryonic cells – as explained to Mal Washer in the recent Blog – is to create teratomas, complex tumours with tissues from all three ‘embryonic layers’ of the body. Unlike adult stem cells (ASCs), which just become the tissue they are asked to become, and nothing else, and are therefore safely used in humans.
Ethics committees don’t mind rats dying of brain tumours or being crippled with knee tumours from the injection of embryonic stem cells (ESCs) – but humans?
The cloning snake-oil salesman is therefore reduced to one dishonourable tactic: to showcase authentic breakthroughs in adult stem cell science, and then by a trick of language sneak in the impression – never quite direct enough to be a lie - that embryonic stem cells can do this too.
So in today’s Weekend Australian ‘Magazine’ (9-10 Sept) we have startling headlines on heart disease, and how ‘researchers believe they will soon be able to regrow healthy ones’. For those in the know, this obviously refers to the injection of adult stem cells from the blood and from muscle into the ailing heart. This research was underway in Newcastle in 2002, and Do No Harm highlighted its successes then, and it is now a multi-centre international clinical trial. So while the headlines of ‘regrowing hearts’ are a little overexcited, the present clinical trials are certainly cause for restrained enthusiasm.
So cardiologist Joshua Hare says of regenerative stem cell science: “Some say it’s the biggest development in biology since the discovery of DNA”. A case study is reported, where cardiologist Suku Thambar at Newcastle’s Hunter Medical Research will “inject about 200 million specially grown adult stem cells into areas of Henry’s heart he identifies as needing repair. The source of the cells will be Henry’s own bone marrow.”
All fine so far – but then the subliminal sneak on behalf of the embryo lobby: “In Australia, scientists are working on embryonic and adult stem cells that could rebuild heart muscle”. Did you catch that? Do you see the strategy? After paragraphs about adult stem cells rebuilding human heart muscle, slip in a mention of embryonic cells in the same breath. Conclusion: give them both a prize!
Don’t mention that embryonic cells can only ‘rebuild heart muscle’ of puffing, pink-in-the-face rats, never humans. Sure, embryonic stem cells may provoke some regrowth of rodent heart muscle, but as always, left long enough, many of these cells will produce tumours.
It is not clear who advised the journalist in the Weekend Australian Magazine, but we know who advised the two page centerfold on “Your stem cell body repair kit” in last weekend’s Herald Sun.
Prof Bob Williamson is chief cloning lobbyist for the Australian Academy of Science; he wrote their submission to the Lockhart enquiry. He is across both the ethical and scientific strategies for getting cloning accepted. First, make out that the cloned embryo is not really a human embryo – so there is no ethical issue with creating it for research. Second, make out that embryo science and cloning is up there with adult stem cell science - so that there is a compelling scientific need to allow cloning.
On the scientific strategy, to his credit, Williamson focuses more on the proposed (and essentially irrelevant) research role of cloning while dismissing the widespread hype over using cloning for direct cell therapy.
But on the ethical strategy, Williamson, a professor of genetics in Melbourne, plays hard ball. He is a very prominent protagonist of the nonsense ‘It’s not an embryo, because there is no sperm involved’. (To which Dolly the former cloned sheep embryo replies ‘Baaaaad biology, Bob. No sperm needed to make me.’)
Williamson has patiently played this biological word-game – this deliberate strategy of the International Society for Stem Cell Research (see Blog on ‘the great lie’) - since the news first broke of the Korean cloning success (later, of course, found to be a fraud).
So in the Sydney Morning Herald of May 21st last year:
‘Professor Williamson said the technique reproduced genetic material from a living person and the intermediate cellular products should not be called embryos, because they were not formed by the union of egg and sperm.’
And again in an opinion piece this year in the SMH:
‘Nuclear transfer from a skin or muscle cell into an inactivated egg does not give an embryo; it gives cells that are genetically identical to the cells of the sick person from whom the cell was taken.’
One wearies of stating the biological obvious: that using an egg and sperm is only one way of creating an embryo - cloning and parthenogenesis are two others. In all cases, what is created looks just like an embryo, grows and develops just like an embryo, in fact - it is an embryo!
The journal Nature in its July 2005 editorial, “Stem-cell biologists should not try to change the definition of the word embryo” accused scientists like Williamson of “playing semantic games in an effort to evade scrutiny”. It stated the biological fact that:
“Whether taken from a fertility clinic or made through cloning, a blastocyst embryo has the potential to become a fully functional organism. And appearing to deny that fact will not fool die-hard opponents of this research. If anything, it will simply open up scientists to the accusation that they are trying to distance themselves from difficult moral issues by changing the terms of the debate.”
Likewise, in response to this organised worldwide attemtpt to redefine and dehumanize the cloned embryo, America’s foremost ethicist, Leon Kass pleaded: “We must call things by their right names and not disguise what is going on with misleading nomenclature. The initial product of the cloning technique is without doubt a living cloned human embryo”. (May 29th 2005, New York Times).
Memo from Kass to Williamson: let’s draw the line at misleading nomenclature.
Moving from the ethical word-game that ‘it’s not an embryo’ to the scientific word-game that ‘embryonic stem cells can do it too’: the Herald Sun centrefold (Sept 2nd) showcases stem cell advances in thirteen different conditions, from disease of the heart, liver, brain and bones, to regrowing hair. Of course, all the actual human therapies use only adult stem cells (including cord blood stem cells). But misleading references to embryonic stem cells cling like parasites to the sections on knees, bladder and ears.
We cannot know to what extent, if any, these sneaky references were at the behest of scientific advisor Williamson – perhaps it was done against his advice, since he is not given to hyping direct cell therapies using ESCs - but we can only wish he had taken more trouble to make the journalist’s report less misleading.
On ‘knees’, after reference to adult stem cell trials in human cartilage repair we hear that experts ‘have succeeded in turning stem cells harvested from embryos into healthy new cartilage’. Yeah, right – but in rodents, not humans! Why is that distinction not made clear to the weekend reader? And of course no reference to the disastrous tumours in mice trials using embryonic stem cells.
On ‘bladder’, after reporting current Australian trials of adult stem cells in women with incontinence, the report mentions some Melbourne scientists who have grown ‘a man-made human prostate from embryonic stem cells’. Wow – sounds like an off-the-shelf solution for every male over 60! But what the report did not clarify is that this prostate was made by man for mice, not by man for man. The prostate was a mouse-human hybrid organ, since, reportedly, the research involved combined human ESCs with mouse prostate cells, and then used a mouse as the host to grow the prostate. Hardly a ‘man-made human prostate’. Just a mouse prostate fused with human cells. And nobody is proposing that this prostate be used in humans. Tiny, frequent mouse-wees are part of the problem, not part of the solution.
Finally, in the section on ‘ears’ we hear of a team ‘exploring whether stem cells from embryos could restore hearing to the deaf’, but the report is not interested in restoring understanding to the dumb. If it was, it would make clear that such experiments with ESCs can only ever be on animals, for reasons including the tumour problem, immune rejection and genetic instability. For humans, adult stem cells are the only possible tools for the job.
Given that the weekend reader is likely, as a demographic, to be troubled by deafness, prostatism and arthritis, this mischievous Herald Sun centrefold certainly pitches well to its market.
And given how important it is for the cloning lobby to pretend that embryonic stem cells are a viable part of human cell therapies, the ‘spin’ is to be expected.
But another name for such scientific spin is ‘false advertising’. It brings no honour to the Australian Academy of Science to be associated in any way with such false advertising, with the selling of embryonic snake-oil to an unsuspecting public.
The embryo / cloning lobby’s endless tricks with rats have no prospect ever of moving to humans, and they know it, because the very nature of embryonic cells – as explained to Mal Washer in the recent Blog – is to create teratomas, complex tumours with tissues from all three ‘embryonic layers’ of the body. Unlike adult stem cells (ASCs), which just become the tissue they are asked to become, and nothing else, and are therefore safely used in humans.
Ethics committees don’t mind rats dying of brain tumours or being crippled with knee tumours from the injection of embryonic stem cells (ESCs) – but humans?
The cloning snake-oil salesman is therefore reduced to one dishonourable tactic: to showcase authentic breakthroughs in adult stem cell science, and then by a trick of language sneak in the impression – never quite direct enough to be a lie - that embryonic stem cells can do this too.
So in today’s Weekend Australian ‘Magazine’ (9-10 Sept) we have startling headlines on heart disease, and how ‘researchers believe they will soon be able to regrow healthy ones’. For those in the know, this obviously refers to the injection of adult stem cells from the blood and from muscle into the ailing heart. This research was underway in Newcastle in 2002, and Do No Harm highlighted its successes then, and it is now a multi-centre international clinical trial. So while the headlines of ‘regrowing hearts’ are a little overexcited, the present clinical trials are certainly cause for restrained enthusiasm.
So cardiologist Joshua Hare says of regenerative stem cell science: “Some say it’s the biggest development in biology since the discovery of DNA”. A case study is reported, where cardiologist Suku Thambar at Newcastle’s Hunter Medical Research will “inject about 200 million specially grown adult stem cells into areas of Henry’s heart he identifies as needing repair. The source of the cells will be Henry’s own bone marrow.”
All fine so far – but then the subliminal sneak on behalf of the embryo lobby: “In Australia, scientists are working on embryonic and adult stem cells that could rebuild heart muscle”. Did you catch that? Do you see the strategy? After paragraphs about adult stem cells rebuilding human heart muscle, slip in a mention of embryonic cells in the same breath. Conclusion: give them both a prize!
Don’t mention that embryonic cells can only ‘rebuild heart muscle’ of puffing, pink-in-the-face rats, never humans. Sure, embryonic stem cells may provoke some regrowth of rodent heart muscle, but as always, left long enough, many of these cells will produce tumours.
It is not clear who advised the journalist in the Weekend Australian Magazine, but we know who advised the two page centerfold on “Your stem cell body repair kit” in last weekend’s Herald Sun.
Prof Bob Williamson is chief cloning lobbyist for the Australian Academy of Science; he wrote their submission to the Lockhart enquiry. He is across both the ethical and scientific strategies for getting cloning accepted. First, make out that the cloned embryo is not really a human embryo – so there is no ethical issue with creating it for research. Second, make out that embryo science and cloning is up there with adult stem cell science - so that there is a compelling scientific need to allow cloning.
On the scientific strategy, to his credit, Williamson focuses more on the proposed (and essentially irrelevant) research role of cloning while dismissing the widespread hype over using cloning for direct cell therapy.
But on the ethical strategy, Williamson, a professor of genetics in Melbourne, plays hard ball. He is a very prominent protagonist of the nonsense ‘It’s not an embryo, because there is no sperm involved’. (To which Dolly the former cloned sheep embryo replies ‘Baaaaad biology, Bob. No sperm needed to make me.’)
Williamson has patiently played this biological word-game – this deliberate strategy of the International Society for Stem Cell Research (see Blog on ‘the great lie’) - since the news first broke of the Korean cloning success (later, of course, found to be a fraud).
So in the Sydney Morning Herald of May 21st last year:
‘Professor Williamson said the technique reproduced genetic material from a living person and the intermediate cellular products should not be called embryos, because they were not formed by the union of egg and sperm.’
And again in an opinion piece this year in the SMH:
‘Nuclear transfer from a skin or muscle cell into an inactivated egg does not give an embryo; it gives cells that are genetically identical to the cells of the sick person from whom the cell was taken.’
One wearies of stating the biological obvious: that using an egg and sperm is only one way of creating an embryo - cloning and parthenogenesis are two others. In all cases, what is created looks just like an embryo, grows and develops just like an embryo, in fact - it is an embryo!
The journal Nature in its July 2005 editorial, “Stem-cell biologists should not try to change the definition of the word embryo” accused scientists like Williamson of “playing semantic games in an effort to evade scrutiny”. It stated the biological fact that:
“Whether taken from a fertility clinic or made through cloning, a blastocyst embryo has the potential to become a fully functional organism. And appearing to deny that fact will not fool die-hard opponents of this research. If anything, it will simply open up scientists to the accusation that they are trying to distance themselves from difficult moral issues by changing the terms of the debate.”
Likewise, in response to this organised worldwide attemtpt to redefine and dehumanize the cloned embryo, America’s foremost ethicist, Leon Kass pleaded: “We must call things by their right names and not disguise what is going on with misleading nomenclature. The initial product of the cloning technique is without doubt a living cloned human embryo”. (May 29th 2005, New York Times).
Memo from Kass to Williamson: let’s draw the line at misleading nomenclature.
Moving from the ethical word-game that ‘it’s not an embryo’ to the scientific word-game that ‘embryonic stem cells can do it too’: the Herald Sun centrefold (Sept 2nd) showcases stem cell advances in thirteen different conditions, from disease of the heart, liver, brain and bones, to regrowing hair. Of course, all the actual human therapies use only adult stem cells (including cord blood stem cells). But misleading references to embryonic stem cells cling like parasites to the sections on knees, bladder and ears.
We cannot know to what extent, if any, these sneaky references were at the behest of scientific advisor Williamson – perhaps it was done against his advice, since he is not given to hyping direct cell therapies using ESCs - but we can only wish he had taken more trouble to make the journalist’s report less misleading.
On ‘knees’, after reference to adult stem cell trials in human cartilage repair we hear that experts ‘have succeeded in turning stem cells harvested from embryos into healthy new cartilage’. Yeah, right – but in rodents, not humans! Why is that distinction not made clear to the weekend reader? And of course no reference to the disastrous tumours in mice trials using embryonic stem cells.
On ‘bladder’, after reporting current Australian trials of adult stem cells in women with incontinence, the report mentions some Melbourne scientists who have grown ‘a man-made human prostate from embryonic stem cells’. Wow – sounds like an off-the-shelf solution for every male over 60! But what the report did not clarify is that this prostate was made by man for mice, not by man for man. The prostate was a mouse-human hybrid organ, since, reportedly, the research involved combined human ESCs with mouse prostate cells, and then used a mouse as the host to grow the prostate. Hardly a ‘man-made human prostate’. Just a mouse prostate fused with human cells. And nobody is proposing that this prostate be used in humans. Tiny, frequent mouse-wees are part of the problem, not part of the solution.
Finally, in the section on ‘ears’ we hear of a team ‘exploring whether stem cells from embryos could restore hearing to the deaf’, but the report is not interested in restoring understanding to the dumb. If it was, it would make clear that such experiments with ESCs can only ever be on animals, for reasons including the tumour problem, immune rejection and genetic instability. For humans, adult stem cells are the only possible tools for the job.
Given that the weekend reader is likely, as a demographic, to be troubled by deafness, prostatism and arthritis, this mischievous Herald Sun centrefold certainly pitches well to its market.
And given how important it is for the cloning lobby to pretend that embryonic stem cells are a viable part of human cell therapies, the ‘spin’ is to be expected.
But another name for such scientific spin is ‘false advertising’. It brings no honour to the Australian Academy of Science to be associated in any way with such false advertising, with the selling of embryonic snake-oil to an unsuspecting public.
Thursday, September 07, 2006
Lookout Lockhart Lobby - you’ve been Googled!
The rot of bias goes deeper than we thought. Not only is the acting Chair of the Lockhart Committee, Loane Skene, on the record as an apologist for cloning from at least 2000 (see earlier posts), but our intrepid Googler from the West, DO NO HARM’s Richard Egan, has turned up similar evidence on two of the other five Lockhart members:
Associate Professor Ian Kerridge (June 2001): "Therapeutic cloning has massive potential. Animal work has shown promising insights into how it can be used to repair tissues that can't normally repair themselves or for which there is a shortage. There are strong moral imperatives to do stem cell and cloning research.”
Professor Peter Schofield (9 October 2001) “Parts 4 and 5 of the [Human Reproductive Cloning and the Trans-Species Fertilisation] Bill [NSW] will allow research on human stem cells, including embryonic stem cells and their use in human therapeutic cloning. This is to be commended as it provides both a regulatory basis by which exciting and significant new developments in medical research can be progressed while providing clarity and simplicity about lines of investigation that will not be permitted because of overwhelming ethical concerns.”
Ouch! Will this send the remaining three members of this ‘impartial, open-minded’ committee, who so earnestly sought the views of Australians, scurrying to see if Google uncovers any compromising comments on them as well?
The theory that Lockhart was a carefully stacked committee does fit the available facts. The theory that this was an ethically prejudiced elite, appointed by largely pro-cloning Premiers in thrall to certain scientific interests, vetted by pro-cloning Minister Julie Bishop, a committee whose recommendations could be safely known in advance, and which continues to act as a dedicated lobby group long after it officially (19/12/05) ceased to exist… well, let the reader decide.
Otherwise how can one account for the behaviour of the committee regarding its two ‘terms of reference’: to assess any change in the science of cloning since 2002, and to assess any change in community attitudes to cloning since 2002?
On the first, changes in science, the Lockhart Committee based their recommendations upon the celebrated cloning experiments of Hwang, but when Hwang was exposed as a total fraud (the same week as their report was tabled, before the ink was even dry), the committee did not see fit to recall and revise their document! Why not? Not part of the campaign script? They might be cheeky enough to say it is because their committee had ceased to exist on 19th December, and therefore they had no power to review their document – cute, but they can’t have it both ways: they cannot continue to ‘exist’ as a committee for the purposes of lobbying for cloning, but not ‘exist’ as a committee for purposes of correcting key recommendations based on scientific fraud.
On the second term of reference, changes in community attitudes, why did the committee ignore the one major piece of published research, that of Swinburne university in 2004, which found a substantial majority of us did not feel comfortable with scientists cloning embryos for stem cells? Preferring instead to be guided by the ‘community attitudes’ of six unrepresentative citizens, the Lockhart Committee.
The neglect of the Swinburne research is academically unprofessional, at the very least. It is cynical misrepresentation of the truth at worst.
But if the political purpose of Skene, Schofield, Kerridge et al was to use the high ground of an advisory committee to ‘lobby’, ever so elegantly, for their own radical preference on cloning, would we expect them to admit that their scientific recommendations were based on fraud, or that their description of change in community attitudes was based on a careful ignoring of unwanted evidence?
One thing we know: that among these six citizens there was not a single person who defended the humane ethical principle that carried the unanimous vote of Parliament in 2002 – that it is simply wrong to create new human embryos with the sole purpose of research. And therefore, at the heart of the cloning question, the committee was unrepresentative – in short, ethically biased – and while they are welcome to their radical opinions, they must not pretend to be speaking for the public, nor presume to overturn the considered ethical judgement of Parliament.
____________________________________
These concerns were conveyed in the following letter, with an accompanying full document, sent yesterday by DO NO HARM to all Federal MPs and Senators.
Dear…
You may shortly be faced with a decision whether or not to vote for a bill to remove the existing prohibition on human cloning which was passed by the Parliament, without a single dissenting vote, just four years ago.
Proponents of such a bill are relying substantially on the Lockhart Review which recommended that cloning should be permitted "to create and use human embryo clones for research, training and clinical applications".
In deciding how to vote it may be helpful for you to consider the following substantial flaws (Details with references are given in the document attached) in the Lockhart Report.
1. Half the members of the Lockhart Review were already on the record as supporting human cloning. The recommendations reflect their well-established personal views.
2. The Lockhart Review relied on fraudulent science. The six month period in which it conducted its inquiry (June-December 2005) coincided exactly with the period in which the whole world was conned into believing that Korean scientists had achieved major breakthroughs in the science of human cloning.
3. The Lockhart Review failed to disclose that over 80% of the submissions it received opposed any change to the prohibition on human cloning.
4. The Lockhart Review ignored completely the key published paper on Australians attitudes to cloning for research which found that 63% of Australians were not comfortable with scientists using cells created by cloning.
5. The Lockhart Review exceeded its brief by revisiting the fundamental ethical issue on whether it was right to create human embryos solely for research. This issue was decided decisively by the Parliament in 2002.
As Senator Kay Patterson said "it is wrong to create human embryos solely for research. It is not morally permissible to develop an embryo with the intent of truncating it at an early stage for the benefit of another human being".
If we can be of any further help to you as you consider the cloning issue please don't hesitate to contact us.
Yours sincerely,
Richard Egan
Do No Harm: Australians for Ethical Stem Cell Research
Associate Professor Ian Kerridge (June 2001): "Therapeutic cloning has massive potential. Animal work has shown promising insights into how it can be used to repair tissues that can't normally repair themselves or for which there is a shortage. There are strong moral imperatives to do stem cell and cloning research.”
Professor Peter Schofield (9 October 2001) “Parts 4 and 5 of the [Human Reproductive Cloning and the Trans-Species Fertilisation] Bill [NSW] will allow research on human stem cells, including embryonic stem cells and their use in human therapeutic cloning. This is to be commended as it provides both a regulatory basis by which exciting and significant new developments in medical research can be progressed while providing clarity and simplicity about lines of investigation that will not be permitted because of overwhelming ethical concerns.”
Ouch! Will this send the remaining three members of this ‘impartial, open-minded’ committee, who so earnestly sought the views of Australians, scurrying to see if Google uncovers any compromising comments on them as well?
The theory that Lockhart was a carefully stacked committee does fit the available facts. The theory that this was an ethically prejudiced elite, appointed by largely pro-cloning Premiers in thrall to certain scientific interests, vetted by pro-cloning Minister Julie Bishop, a committee whose recommendations could be safely known in advance, and which continues to act as a dedicated lobby group long after it officially (19/12/05) ceased to exist… well, let the reader decide.
Otherwise how can one account for the behaviour of the committee regarding its two ‘terms of reference’: to assess any change in the science of cloning since 2002, and to assess any change in community attitudes to cloning since 2002?
On the first, changes in science, the Lockhart Committee based their recommendations upon the celebrated cloning experiments of Hwang, but when Hwang was exposed as a total fraud (the same week as their report was tabled, before the ink was even dry), the committee did not see fit to recall and revise their document! Why not? Not part of the campaign script? They might be cheeky enough to say it is because their committee had ceased to exist on 19th December, and therefore they had no power to review their document – cute, but they can’t have it both ways: they cannot continue to ‘exist’ as a committee for the purposes of lobbying for cloning, but not ‘exist’ as a committee for purposes of correcting key recommendations based on scientific fraud.
On the second term of reference, changes in community attitudes, why did the committee ignore the one major piece of published research, that of Swinburne university in 2004, which found a substantial majority of us did not feel comfortable with scientists cloning embryos for stem cells? Preferring instead to be guided by the ‘community attitudes’ of six unrepresentative citizens, the Lockhart Committee.
The neglect of the Swinburne research is academically unprofessional, at the very least. It is cynical misrepresentation of the truth at worst.
But if the political purpose of Skene, Schofield, Kerridge et al was to use the high ground of an advisory committee to ‘lobby’, ever so elegantly, for their own radical preference on cloning, would we expect them to admit that their scientific recommendations were based on fraud, or that their description of change in community attitudes was based on a careful ignoring of unwanted evidence?
One thing we know: that among these six citizens there was not a single person who defended the humane ethical principle that carried the unanimous vote of Parliament in 2002 – that it is simply wrong to create new human embryos with the sole purpose of research. And therefore, at the heart of the cloning question, the committee was unrepresentative – in short, ethically biased – and while they are welcome to their radical opinions, they must not pretend to be speaking for the public, nor presume to overturn the considered ethical judgement of Parliament.
____________________________________
These concerns were conveyed in the following letter, with an accompanying full document, sent yesterday by DO NO HARM to all Federal MPs and Senators.
Dear…
You may shortly be faced with a decision whether or not to vote for a bill to remove the existing prohibition on human cloning which was passed by the Parliament, without a single dissenting vote, just four years ago.
Proponents of such a bill are relying substantially on the Lockhart Review which recommended that cloning should be permitted "to create and use human embryo clones for research, training and clinical applications".
In deciding how to vote it may be helpful for you to consider the following substantial flaws (Details with references are given in the document attached) in the Lockhart Report.
1. Half the members of the Lockhart Review were already on the record as supporting human cloning. The recommendations reflect their well-established personal views.
2. The Lockhart Review relied on fraudulent science. The six month period in which it conducted its inquiry (June-December 2005) coincided exactly with the period in which the whole world was conned into believing that Korean scientists had achieved major breakthroughs in the science of human cloning.
3. The Lockhart Review failed to disclose that over 80% of the submissions it received opposed any change to the prohibition on human cloning.
4. The Lockhart Review ignored completely the key published paper on Australians attitudes to cloning for research which found that 63% of Australians were not comfortable with scientists using cells created by cloning.
5. The Lockhart Review exceeded its brief by revisiting the fundamental ethical issue on whether it was right to create human embryos solely for research. This issue was decided decisively by the Parliament in 2002.
As Senator Kay Patterson said "it is wrong to create human embryos solely for research. It is not morally permissible to develop an embryo with the intent of truncating it at an early stage for the benefit of another human being".
If we can be of any further help to you as you consider the cloning issue please don't hesitate to contact us.
Yours sincerely,
Richard Egan
Do No Harm: Australians for Ethical Stem Cell Research
Monday, September 04, 2006
MEMO TO MAL: 'TOTIPOTENCY' IS THE CURSE OF EMBRYO STEM CELLS, NOT THEIR CROWNING GLORY
Today MPs in Canberra heard from leading Adult Stem Cell Researcher Alan Mackay-Sim the great news that privileged readers of this Blog have been hearing from the start – that adult stem cells can indeed do everything that embryonic stem cells from a cloned embryo dream of doing – but better.
“ABC Radio PM: Do you believe that adult stem cells can do everything that therapeutic cloning potentially could do to establish treatments?
ALAN MACKAY-SIM: I think ... yes I do agree with that.”
Ah, but what about ‘totipotency’ said a very excited Dr Mal Washer.
“MAL WASHER: What Alan said, and I think this is an important thing, is that adult stem cells do not have totipotency. They have some flexibility and that is fabulous and maybe they'll get more flexibility with more research and time. But nothing can replace that total, every cell line in your body creation from an embryonic stem cell and no-one has said anything contrary to that there.”
Dr Washer, you will fool some of the people some of the time with your pseudoscientific bluster – but just between colleagues, what’s your game?
You know and I know that ‘totipotency’ – the ability to turn into ‘all’ tissues of the human body – is the central insurmountable problem with embryonic stem cells (ESCs). That is why these cells turn into tumours from every layer of the human body – because they are cursed with ‘totipotency’. Nobody will contradict your claims of totipotency for ESCs – but who wants totipotency anyway?
After all, the job description of an embryonic stem cell is to turn into all cell types – and in forming tumours it is only doing its job. By contrast, the job description of an adult stem cell is to be the repair kit for a certain tissue – and to turn into other tissues in only a very controlled manner (as Mackay Sim’s team has so beautifully demonstrated in their published work).
In the treatment of disease, which cell would you want in your body? One that is exploding uncontrollably into tumours, or one that is calm and controllable in turning into the desired cell type?
That is why there has never been a single embryonic stem cell implanted in a single human ever – they are too dangerous even in animals – while adult stem cells are now used safely in over 70 human diseases. For instance, the trial of ESCs in repairing the cartilage of mice – where a tumour was formed in every single joint injected. Compare this to the ongoing human trials of adult stem cells for the repair of cartilage. No tumours! Or the Bjorklund study using ESCs to treat Parkinson’s in rats, where one in five of the rats died of brain tumours from the ESCs.[i] Compare that to Mackay-Sim’s Griffith colleagues who have treated Parkinsons in rats using adult stem cells, without a single tumour, and with sufficient success to justify primate trials.
Happy patients versus sad rodents. That about sums it up.
Yet Washer has the chutzpah to declare that this curse of ‘totipotency’ is in fact what gives cloning for stem cells the edge over adult stem cells!!
This medically bogus hogwash, Mal, does no credit to your former profession.
__________________________________________
[i] Researchers injected Parkinson’s rats with mouse embryonic stem cells. The rats showed a modest benefit for just over 50% of the rats, but one-fifth (20%) of the rats died of brain tumors caused by the embryonic stem cells. Bjorklund LM et al.; “Embryonic stem cells develop into functional dopaminergic neurons after transplantation in a Parkinson rat model”; Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. 99, 2344-2349, February 19, 2002
“ABC Radio PM: Do you believe that adult stem cells can do everything that therapeutic cloning potentially could do to establish treatments?
ALAN MACKAY-SIM: I think ... yes I do agree with that.”
Ah, but what about ‘totipotency’ said a very excited Dr Mal Washer.
“MAL WASHER: What Alan said, and I think this is an important thing, is that adult stem cells do not have totipotency. They have some flexibility and that is fabulous and maybe they'll get more flexibility with more research and time. But nothing can replace that total, every cell line in your body creation from an embryonic stem cell and no-one has said anything contrary to that there.”
Dr Washer, you will fool some of the people some of the time with your pseudoscientific bluster – but just between colleagues, what’s your game?
You know and I know that ‘totipotency’ – the ability to turn into ‘all’ tissues of the human body – is the central insurmountable problem with embryonic stem cells (ESCs). That is why these cells turn into tumours from every layer of the human body – because they are cursed with ‘totipotency’. Nobody will contradict your claims of totipotency for ESCs – but who wants totipotency anyway?
After all, the job description of an embryonic stem cell is to turn into all cell types – and in forming tumours it is only doing its job. By contrast, the job description of an adult stem cell is to be the repair kit for a certain tissue – and to turn into other tissues in only a very controlled manner (as Mackay Sim’s team has so beautifully demonstrated in their published work).
In the treatment of disease, which cell would you want in your body? One that is exploding uncontrollably into tumours, or one that is calm and controllable in turning into the desired cell type?
That is why there has never been a single embryonic stem cell implanted in a single human ever – they are too dangerous even in animals – while adult stem cells are now used safely in over 70 human diseases. For instance, the trial of ESCs in repairing the cartilage of mice – where a tumour was formed in every single joint injected. Compare this to the ongoing human trials of adult stem cells for the repair of cartilage. No tumours! Or the Bjorklund study using ESCs to treat Parkinson’s in rats, where one in five of the rats died of brain tumours from the ESCs.[i] Compare that to Mackay-Sim’s Griffith colleagues who have treated Parkinsons in rats using adult stem cells, without a single tumour, and with sufficient success to justify primate trials.
Happy patients versus sad rodents. That about sums it up.
Yet Washer has the chutzpah to declare that this curse of ‘totipotency’ is in fact what gives cloning for stem cells the edge over adult stem cells!!
This medically bogus hogwash, Mal, does no credit to your former profession.
__________________________________________
[i] Researchers injected Parkinson’s rats with mouse embryonic stem cells. The rats showed a modest benefit for just over 50% of the rats, but one-fifth (20%) of the rats died of brain tumors caused by the embryonic stem cells. Bjorklund LM et al.; “Embryonic stem cells develop into functional dopaminergic neurons after transplantation in a Parkinson rat model”; Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. 99, 2344-2349, February 19, 2002
Sunday, September 03, 2006
Salt in the wound of Alzheimer’s: just how low can the cloning lobby go?
Apologies to both my readers (Hi there, Anne & Marie!) for the blogless couple of days, but I have been on call and it’s flu season. But doing the rounds of the dementia ward yesterday provided the prompt all bloggers need for the next entry.
August in the cloning lobby’s calendar has been the month of Alzheimer’s, with at least a dozen prominent references in print and on TV. Alzheimer’s is the litmus test of this debate – since anybody who claims that stem cells can be used as cell therapy for this global disease of the brain is, without shadow of doubt, either a fool or a fraud. Yet such claims will continue to be made – for exactly the strategic reasons spelled out in the banner to this Blog.
But these claims, let it be said, are worse than foolish or fraudulent. It is a sign of how low the cloning lobby will go that they resort to arguments that are not only false, but cruel. And it is time to call a halt to their despicable manipulation of Alzheimer’s sufferers and their families.
I have patients devastated with Alzheimer’s disease, families in prolonged grief for the loss of their mother to this degrading affliction, and the last thing anyone should do is raise false hope of treatment in such people.
Let it be clearly stated once more: Alzheimer’s disease is not, and never could be, a candidate for stem cell therapy - not even using the safe therapy of adult stem cells, let alone using inherently dangerous embryonic stem cells.
Professor Colin Masters, Australia’s leading authority on degenerative diseases of the brain, dismissed as “fairyland” any proposal for stem cell therapy in Alzheimer’s. Adelaide embryo researcher, Professor Peter Rathjen, put it more bluntly in the Australian newspaper as “bloody nonsense”. No serious medical expert, here or overseas, will dispute that judgment.
But for the cloning lobby it does not matter that raising hopes of embryonic stem cell therapies for Alzheimer’s is knowingly deceitful and cruel, what matters is that it works with the voters. This effective formula of having scientists lie about diseases like Alzheimer’s and having patient advocacy groups believe those lies so they beat down the doors of politicians - that worked for embryo experimentation in 2002 and maybe it will work again for cloning in 2006.
So again in August Alzheimer’s has been central to the media distortions of public opinion on cloning. We have the sad spectacle of Hazel Hawke on the ABC 7.30 Report, on August 7, 2006, and her daughter pleading for cloning to be allowed in order to treat her mother’s Alzheimer’s. What charlatans of science have been deceiving the Hawke family, and why are they not exposed and shamed for it? We see, on the same day, the editorial of The Australian wallowing in misguided compassion about cloning providing “hope of cures for ailments from Alzheimer's disease to diabetes”. Utter nonsense, and hurtful nonsense.
Why this organised lying, which at a public level corrupts public policy on stem cell science and at a private level lifts up families of disease sufferers only to dump them back in the dirt? We know who the repeat offenders are - certain politicians (Premier Bracks being the worst), a couple of journalists and scientists - and they may choose which category, ignorant or deceitful, they prefer. But either way they must be shamed into silence.
The Alzheimer’s deceit has been central to the campaign overseas also. During the public hysteria surrounding the death of US President Reagan in 2004 from Alzheimer’s, the Washington Post pointed to the “Reagan-inspired tidal wave of enthusiasm” for embryonic stem cell research.
But the report correctly noted that Alzheimer’s was not the sort of disease open to stem cell therapy, and that science was being distorted amid the frenzied hype: “A distortion that some admit is not being aggressively corrected by scientists.” Then came an astounding comment by a stem cell researcher at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke: "To start with, people need a fairy tale," he said. "Maybe that's unfair, but they need a story line that's relatively simple to understand."
Fairy tales. Fairyland. Nonsense. As our Deputy Prime Minister in 2002, John Anderson, lamented: "If we can't believe leading scientists to give us the real truth, how are we as a society to form the right judgments?"
But that is to misunderstand the motivation of elite scientists and their relationship to ignorant society. As I learnt from discussion with American stem cell scientists at Johns Hopkins University in May, what really matters is that society - especially social conservatives - must not be allowed to limit scientific research. As one cloning advocate put it to me: “If you let them limit us on cloning, where will it stop?” What really matters is that we, the scientists, are not told by you, the great ignorant (and probably conservative) unwashed, what we can and cannot research.
And there are other, much darker, reasons as to why scientists campaign by any and every means to get hold of human cloning – but that is for another Blog.
Getting back to former PM John Anderson – his dismay was validated by Lord Robert Winston, President of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, of ‘The Human Body’ fame. Last year Winston reproached his colleagues for their misleading hype, observing that “the desire to source some stem cells from embryos - an ethically controversial area - probably led a number of the field's proponents to hype outcomes just to get liberal legislative approval.” What a devastating admission – but notably only made after Britain had achieved its own liberal legislation on cloning, and the admission was safe enough to make. And still, as the need arises, the calculated hype continues.
Voters will continue to be misled with false science and fairy tales, if that is what is needed to ensure “liberal legislative approval” on cloning, this latest frontier. Scientists will do this partly to ensure that nobody, not even the Parliament, tells them what they can and cannot do, and partly because it doesn’t often rain dollars like this for researchers.
Too bad that scientific integrity can be so easily bought off. Too bad that scarce research money will be diverted away from effective and ethical adult stem cell science. And too bad that families of patients afflicted by Alzheimer’s, who have already suffered enough, will continue to be exploited as useful fools by the cloning lobby.
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NOTE: because a number of people have requested it, a trial of 'comments' starts today. But they will be vetted prior to posting. Nutcases need not apply.
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August in the cloning lobby’s calendar has been the month of Alzheimer’s, with at least a dozen prominent references in print and on TV. Alzheimer’s is the litmus test of this debate – since anybody who claims that stem cells can be used as cell therapy for this global disease of the brain is, without shadow of doubt, either a fool or a fraud. Yet such claims will continue to be made – for exactly the strategic reasons spelled out in the banner to this Blog.
But these claims, let it be said, are worse than foolish or fraudulent. It is a sign of how low the cloning lobby will go that they resort to arguments that are not only false, but cruel. And it is time to call a halt to their despicable manipulation of Alzheimer’s sufferers and their families.
I have patients devastated with Alzheimer’s disease, families in prolonged grief for the loss of their mother to this degrading affliction, and the last thing anyone should do is raise false hope of treatment in such people.
Let it be clearly stated once more: Alzheimer’s disease is not, and never could be, a candidate for stem cell therapy - not even using the safe therapy of adult stem cells, let alone using inherently dangerous embryonic stem cells.
Professor Colin Masters, Australia’s leading authority on degenerative diseases of the brain, dismissed as “fairyland” any proposal for stem cell therapy in Alzheimer’s. Adelaide embryo researcher, Professor Peter Rathjen, put it more bluntly in the Australian newspaper as “bloody nonsense”. No serious medical expert, here or overseas, will dispute that judgment.
But for the cloning lobby it does not matter that raising hopes of embryonic stem cell therapies for Alzheimer’s is knowingly deceitful and cruel, what matters is that it works with the voters. This effective formula of having scientists lie about diseases like Alzheimer’s and having patient advocacy groups believe those lies so they beat down the doors of politicians - that worked for embryo experimentation in 2002 and maybe it will work again for cloning in 2006.
So again in August Alzheimer’s has been central to the media distortions of public opinion on cloning. We have the sad spectacle of Hazel Hawke on the ABC 7.30 Report, on August 7, 2006, and her daughter pleading for cloning to be allowed in order to treat her mother’s Alzheimer’s. What charlatans of science have been deceiving the Hawke family, and why are they not exposed and shamed for it? We see, on the same day, the editorial of The Australian wallowing in misguided compassion about cloning providing “hope of cures for ailments from Alzheimer's disease to diabetes”. Utter nonsense, and hurtful nonsense.
Why this organised lying, which at a public level corrupts public policy on stem cell science and at a private level lifts up families of disease sufferers only to dump them back in the dirt? We know who the repeat offenders are - certain politicians (Premier Bracks being the worst), a couple of journalists and scientists - and they may choose which category, ignorant or deceitful, they prefer. But either way they must be shamed into silence.
The Alzheimer’s deceit has been central to the campaign overseas also. During the public hysteria surrounding the death of US President Reagan in 2004 from Alzheimer’s, the Washington Post pointed to the “Reagan-inspired tidal wave of enthusiasm” for embryonic stem cell research.
But the report correctly noted that Alzheimer’s was not the sort of disease open to stem cell therapy, and that science was being distorted amid the frenzied hype: “A distortion that some admit is not being aggressively corrected by scientists.” Then came an astounding comment by a stem cell researcher at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke: "To start with, people need a fairy tale," he said. "Maybe that's unfair, but they need a story line that's relatively simple to understand."
Fairy tales. Fairyland. Nonsense. As our Deputy Prime Minister in 2002, John Anderson, lamented: "If we can't believe leading scientists to give us the real truth, how are we as a society to form the right judgments?"
But that is to misunderstand the motivation of elite scientists and their relationship to ignorant society. As I learnt from discussion with American stem cell scientists at Johns Hopkins University in May, what really matters is that society - especially social conservatives - must not be allowed to limit scientific research. As one cloning advocate put it to me: “If you let them limit us on cloning, where will it stop?” What really matters is that we, the scientists, are not told by you, the great ignorant (and probably conservative) unwashed, what we can and cannot research.
And there are other, much darker, reasons as to why scientists campaign by any and every means to get hold of human cloning – but that is for another Blog.
Getting back to former PM John Anderson – his dismay was validated by Lord Robert Winston, President of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, of ‘The Human Body’ fame. Last year Winston reproached his colleagues for their misleading hype, observing that “the desire to source some stem cells from embryos - an ethically controversial area - probably led a number of the field's proponents to hype outcomes just to get liberal legislative approval.” What a devastating admission – but notably only made after Britain had achieved its own liberal legislation on cloning, and the admission was safe enough to make. And still, as the need arises, the calculated hype continues.
Voters will continue to be misled with false science and fairy tales, if that is what is needed to ensure “liberal legislative approval” on cloning, this latest frontier. Scientists will do this partly to ensure that nobody, not even the Parliament, tells them what they can and cannot do, and partly because it doesn’t often rain dollars like this for researchers.
Too bad that scientific integrity can be so easily bought off. Too bad that scarce research money will be diverted away from effective and ethical adult stem cell science. And too bad that families of patients afflicted by Alzheimer’s, who have already suffered enough, will continue to be exploited as useful fools by the cloning lobby.
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NOTE: because a number of people have requested it, a trial of 'comments' starts today. But they will be vetted prior to posting. Nutcases need not apply.
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