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.
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