Audit Ordered for California Center for Regenerative Medicine

More trouble in Proposition 71-Land: The California State Controller--in what I must say is a gutsy move given the politics of the matter--has ordered an audit of the CIRM citing charges of conflict of interest. From the story:

California's top financial officer Tuesday ordered a top-to-bottom audit of the state's $3 billion stem cell institute, in the wake of reports that its chairman and one of its directors were involved in a violation of the agency's conflict-of-interest policy.

State Controller John Chiang also called on the state Fair Political Practices Commission to investigate the alleged violation by John Reed, a director of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine and president of the internationally known Burnham Institute of La Jolla, California. Reed privately lobbied institute staff in an attempt to secure a $638,000 grant for Burnham, according to agency documents. Complicating the case further, Robert Klein, an attorney and president of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, has publicly admitted he advised Reed to solicit internally for Burnham...

Only three years old, the California stem cell agency has had a rocky start, with previous accusations of conflict of interest and lawsuits that held up its grant process for two years. Nevertheless, it has become the largest source in the world for human embryonic stem cell research funding. Scientists and government officials throughout the world follow its activities.

John M. Simpson, stem cell project director of the nonprofit Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights, a group that has closely watched the institute since its inception, has called for the resignation of both Klein and Reed, a call echoed by The Sacramento Bee, the leading newspaper in the California state capital.

Simpson said the only way to clear the air and restore confidence in the agency's grant awards process is for both men to leave. Simpson cited the built-in conflicts of interest on the institute's board. Seventeen of its 29 members have links to institutions that stand to benefit from the $227 million lab-construction program.

The potential for conflicts have always been there--ignored by the media prior to the election. But if the CIRM has strayed, it will materially undermine the biotechnology project in general. Indeed, with "science" increasingly taking on the trappings of a special interest, the harm for the reputation of science could be profound.

Well, the truth will out. It will be interesting to see what, if anything, Chiang turns up.

Lead Into Gold: More on Yamanaka Continued Progress

"The scientists" have spent hundreds of millions and years trying to obtain tailor made, patient specific, pluripotent stem cells. Well, Shinya Yamanaka did it. From the story:

Skin cells from the face of 36 year old woman have been converted into her own embryonic like cells directly, in experiments that bring closer the day that doctors will not need to clone embryos to create any of a patient's own cells and tissues for novel treatments...

By inserting four key genes into adult cells, the scientists created a form of stem cell that can grow into virtually any kind of tissue--a feat that previously required destroying embryos to extract cells. The discovery may clear a path for researchers to produce stem cells more easily and without embryo destruction, which is bitterly opposed by pro life groups. But one of the genes the Japanese team used in the new method is also an oncogene, meaning it has been linked with certain types of cancer. And although a rival American group in Wisconsin avoided using that gene, they used cells from a newborn rather than an adult.

Now the Japanese team led by Prof Shinya Yamanaka and colleagues at Kyoto University show in the journal Nature Biotechnology how to convert adult human skin cells into cells that resemble embryonic stem cells without using the tumour-causing gene c-Myc...

Scientists still need to devise ways to transform adult into embryo cells without the need for viruses, which are currently used to introduce the genes to reprogramme the cells and can in theory disrupt other genes.

Work yet to do, to be sure, but very good news indeed.

Lead Into Gold: Technique Already Being Improved

Great news! The great stem cell breakthrough is already being improved upon. As a consequence, the half-hearted defense of human cloning by "the scientists," in which they point out remaining problems with induced pluripotent stem Cells, seems to already be losing water. (The future Nobel laureate?) Shinya Yamanaka, the Japanese scientist who first pioneered the technique in mice and then followed up with humans, says he has already improved the process. From the story:

Yamanaka's breakthrough would notably mean that stem cell researchers can sidestep the seething ethical controversy that comes from using embryonic stem cells, the most potent stem cell of all. In further research, unveiled on Friday by the journal Nature Biotechnology, Yamanaka's team report that they can now produce these so-called induced pluripotent stem cells, or iPS cells, without having to resort to a cancer gene found to cause tumours in many of the lab mice in the earlier experiment. If confirmed, it will remove a significant safety hazard in using these cells in transplants one day.

James Thomson, who originated human embryonic stem cells, claimed this breakthrough will end the stem cell wars. I was dubious. Perhaps I was too hasty in that assessment.

Should 14 Year-Old Make Life and Death Medical Decisions?

At what age should children be allowed to make their own medical decisions? It seems to me, that just as children can't sign contracts or vote, they shouldn't have the final say in whether they receive medical care? But in Washington, a court permitted a 14-year-old to refuse a blood transfusions for religious reasons, which resulted in his death. From the story:

When Skagit County Superior Court Judge John Meyer came to work he expected to be hearing a few small matters. Instead, he made a decision in a case that he said has "perhaps more profound interest and implication than any matter I have ever heard on the bench."

Meyer decided Wednesday to allow 14-year-old Dennis Lindberg of Mount Vernon to refuse blood transfusions--based on his religious beliefs--in his fight against leukemia. Lindberg died later that evening...

Lisa Kelly, director of the Children and Youth Advocacy Clinic at the UW Law School, said that while courts are listening more to adolescents, there's also the understanding that teens "have a developmental trajectory that is not yet like an adult's."

That tension is reflected in state law as well. For instance, those under 18 generally cannot receive health care without a parent's consent, though there are exceptions, such as in cases concerning birth control and abortion.

"It's a gray area when you have a 14-year-old making the decision," said Thomas McCormick, senior lecturer emeritus at the UW School of Medicine. Such instances need to be taken on a case-by-case basis, ethicists say, after conversations with the patient to assess his maturity, whether his beliefs are well grounded and arrived at without coercion, and whether he truly understands the consequences of his decision.

Of some interest in this regard, what if Washington legalizes assisted suicide as a so-called medical treatment next year? (Booth Gardner, the very rich former governor, intends to try and buy such a law.) No doubt the law, if passed, will require adulthood. But if the above case applies, if fourteen year-olds can accept and refuse treatment, how can they be denied a poison prescription if they are an otherwise qualified patient?

Lead Into Gold: "StemCell Vindication" for Bush

Charles Krauthammer, the Washington Post columnist who favored ESCR funding but also saw that the scientists would never be satisfied with being limited to leftover embryos, has a column on the great iPSC breakthrough. He writes (prematurely in my view) that "the great stem cell debate is over:"

Which allows a bit of reflection on the storm that has Bush got it right. Not because he necessarily drew the line in the right place. I have long argued that a better line might have been drawn--between using doomed and discarded fertility-clinic embryos created originally for reproduction (permitted) and using embryos created solely to be disassembled for their parts, as in research cloning (prohibited). But what Bush got right was to insist, in the face of enormous popular and scientific opposition, on drawing a line at all, on requiring that scientific imperative be balanced by moral considerations.raged ever since the August 2001 announcement of President Bush's stem cell policy. The verdict is clear: Rarely has a president--so vilified for a moral stance--been so thoroughly vindicated...

Bush got it right. Not because he necessarily drew the line in the right place. I have long argued that a better line might have been drawn--between using doomed and discarded fertility-clinic embryos created originally for reproduction (permitted) and using embryos created solely to be disassembled for their parts, as in research cloning (prohibited). But what Bush got right was to insist, in the face of enormous popular and scientific opposition, on drawing a line at all, on requiring that scientific imperative be balanced by moral considerations.

A willingness to draw moral lines is going to become increasingly important as life sciences gain power once consigned to the gods. I think atomic energy is a rough, but good analogy. Like the current strides being made in biology and biotechnology (think artificial viruses, for example), the tremendous scientific gains made by physicists in unlocking the atom unleashed great potential for both tremendous good and catastrophic evil. Yet, nobody said in the face of that awesome power, as Senator Specter did the other day about stem cell research, that science should be "unfettered." Rather, all agreed that at least some parameters had to be placed around the use of atomic energy and we have since engaged in long and sometimes bitter debates about the extent to which we should use our knowledge and ability to make uses out of the atom. Like the debate over stem cell research, that is right and proper in a democratic society.

For those who think that Krauthammer can't know what it's like to be sick or is ignorant of the science, or must be religious: He is a secularist, a physician, psychiatrist, and near-quadriplegic from a spinal cord injury.

Read the whole column. It is well worth your time.

More Trouble in Proposition 71 Land

I have this theory, which as I have said previously, isn't even that--at best a notion or a wisp of a thought--that anyone seriously involved with human cloning will have it turn to dust in his or her hands. And we've seen the Wu-suk Hwang debacle, the problems of credibility over at Advanced Cell Technology, and problems at the California Institute of Regenerative Medicine (CIRM), and its inability to keep top management. Well, now there appears to be another scandal over at CIRM, as reported in an opinion column in the San Francisco Chronicle, "Undue Influence at the Stem Cell Institute," by Jesse Reynolds, who works for the liberal anti-cloning organization Center for Genetics and the Society. Reynolds writes:

Last week was a busy one for stem cell research. But amid the coverage of major technical advances, an all-too-predictable scandal erupted in California's stem cell program. The details reveal improper and potentially illegal influence on the allocation of public funds by a board member of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, the state body created to expend the $3 billion voters agreed to borrow and invest in research under Proposition 71.

The action was, in part, a symptom of the board's structure. Proposition 71, which created CIRM in 2004, requires that a majority of board members be representatives of the very institutions waiting in line to receive grants.

Yes, we opponents warned the media about the potential for real ethical problems in the structuring of the CIRM--and they wrote about it too--after the campaign! Before that, they were too obsessed with pro lifers and giddy at the chance to "stick it to Bush" (which, as I have said Proposition 71 didn't do; it stuck it to California) to do their jobs for the people of California.
Reynolds continues:

The scandal began when CIRM gave initial approval for a $638,000 grant to a researcher at the Burnham Institute in La Jolla. But a subsequent review by the agency's staff found that the researcher is not qualified to receive CIRM funds because he's not a full-time faculty member.

Before this was to be announced, John Reed, who is both a CIRM board member and the president of Burnham, sent a strongly worded seven-page letter to CIRM staff, emphasizing the "potentially damaging consequences" and "dangerous precedent" of a grant denial. Reed wasn't merely assisting by clarifying a few details. To assess the grant's eligibility, CIRM staff had been in communication for months with their counterparts at Burnham. When a board member, who is also president of one of the top grant-receiving institutions, writes this sort of letter, he's sending a strong message.

That message is that it is chow time, boys! Come and git it!

CIRM Board Chairman Robert Klein also got his hands dirty, according to Reynolds:

Before lobbying CIRM staff, Reed asked for an opinion from Klein, who recommended that he write the letter. While Reed claims that he didn't fully understand the prohibition on board members' interference, Klein can't assert ignorance. Although he now says that he's "learned something," Klein was Proposition 71's primary author - not to mention the leader of the campaign to win voter approval.

This is part of a distinct pattern by Klein, who repeatedly chooses heavy-handed tactics and misleading statements over transparency and accountability. He routinely dismisses public process, and seems reluctant to assume the ethical obligations of a public official.

The science climate has changed since the passage of Proposition 71 and its structural problems continue. In light of the new science breakthroughs and the continuing questionable decision making, perhaps it's time not to borrow billions of dollars for human cloning research in a state once again drowning in red ink.

Ramesh Ponnuru Exposes MSM Stem Cell Hypocricy

Over at The Corner, Ramesh Ponnuru exposes some hypocricy from a Newsweek science reporter named Sharon Begley. When Bush limited funding, it was taking the last hope away from sick and dying patients. Now that iPSCs have been discovered, stem cell science is merely one more mundane area of study:

While the research was once hailed as leading directly to cures--by turning stem cells into neuronal cells that could be implanted in patients with Parkinson's disease, say--it now looks like something much more mundane: another laboratory tool to study different diseases, yielding insights that would launch the slow, years-long search for new therapies.

She obviously didn't read that ESCs are the "greatest scientific breakthrough in human history."

Get your stories straight, guys!

Lead into Gold: ESCR Hype Continues

"The scientists" were thrown a bit by the iPSC breakthrough, but they are in a full counter attack mode with the help of a compliant media. Here is an example. A researcher named Hans Keirstead, gave a speech and somehow got a full story out of it that is exclusively about his views in the Arizona Star. From the story:

But scientists deeply involved in human embryonic stem-cell research are unlikely to scrap years of work, however controversial, to start over with the new skin-cell technology, said one noted for cutting-edge achievements in this field. "I do think a great deal of this work could be done with the skin-cell-derived stem cells. But we'd have to start completely over, from scratch, and we are not going to slow down to do that, not at this point," said Hans Keirstead, a neurobiologist and stem-cell researcher at the University of California-Irvine.

Really? From scratch, meaning as if no knowledge has been obtained from previous work on ES cells? Really?

And of course, we get some inaccurate reporting:

Speaking at University Medical Center, Keirstead outlined his progress, which has taken off in the past three years--after California sidestepped President Bush's ban on federal funding for research using human embryos.

Sigh. There is no ban on federal funding of ESCR, indeed there has been about $160 million spent in human ESCR since 2001-2007. Second, California's decision wasn't a sidestep at all. Bush never tried to prevent states or private sources from funding the research, and moreover, California funds cloning research. Don't get me started again on bad stem cell reporting!

Since then, Keirstead and his team at the Reeve-Irvine Research Center (named for the late actor Christopher Reeve, who suffered a devastating spinal-cord injury) have used these new stem-cell lines to restore full mobility to rats paralyzed by spinal cord injuries...Keirstead's work is expected to set the stage for the first human clinical trial in the world using embryonic stem cells, possibly as early as next year.

Ah, the Geron research which, we have been told for the last four years, will lead to human studies "next year." (Maybe this time it will be true.) And, of course, adult stem cells are already in human trials having restored feeling and some limited mobility to paralyzed spinal cord injury patients using their own olfactory stem cells.

Embryonic stem cells--taken from 5-day-old embryos discarded by fertility clinics--"have the potential to address every single human disorder," Keirstead said. "They are the greatest single scientific advance in human history, with the potential to develop into any kind of cell in the human body."

In human history? Really? Plus, using embryos still leaves the problem of tissue rejection for most conditions and the problem of tumors. The iPS cells would not have the rejection issue, coming, in theory, from a patient's own body. The teratoma issue might still be a problem, but then, adult stem cells will also continue to progress. And in any case, pluripotency in the Petri dish remains theoretical since it hasn't actually been done.

iPSC research is not going to end ESCR. Indeed, studies on ES cells may well be required to improve the technique, but this can probably be done with the Bush approved lines. What iPSC research has the distinct possibility of doing is to make human cloning for stem cell research superfluous. And that is to be celebrated.

"Lead Into Gold:" Stem Cell Counter Attack

If anyone thought that the pro human cloners would fold up their tents and steal away after the news was released that patient-specific, pluripotent stem cells had been derived from normal skin cells, they just didn't understand how fervently some scientists and their camp followers want to clone human life--and how hopeful some are that the stem cell issue can be the vehicle that wins the culture war. Case in point: Science Live's Christopher Wanjek. who bemoans the breakthrough because it could "stifle" science. From his column:

Great news, maybe. Never has such a breakthrough been so worrisome to scientists. The discovery, albeit promising, might stifle stem cell research or send it down a dead-end path, for it is now harder than ever to secure funding to study the best source of embryonic stem cells--that is, embryos.

The controversy issue isn't scientific, it is ethical. If methods of deriving pluripotent cells can be obtained in ways all can accept, it should be cause for celebration and funding. And it shouldn't stop with iPSCs--all potential alternatives should be explored.

The two teams weren't motivated by ethical reasons to look for an alternative method to produce pluripotent cells. Thomson, after all, is a pioneer of using human embryos and helped launch the research field in 1998. Rather, these scientists wanted a simpler approach, for human embryos are expensive and difficult to manipulate.

Not necessarily so. Thomson said that he had real reservations about ESCR and said that anyone who didn't should think twice. Specifically Thomson stated:

"If human embryonic stem cell research does not make you at least a little bit uncomfortable, you have not thought about it enough," he said. "I thought long and hard about whether I would do it."

But back to Wanjek:

As a result of their discovery, lifting the ban on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research will be more challenging than ever, because politicians and the public who supports them are under the false belief that something better has come along. And it hasn't...

This is highly debatable. Human SCNT hasn't worked yet. ES cells can't be used safely in humans because of tumors--which could also be problem for the new stem cells. And effort must still go into the iPSC approach.

Still, the great breakthrough has slowed the Oklahoma Land Race mentality to promote human cloning into merely a mad dash. But the promoters of "unfettered science" in Senator Specter's unfortunate term, are still adamant: They want their blank check; your money as they crush your ethical concerns underfoot.

The current federal funding freeze has already hurt U.S. research. Japan is basking in glory, and Yamanaka might win a Nobel Prize if the new technique works. America's Thomson essentially borrowed Yamanaka's technique, and his work has been supported largely with private funding.

Wrong: Thomson's iPSC study was federally funded.

A brave presidential candidate will see the new results in Cell and Science, connect that to a breakthrough announced two weeks ago in Nature on monkey [cloned] embryonic stem cells, and then promise to increase funding for all kinds of embryonic stem cells to usher in an era of regenerative medicine.

That kind of a blank check mentality that promotes human cloning will no longer sell. Any embryonic stem cell research needed to perfect the iPSC approach can be done with approved lines. It will be more efficient and cheaper than cloning. I think this breakthrough defangs the issue for 2008 unless something else unexpected happens.

James Thomson said the stem cell wars are over. Not yet. There are a lot of powerful folk who don't want there to be any limits. However, I do think this could be Gettysburg or Midway: the war remains but the tide may have actually turned.

"Cat and Dog Liberation Army" Terrorize LA Mayor's SISTER

This "anonymous communique" posted on the Animal Liberation Press Office Website--a favored animal rights terrorists' method of getting their message out (reminds one of the jihadists, doesn't it?)--illustrates vividly the raw nihilism and lack of comity of the terrorist wing of the animal liberation movement. From a group calling itself the "Cat and Dog Liberation Army:"

Received anonymously

On the night of monday november the 12 we hit the house of deborah villar. If the name sounds familiar its cause shes the sister of the mayor of los angeles, california. We spent the last couple months doing some recon at the department of los angeles animal shelters. We even saw places like the rooms they bump off animals. What haunted us most were the wide eyes, wide eyes with the most terrified expressions we ever saw. The stk web site has a video that doesn't show the half of it.

Sorry if you take this the wrong way but we read about a protest at deborahs house. But we know that in order to change the behavior of a mental case like antonio villaraigosa and make him do whats right for these wide eyed animals who still haunt us is to hit him harder and harder. The mayor is the person who has bloody hands who appointed the dirt bag Boks. The mayor is the person who can make the killing come to an end. This is why we covered deborahs black suv with tons of stripper and poured red paint all over the steps, walkway and fancy ornamental light fixtures at [address omitted]. Villaraigosa deserves to be bumped off like the dogs and cats we witnessed with their eyes wide, terrified before they were bumped off. He got off way to easy."

cat and dog liberation army

Veiled threats of murder and vicious vandalism, without a peep of protest from the likes of PETA. Hmmm. PETA kills dogs and cats. I'll bet if the friends and family of Ingrid Newkirk faced such outrageous and criminal attack, she would find it within her compassionate little heart to complain.

Debating at the Holocaust Museum of Houston

Kathryn Tucker, the lawyer for Compassion and Choices (formerly Hemlock Society) and I will debate assisted suicide (which she insists on calling "aid in dying") Tuesday night at the Holocaust Museum of Houston. Our presentations are part of a much larger series entitled "Medical Ethics and the Holocaust: How Healing Becomes Killing--Eugenics, Euthanasia and Extermination."

Apparently, the event can be viewed live over the Internet from this page at the Museum site. We begin at 6:00PM Central Time. I speak first for 30 minutes. Tucker goes second. And then we take questions from the audience.

Tucker is one of the most able pro assisted- suicide advocates around. It should make for an interesting night.

60 MINUTES Good Program on "Awakenings"

60 Minutes and Anderson Cooper did a good job tonight on the hope that now clearly exists for at least some patients in a minimally conscious state. The show focused on the Ambien awakenings, which we have discussed here many times at SHS and in my articles. I was also pleased to note that Anderson had a doctor acknowledge that about 40% of patients diagnosed as persistent vegetative state, are wrongly so identified.

But true to form among the media, Cooper went out of his way to distinguish Terri Schiavo from any of these cases--even though her autopsy said that her brain was consistent with either a PVS or a MCS. Moreover, these patients were given the opportunity to benefit from experimental therapies. Terri was denied such potentially life-saving care--as well as normal rehabilitation attempts--because Michael Schivo adamantly refused and Judge Greer stubbornly and repeatedly denied permission for Terri to receive such care--even though there would have been be no harm in trying and some experts said she could be improved.

Another point Cooper should have noted is the awful truth that we dehydrate to death both conscious and unconscious people in all 50 states based in this country--not based on medical decisions but on subjective and potentially discriminatory quality of life determinations. Tackling that topic in a hard-hitting way would be a worthy topic for 60 Minutes--albeit one that would compel them to be politically incorrect, which epitomizing the Establishment, is not the show's strong suit.

Still, all in all, congratulations to Anderson Cooper and 60 Minutes for a good and important segment.

"Balance" in the Assisted Suicide Debate

The Canadian television show, "The Verdict" which featured my good friend, Mark Pickup in the third segment, is so typical of the pro assisted suicide public affairs media explorations of the issue. First, notice how the question is posed:

Are Canadian laws robbing people of the right to choose the time and place of their passing?

Second, the balance of the show was completely skewed--three against one in Mark's segment, four if you include the moderator who asked no tough questions of the pro side and clearly rooted for assisted suicide. Third, in Mark's segment, the conversation focused on one case of a woman who committed suicide because she was in excruciating pain, without addressing why she was allowed to be in such pain. Fourth, most assisted suicides aren't about people being in pain that cannot be controlled--that is just the way it is sold.

Mark did a good job. I have been in his shoes and it isn't easy to speak in the situation where family members who want to go the other way are also arguing. But that is what the media thinks of as balance.

In the last segment, it was two for and one against assisted suicide, and one clueless commentator even said there were no abuses in Holland! It then descended into raw emotionalism, ideological assertions, claims that only religion is the basis for opposition, with few accurate facts. No detailed discussion of hospice. No promotion of suicide prevention, etc..

So typical of the MSM on this issue: Ignorant. Biased. Skewed. With the moderator, one Paula Todd, clearly rooting for one side, as her final emotional commentary made clear, in one of the most astonishing assertions of radical individualism I have ever seen: "If death is so important, why leave it to the amateurs?" Sickening, really.

Keeping Health Care Costs Down: NYT Misses the Boat

The New York Times has a humongous but very disappointing editorial in today's paper about the various issues we will have to address as a nation to keep health care costs down. Unfortunately, the editorialist ignores the big issues and manages to use a lot of words to say very little. First, an overview of the solutions the Times suggested:

Geography: Some areas of the country have more economical health care than others, without much difference in outcome: "If the entire nation could bring its costs down to match the lower-spending regions, the country could cut perhaps 20 to 30 percent off its health care bill, a tremendous saving."

Stick to What Works: "The sad truth is that less than half of all medical care in the United States is supported by good evidence... If doctors had better information on which treatments work best for which patients, and whether the benefits were commensurate with the costs, needless treatment could be junked, the savings could be substantial..."

Managed Care: "Managed care techniques are creeping back into some health plans, especially for services apt to be overused, but too heavy a hand would most likely produce another backlash."

Information Technologies: Increased computerization is needed: "There is little doubt that widespread computerization could greatly reduce the paperwork burden on doctors and hospitals, head off medication errors, and reduce the costly repetition of diagnostic tests as patients move from one doctor to another."

Other issues mentioned: Prevention, wellness programs, disease management, and drug prices, none of which offer great savings.

Here are 10 more difficult issues that involve cost contained that the Times' timid editorialist didn't address:

1. The cost of paying for undocumented/illegal aliens. This is the elephant in the living room that too many advocates refuse to address for fear of being branded xenophobic or worse.
2. Health care rationing. Is it needed? How would it be imposed?
3. The cost of paying for uninsured people at emergency rooms.
4. The cost of 50 state private insurance markets instead of a national market.
5. The cost of full tab health care systems. Any nationalized or required private insurance system will have to be bare bones to be affordable.
6. The cost of defensive medicine. The NYT generally opposes tort reform (as generally do I), but it needs to address this issue.
7. The lack of competition as to price in the current system.
8. The cost of over utilization due to low deductibles and co-pays.
9. The puzzling continued high cost of medical technology despite economies of scale.
10. The place for private health savings accounts.

The cost of health care is a huge issue that we need to discuss in the coming election. But bland editorials that don't say very much--not to mention anything controversial--are not the kind of hard-hitting opinion pieces we need to stimulate the painful and provocative debate required to come up with a democratically attained solution to this increasingly pressing problem.

UK Circus Animals Not Mistreated

Animal liberationists are ever about the task of impeding any and all uses of animals for any human purpose. One target here and abroad is entertainment, particularly circuses, based on the claim that circuses abuse their animals. This is a dubious assertion, given that healthy animals are needed for the circus to thrive. But be that as it may, in the UK, the charges have been proven specious. From the story in the Telegraph:

A ban on using wild animals in travelling circuses because of welfare concerns is not supported by scientific evidence, a Government report has declared. The chairman of the Circus Working Group reported his findings following proposals, outlined by the Government in March last year, to ban certain non-domesticated animals from travelling circuses under the Animal Welfare Act...

The new report concludes: "There appears to be little evidence to demonstrate that the welfare of animals kept in traveling circuses is any better or worse than that of animals kept in other captive environments." The panel members, who were nominated by animal welfare groups and industry representatives, said they found no evidence that regular transportation caused an adverse affect on animal welfare.

That won't settle the matter, of course. Animal liberationists believe that any human use of animals, is by definition, abuse. And they want to shut down all animal parks and zoos as well as circuses. But it is good that the government is now less likely to harass legitimate circuses that use animals to bring fun and joy to human children and those who are young at heart.

The Folly of Proposition 71's "Fools Gold Rush"

California is once again sinking into the quicksand of red ink. Latest estimates show that the state must cut its budget by $10 billion! This will come out of the hides of university students, poor people needing health care, and other areas of urgent state concern.

But "the scientists" will still reap their $300 million a year in borrowed money to pursue human cloning research! For as I pointed out back in 2004 during the campaign, under the wording of Proposition 71, which is now embedded in the state constitution:

Biotech companies and researchers must to be paid an average of $295 million per year no matter how bad the California economy becomes. The CSCRCA is a constitutional amendment that would require funds to "be continuously appropriated without regard to fiscal year, be available only for the purposes provided herein, and shall not be subject to appropriation or transfer by the Legislature or the Governor for any other purpose." In other words, the measure explicitly removes funding decisions from the California legislature. This means that even if Los Angeles falls into the Pacific, biotech researchers must receive their $295 million in research grants every year.

This was just one reason why Investor's Business Daily once called Proposition 71 a "fools gold rush." Indeed. Don't the New Jersey voters who turned down their own version of Proposition 71 look prescient now?

From Lead Into Gold: "Stem Cells the Right Way"

Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson has a very good column in today's paper about the recent stem cell breakthrough. After giving President Bush due credit for the part his policy played in the recent development, and recounting some of the past debate, he suggests that the pro-ESCR/human cloning impetus comes from a belief in raw utilitarianism. The whole thing is worth reading, but I'll just focus on his conclusion:

Standing in opposition to utilitarianism is a different philosophy--that all men are created equal and endowed with inalienable rights. This belief in human dignity has theological roots for some--but it is no less reasonable than the alternatives. And this commitment has informed medical ethics in the past. In 1964, the World Medical Association declared: "In medical research on human subjects, considerations related to the well-being of the human subject should take precedence over the interests of science and society."

The human subject, in the case of embryonic research, is unrecognizable. But it is genetically distinct from other lives and undeniably human--a human at its earliest stage of development. It is not a superstition of the Dark Ages to believe that it should be valued, instead of discarded like cracked pottery.

In some quarters, advances such as this breakthrough will not be well received. A number of companies have a financial stake in embryonic research, and their stocks fell on the news. Others have an emotional investment in embryonic research because of a conviction that humanity should have unrestricted technological control over its reproductive and genetic future. "My own view," says Sen. Arlen Specter, "is that science ought to be unfettered."

But, as C.S. Lewis said, "Man's power over Nature turns out to be a power exercised by some men over other men with Nature as its instrument. . . . Each new power won by man is a power over man as well."

Now, science has demonstrated an even greater power -- the power of morally responsible technology to serve the cause of human dignity instead of undermining it.

Senator Specter's comment is ignorant of history. Unfettered science, that is science unbounded by ethics and proper moral parameters, can grow monstrous. But science in the service of the intrinsic value of human life--now that can lift the whole human race.

Valuing All Human Life: Fetus Killing is Murder in Texas

A new Texas Supreme Court decision validates a Lone Star State law that treats the killing of unborn life--other than in the abortion context--as potentially murder. From the story:

Texas laws allow the killing of a fetus to be prosecuted as murder, regardless of the fetus' stage of development, but they do not apply to abortions, the state's highest criminal court has ruled.

Wednesday's ruling by the Court of Criminal Appeals rejected an appeal by Terence Lawrence, who said his right to due process was violated because he was prosecuted for two murders for killing a woman and her 4- to 6-week-old fetus. The court ruled unanimously that state laws declaring a fetus an individual with protections do not conflict with the U.S. Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade ruling that protects a woman's right to an abortion...

The Supreme Court has emphasized that states may protect human life not only once the fetus has reached viability but 'from the outset of the pregnancy,'" the court said. "The Legislature is free to protect the lives of those whom it considers to be human beings."

The "fetus" in question was actually an embryo, which is what nascent, developing humans are called from conception through the eighth week. Be that as it may, what this means is that when the personal autonomy right of a woman is not at issue--which is the unique circumstance involved with abortion--federal and state laws are increasingly protecting the intrinsic value of unborn life with the support of the courts. Good. All human life should be deemed worthy of protecting.

This has also been the ethical issue involved in human cloning and ESCR. Hopefully, the new stem cell breakthrough will eventually bring that contentious issue to an end as James Thomson and Ian Wilmut have predicted.

The Good News Just Keeps On Coming: Adult Stem Cells Treat MS and Arthritis in Mice

As we celebrate the creation and potential of induced Pluripotent Stem Cells, adult stem cell research continues to bear fruit in animal and human studies. The latest is a truly exciting find out of Stanford University: Blood stem cells taken from a donor with a healthy immune system effectively treated multiple sclerosis and arthritis in mice. From the story in the Telegraph:

Thousands of patients with arthritis and multiple sclerosis are given new hope today by scientists who have developed a way to alter the immune system.

Both conditions are caused when the immune system becomes faulty and attacks the body. Scientists have discovered that by injecting stem cells, the body's building blocks, taken from a healthy donor into the patient they can effectively transplant the donor's immune system and cure the condition.

Until now, such a transplant would have been possible only by giving the patient aggressive treatments such as radiotherapy to wipe out the faulty immune system before carrying out a bone marrow transplant to provide new cells. But under the new system patients would be treated with a toxin to clear out the old immune system before being injected with healthy stem cells that would form a new immune system.

The procedure has been performed only on mice but the researchers at Stanford University School of Medicine in California said the "benefits are potentially huge" for humans and could be used to treat MS and rheumatoid arthritis.

The human cloning research advocate Irving Weissman, who is also controversial for wanting to create mice with human brains, is the moving force behind this research. Good on him. Here's some more from the story:

When the team transplanted new, blood-forming stem cells into the mice, they became attached to the bone marrow and established a new blood and immune system. In this way, stem cells can be taken from a donor and implanted into a person with a good tissue match who has an auto-immune disease, such as multiple sclerosis, so that the new immune system will no longer attack the nerves of the body. First, the researchers need to do more animal testing and then to develop a way to carry out the same kind of surgical strike on human blood-­forming cells.

That last bit is worth noting because it demonstrates, once again, the utter falsity of animal liberationists' ideologically-driven contention that humans receive no benefit from animal research.

Stem Cell Lead Into Gold: Analyzing the Media's Bias in the Debate

My pal Joseph Bottum over at First Things had a piece on the FT blog the other day (that I partially quoted previously), concerning the great breakthrough. But his analysis ranged beyond the apparent capability now to obtain ethical pluripotent stem cells. He suggests that the wild media bias on this issue--which we have documented repeatedly here at SHS--was a stalking horse for an anti-religious and anti-anti-abortion agenda:

But there were reasons for all the hype. I have long suspected that science, in the context of the editorial page of the New York Times, was simply a stalking-horse for something else. In fact, for two something-elses: a chance to discredit America's religious believers and an opportunity to put yet another hedge around the legalization of abortion...

Shake loose from the narrative of anti-science fundamentalists and pro-science liberals, however, and a different story starts to be visible. Abortion skewed the political discussion of all this, pinning the left to a defense of science it doesn't actually hold. The more natural line is agitation against Frankenfoods and all genetic modification, particularly given the environmentalism to which the campaign against global warming is tying the left.

Narratives about positions on public policy are like enormous steamships: It takes a long time to turn them around. But if the news of stem-cell breakthroughs prove accurate, we may well see over the next few years a gradual reversal in news stories and editorials. Watch for it, now that abortion is out of the equation: Much less hype about all the miracle cures that stem cells will bring us, more suspicion about the cancers and genetic pollution that may result, and just about the same amount of bashing of religious believers--this time for their ignorant support of science.

I think there is much to what Bottum writes--particularly of the far Left--but I don't think that liberal media modernists will turn against science because reporters generally see themselves as its boosters.

Moreover, the way I look at it, an even bigger issue driving the media herd in their often terrible stem cell reporting was--and is--a shared and visceral hatred of President Bush and a deep desire to destroy his policies, in this case his embryonic stem cell funding rules. Remember last year when a relatively minor proof of principle experiment at Advanced Cell Technology resulted in wild--and inaccurate-- international headlines that embryonic stem cells had been derived without destroying embryos? (That imbroglio was covered extensively here at SHS throughout August and September of last year.)

The only reason that story received such undue prominence was that it was perceived as undercutting Bush.

While the media certainly has generally covered the iPS cell story responsibly, that bogus non breakthrough received far more breathless and excited coverage than this bona fide earthquake. Why? The media through line is a desire to hurt Bush: The former story was played as destroying his policy. This story validates it.

Stem Cell Lead into Gold: "Man Who Started Stem Cell War May End It"

As "the scientists" and industrialists who wanted to do human cloning spin the media that spending billions to perfect human SCNT is still necessary and that the new iPS cells are not really that big a deal, James Thomson, the scientist who derived the first human embryonic stem cell lines tells a different story to the New York Times. Thomson's lab also was one of the two that created the first human induced pluripotent stem cell lines. From the story:

The fact is, Dr. Thomson said in an interview, he had ethical concerns about embryonic research from the outset, even though he knew that such research offered insights into human development and the potential for powerful new treatments for disease.

"If human embryonic stem cell research does not make you at least a little bit uncomfortable, you have not thought about it enough," he said. "I thought long and hard about whether I would do it."

Thomson says that contrary to some of the biotech spinners, the ground has fundamentally changed with the discovery and expected coming improvements in the still relatively rudimentary iPS cell technology:

Now with the new technique, which involves adding just four genes to ordinary adult skin cells, it will not be long, he says, before the stem cell wars are a distant memory. "A decade from now, this will be just a funny historical footnote," Dr. Thomson said in the interview.

In the early days of his work, Thomson consulted bioethicists Alta Charo and Norman Fost for advice. I have dealt with Charo and she is a wild advocate of cloning and ESCR, as is Fost, so he wouldn't have gotten any slow down signs from them. Fost and Thomson thought that the biggest issue for people in embryonic stem cell research would be the potential power of the technology. But it was instead, the intrinsic value of human life--even at the earliest nascent developmental stage.

Thomson is glad that stem cell science can put the ethical fight behind them and get on with the science:

Four years ago he and, independently, Shinya Yamanaka of Kyoto University set out to figure out a way to mimic what an egg can do [in cloning and fertilization]. Both succeeded and both discovered that all they had to do was add four genes to the cells and the cells would turn into what look, so far, just like stem cells.

"It is actually fairly straightforward to repeat what we have done," Dr. Thomson said.

More work remains, but he is confident that the path ahead is clear. "Isn't it great to start a field and then to end it," he said.

Let us all earnestly hope on this Thanksgiving Day that Thomson is right, and that the great stem cell war has ended in a victory for everyone.

Happy Thanksgiving

Abraham Lincoln, one of my great heroes, declared the first Thanksgiving National Holiday on October 3, 1863 in the midst of the worst crisis in American history. Here is what he proclaimed:

The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God.

In the midst of a civil war of unequalled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign States to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military conflict; while that theatre has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union. Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defence, have not arrested the plough, the shuttle, or the ship; the axe had enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege and the battle-field; and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom.

No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy. It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and voice by the whole American People. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to his tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity and Union.

For the American friends--and readers who are not so friendly--of Secondhand Smoke: Happy Thanksgiving. Enjoy your turkey or tofu, as your personal tastes prefer. We have so much for which to be grateful. Let us pause and really give thanks for our freedom, our prosperity, our cohesion as a society even in the midst of bitter divisions which are tame when compared to those faced by Lincoln--and the potential we all have to serve each other. Enjoy the day and thanks to everyone near and far for visiting Secondhand Smoke.

Lead into Gold Continued: The NRO Symposium

The NRO has published a mini-symposium containing the views of William Hurlbut, Jennifer Lahl (of the CBC), Carter Snead, and other notable commentators about the great stem cell breakthrough. They are all worth reading.

But I thought Leon Kass's perspective was most worthy of discussion here for the direction in which he would now like us to go:

Reprogramming of human somatic cells to pluripotency is an enormously significant achievement, one that boosters of medical progress and defenders of human dignity can celebrate without qualification. The evidence in the papers released Tuesday is complete and compelling: Cells as versatile and useful as embryonic stem cells, obtained without embryo creation and destruction or the need to exploit women for eggs. Best of all, these cells can be created from everyone--permitting the study of cells with different diseases and genetic makeup and, when stem-cell-based therapies eventually become available, providing rejection-proof tissues for personalized transplantation.

The ethical and political benefits may be equally great. The alleged need for so-called therapeutic cloning--cloning embryos for research--is now pas'e`. We can therefore disentangle the "life issue" of embryo-destruction from the "dignity issue" of baby manufacture, and enact a legislative ban on cloning and other degrading forms of baby-making, as recommended unanimously by the President's Council on Bioethics: Prohibit all attempts to conceive a child by any means other the union of egg and sperm, both obtained from adults. Erecting such a barrier against the brave new world would be a great achievement, one that pro-lifers can now happily embrace without reservation. (My emphasis.)

Very interesting and I agree. What would be the bases for opposing this except that the real agenda of this area of science isn't stem cell cures but fetal farming, genetic engineering, and eugenic control.

Yearning for Human Extinction

So much anti-humanism being expressed by people who live at a time of the greatest prosperity in history and who are members of the first moral species in the known history of the universe. The latest example of self-loathing concludes a book review written for Nature (no link) by one Chris D. Thomas, a biology professor at the University of York in the UK. Reviewing a book about the threats to our ecosystem, Thomas yearns for the end of the human race:

The geological perspective of Terra is bizarrely reassuring. Humans will presumably be gone within a few million years, perhaps sooner. If the past that [Michael] Novacek [the book's author] describes is a guide to the future, global ecosystem processes will be restored some tens of thousands to a million years after our demise, and new forms of life over the ensuing millions of years will exploit the denuded planet we leave behind. Thirty million years on, things will be back to normal, albeit a very different ‘normal’ from before. It is good to be optimistic. The problem is living here in the meantime.

But "Normal" is the merciless tooth and claw environment of survival of the fittest. "Normal" is a world in which no creatures can appreciate the beauty and grandeur of their pristine biosphere. "Normal" is a pointless and meaningless existence in which creatures are born, eat, copulate, defecate, and then are killed violently or die of disease without the possibility of care or palliation.

Thomas, like others who see humans as blights on the beautiful planet--whether they know it or not--are nature worshipers. But what makes the Tetons or a beautiful coral island so amazing is our unique ability to feel awe. It took 1 billion years for a species to emerge--us--that is conscious and capable of "caring about the planet." Indeed, if we go belly-up as a species and "paradise" returns, what difference will it make if if there is nobody around to appreciate it?

Lead Into Gold: Credit for Hurlbut Where Credit is Due

The editors of the NRO lauded yesterday's big stem cell announcement and the part played by President Bush, also credit my pal Bill Hurlbut for his strenuous and often selfless efforts--which I witnessed and that including late nights, travel away from family, castigation by some in the science community and even among pro lifers--to forge a societal consensus and bridge our severe cultural divides by pushing the search for "alternative" sources of pluripotent stem cells. Bill's pet project toward this end was (and is) ANT, but he always enthusiastically supported other approaches--believing that bridging the ethical gap was crucial for science and society. In any event. I am so glad the NRO editors have recognized his hefty contribution, writing:

For several years now, the president has also clearly understood that the potential for scientific alternatives to the destruction of embryos could offer a powerful means to that end. Helped along by a variety of experts who saw that promise--perhaps most notably William Hurlbut of Stanford University, who was a member of Bush's bioethics council--he came to recognize that stem-cell science could solve the ethical quandary stem-cell science had created.

As early as 2005, Bush was speaking about "ethical ways of getting the same kind of cells now taken from embryos without violating human life or dignity." And after trying unsuccessfully to get the Congress to support such new avenues of research, he acted on his own through an executive order this summer.

The researchers who achieved this week's advance were not pro-lifers. They did not think it was unethical to destroy human embryos for research. But they did think there were scientific advantages to getting pluripotent cells without the need for embryos; and they knew, too, that there would be political and social advantages to it. By standing firm on principle, President Bush and many other pro-lifers made that latter point clear, and that surely played a part in getting us to what seems increasingly likely to be the end of the stem-cell debate.

This leaves the nation with a crucial lesson for what will certainly be many ethical quandaries to come as biotechnology advances: The answer to unethical science is not to give up on ethics, but rather to pursue ethical science.

It's always good to see credit where credit is due--for both the president and for Bill.

Cell Reprogramming: "The End of Therapeutic Cloning"

An article in the Telegraph was certainly music to my ears, if you will pardon the somewhat inapt metaphor:

Landmark research published today by scientists in America and Japan is likely to render plans to clone human embryos redundant in the quest for revolutionary new treatments. Dolly the Sheep scientist Prof Ian Wilmut exclusively revealed to The Daily Telegraph last week his intention to adopt the technique and abandon work on therapeutic human cloning because his is convinced that this new work overcomes key practical and ethical issues. Both research groups have found a way to reprogram human skin cells so they cannot be distinguished from embryonic stem cells.

Although at an early stage, the technique holds out the promise of turning a scrape of cells from inside the cheek into embryonic like cells which can be used to repair almost any part of the body without having to clone human embryos.

This will spur research to develop these so called stem cells into the next generation treatments of degenerative diseases such as Parkinson's, diabetes and Motor Neuron Disease, or repair damage caused by a stroke or heart attack.

As if to underline the significance of the breakthrough, Sir Martin Evans, the British stem cell pioneer who won the Nobel prize this year, said today that his team at Cardiff University will now study the new method to help make it simpler, safer and more straightforward so it could be used on patients. "We have been waiting for this."

That last point is key: This is just the beginning. The technique remains to be perfected. But if the Telegraph writer is right--and I think he is--treasure and irreplaceable human effort that might have gone into human cloning will instead be invested into this very hopeful avenue of biotechnological research. Hooray.

Lead Into Gold: What The Scientists Are Saying

The science journal Cell has a great summary article today summarizing what the great announcement of the success of human cell reprogramming may mean (no link available):

Direct reprogramming of somatic [body] cells to a pluripotent state, thus reversing the developmental arrow of time, is considered by some to be the “holy grail” of stem cell research. Once the results in human cells are confirmed, these advances will enable the creation of patient-specific stem cell lines to study different disease mechanisms in the laboratory. Such cellular models also have the potential to dramatically increase the efficiency of drug discovery and to provide valuable tools for toxicology testing. Furthermore, this reprogramming system could make the idea of customized patient-specific screening and therapy both possible and economically feasible. Finally, the work will have a powerful impact on the intense debate regarding the moral, religious, and political aspects of ES cell research.

The journal suggests that human ESCR is not yet "obsolete" because much remains to be learned about pluripotency. But if seems clear: If this work holds and if scientists improve upon it, we are into a new and beneficial era that everyone can support.

Can we say, "Nobel Prize?"

Sour Grapes: The Scientists Try to Hold Back the Tide

As I suspected would happen, I just listened to an ABC Radio report, and a Harvard scientist said the new stem cells were "not ready for prime time" because they can't yet be used in human patients. Gee, they have never said that about embryonic stem cells. Instead, they insisted we go forward full speed ahead. We were told they were the only hope. Yadda, Yadda Yadda.

Tumors remain a problem before human use can be attempted. Indeed, one of the indicators of pluripotency in the studies was the capacity of the cells to create teratomas! But these cells will permit the research that scientists said they wanted from pluripotent cells. They will be able to be used in drug testing, cell differentiation, and etc. Adult and umbilical cord blood stem cells will continue to be used in human trials. Perhaps one day, the iPS Cells will also be usable in patients.

But until then, this is still BIG and "the scientists" can't change that.

"Turning Lead Into Gold:" More on the Big Stem Cell Breakthrough

There are a lot of stories out about the big breakthrough, although as I suspected the energy of excitement is missing in many media reports. Still, the news is all over the place. Here's a small sampling:

- Los Angeles Times:

Human skin cells can be reprogrammed to behave almost exactly like embryonic stem cells, a discovery that provides a road map for creating personalized biological repair kits without ethical strings attached, scientists reported today.

- Wall Street Journal Online:

In the quest to treat difficult diseases, researchers have created human embryonic stem cells without destroying embryos or using hard-to-get eggs. The technique may prove to be easier, cheaper, and more ethically appealing than an alternative approach that requires cloning.

- My pal Joseph Bottum at the First Things Blog:

..we are about to witness something like victory in the fight over embryonic stem cells. And that will open a nest of interesting questions, beginning with this one: All those editorialists and columnists who have, over the past ten years, howled and howled about Luddites and religious fanatics thwarting science and frustrating medicine--were they really interested in technology and health, or were they just using all that as a handy stick with which to whack their political opponents?...The people who turn out actually to have believed in the power of science are the pro-lifers--the ones who said that a moral roadblock is not, in point of fact, an outrageous hindrance, for scientists will always find another, less-objectionable way to achieve their goals.

- The Associated Press:
Scientists have made ordinary human skin cells take on the chameleon-like powers of embryonic stem cells, a startling breakthrough that might someday deliver the medical payoffs of embryo cloning without the controversy.

- Reuters:

Researchers announced on Tuesday that they had found a way to make powerful human embryonic stem cells without using cloning technology and without making a human embryo.

This early work will be multiplied now as, in the tradition of science, many other researchers jump in to perfect the technique. Whether these cells will be used directly in therapies remains an open issue--remember the tumors!--but there is no question that many of the basic research goals scientists wanted from pluripotent stem cells can now be achieved, and more easily since ESCR remains a difficult process and human cloning has not yet been done.

Now, with adult stem cells and umbilical cord blood stem cells moving ahead in human trials, along with other areas of ethical biotechnology we often discuss here at SHS, regenerative medicine looks to be both beneficial and ethical. Who could ask for anything more?

Ethical Stem Cell Breakthrough! "Like Turning Lead Into Gold"

A huge advancement in stem cell research--and a stake in the heart of human cloning--was announced today. Two different scientific teams have "reprogrammed" skin and other adult cells and reverted them back to a pluripotent stem cell state. (The altered cells are being called "Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells" or iPS.) One of the researchers was James Thomson--the Wisconsin scientist who first derived human stem cell lines. As he wrote in SCIENCE (no link available):

The human iPS cells described here meet the defining criteria we originally proposed for human ES cells, with the significant exception that the iPS cells are not derived from embryos. (My emphasis.)

This is a huge development. As would-be human cloner Robert Lanza, of Advanced Cell Technology put it in Wired, employing a fine and apt metaphor, "It's the holy grail. It's like turning lead into gold." And it is the reason why, as we discussed last week here at SHS, that Ian Wilmut has exited the human cloning business.

This puts a stake through the heart of therapeutic cloning. The justification for cloning human embryos, we were told, was to obtain "tailored" pluripotent stem cells from individual patients with specific diseases and disabilities. Well, that is precisely what reprogramming can do--with no need to exploit women for their eggs, no need for creating and destroying embryos, and no need to ban implantation. Now, cloning could still help with learning how to genetically engineer the human race, fetal farming, and birthing cloned babies--but these will never be supported by the American people. The ability to outlaw all human cloning now improves, and even if Big Biotech is able to prevent that--the money will dry up. After all, why spend billions of dollars and all those man and woman hours of talented researchers over perhaps a decade when we have turned lead into gold? And it is ethical!

As I wrote this morning in the NRO, President Bush deserves great credit for this breakthrough.

I believe that many of these exciting "alternative" methods would not have been achieved but for President Bush's stalwart stand promoting ethical stem-cell research. Indeed, had the president followed the crowd instead of leading it, most research efforts would have been devoted to trying to perfect ESCR and human-cloning research--which, despite copious funding, have not worked out yet as scientists originally hoped.

So thank you for your courageous leadership, Mr. President. Because of your willingness to absorb the brickbats of the Science Establishment, the Media Elite, and weak-kneed Republican and Democratic politicians alike--we now have the very real potential of developing thriving and robust stem-cell medicine and scientific research sectors that will bridge, rather than exacerbate, our moral differences over the importance and meaning of human life.

We are entering a new era that would have been unthinkable just a year or two ago. The media will try to hedge and underplay the breakthrough. "The scientists" will say we need to do all of the research. But ethics have prevailed. I believe the drive to clone has been struck a mortal blow--as well, perhaps, as the need for ESCR using human embryos.

A great day for science and ethics!

More Good News From Ethical Biotechnology: Potential Gene Therapy Treatment for Parkinson's

Why don't the American media report these stories (as if I didn't know)? A new experimental gene therapy treatment seems to alleviate symptoms in Parkinson's disease. From the Telegraph story:

Evidence that a breakthrough has been achieved in gene therapy for serious brain diseases has come with the release of the hard evidence that it works in Parkinson's disease. Patients were given injections of billions of copies of genetically altered viruses into parts of the brain

The world's first gene therapy for a brain disease brought about significant improvements in the mobility of Parkinson's sufferers. American doctors said it could also herald a landmark in the treatment of other neurological disorders, such as Alzheimer's or epilepsy but there was a lingering doubt that the reports by a dozen patients of improvements of up to 65 per cent in mobility could be anecdotal or due to the placebo effect.

Today, Prof David Eidelberg of the of The Feinstein Institute for Medical Research in Manhasset, New York, and colleagues report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences evidence that the brain chemistry of the patients has been altered by gene therapy, ending concerns that the evidence that it worked depended too much on what the patients said and not enough on objective measures. "It is the first solid evidence of benefit from gene therapy. It is objective," Prof Eidelberg told The Daily Telegraph.

The new approach is going into Phase II human trials, meaning the tests will be to determine safety and efficacy:

The researchers are about to start a larger Phase 2 study in Parkinson's disease this year and a preliminary trial with epilepsy sufferers. The success of this trial lays the foundation for the use of gene therapy against neurological diseases generally, notably Alzheimer's and epilepsy.

Warning: We have had high hopes for gene therapy before, only to have them crushed. Moreover, if new treatment approaches fail, it is usually in this phase of the clinical trial. But this seems like the real deal. And it is entirely ethical.

It Will Kill You AND It Smells Good!

The below quoted piece of twisted thinking was posted on an assisted suicide list serve whose members are obsessed with "self deliverance" methods (my emphasis):

If you are planning to self-deliver with helium and want to make your own "hood" but cannot find turkey-roasting bags, you might consider panettone bags. Panettone is an Italian sweet bread that is sold around Christmastime and is shipped to many places outside Italy. A one-kilogram panettone (2.2 lbs.), which comes in a box that is 7 1/2" square and 7 1/2" high (19.5 cm.) is wrapped in a very strong clear bag that measures 15" x 19" (39 cm. x 49 cm.). A plus: the bag smells wonderful (though this might no longer be true after the bag has been inflated with helium).

--Ruth von Fuchs President and Secretary Right to Die Society of Canada

Unbelievable.

Meanwhile, the 2008 international convention of the World Federation of Right to Die Societies will be meeting in Paris. Hmmmm. I like Paris. Maybe I'll attend.

BIG Stem Cell News Tomorrow

Stay tuned.

Xenophobia Against the Obese

This story is unbelievable. New Zealand is refusing to let a woman emigrate from the UK to be with her husband because she is too fat. Wouldn't want to let someone in who might cost the nationalized health care system too much money, don't you know. From the story:

Robyn Toomath, a spokesman for Fight the Obesity Epidemic and an endocrinologist, said the BMI limit was valid in the vast majority of people. She said she was opposed to obese people being stigmatised.

"However, the immigration department's focus is different," she said. "It cannot afford to import people into the country who are going to be a significant drain on our health resources. "You can see the logic in assessing if there is a significant health cost associated with this individual and that would be a reason for them not coming in."

Before anyone says, good, you had better be ready to go after all conduct and life circumstances that could cost health care money: How about people who sleep around? Ah, no question that they can be a drain on health care resources: The promiscuous have greater chances of STDs, HIV, unwanted pregnancy and abortion. But then, unlike looking down our noses at the obese, it is politically incorrect to judge people as wrong for having too much sex. Nope. The promiscuous get a pass.

Smokers? Well, that goes without saying, doesn't it? But it is actually a tougher call than it appears. I mean, look at all the taxes they pay on cigarettes! We wouldn't want to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs, now would we?

People with disabilities? They wouldn't dare. Unlike the obese, people with disabilities have political clout.

See what happens once this kind of thing begins? It's like the high school clique thing: Only those with unpopular unhealthy conditions will be punished.

Oh yes, did you hear? In the UK they want to prevent obese women from gaining access to IVF.