Stanford Jumps Into Cloning Fray

smackthud writes "According to this article in the Minneapolis StarTribune website Stanford University is planning to clone human embryos. Story summary says it all: 'Stanford University announced today its intention to clone human embryos, becoming the first U.S. university to publicly embrace the politically charged procedure. The intent of the project is to produce stem cells for medical research.'" Stanford has released a statement distinguishing what Stanford is doing from reproductive cloning.

Comments

victory, you say?

[Anonymous Coward]

...Begun, this clone war has......

Brave and Good

[e8johan]

"The intent of the project is to produce stem cells for medical research."

The benefits of this is to great to avoid doing it. If the cells are not cloned in the US, they will be bought from abroad, so the result will be the same anyway. Brave of Stanford to dare doing this in the US anyhow!

Re:Brave and Good

[Lars Arvestad]

Sweden will probably be a source of stem cells. This solution has been suggested by Bush's administration.

I think the decision was that US govt funded research would only be allowed on existing cell lines. At the time of the decision, Sweden supposedly had the largest number of cell lines, and would therefore be the main provider. Consequently, research funding organisations in the US have already started funding some research in Sweden.

Note that if new cell lines are produced from new embryos, even in other countries, they would not be allowed in US govt funded research.

Since the decision, there have been some suggestions of obtaining human cell lines from other sources, but I don't think it has been shown to work yet.

Re:Brave and Good

[Bunji X]

"Added bonus: it doesn't involve creating a life just to destroy it and harvest parts."

Maybe I am cynical, but I really can't see the problem. Well, I can see why some people see it as a problem, but I can't really understand them.

My view on this is that as long as the blob of cells frow which the scientists "harvest" the stem cells isn't sentient, the problem doesn't exist. It is like picking a flower or using a beetle for the sake of science. A non sentient mass of cells beeing sacrificed for a better life with less suffering for an allready suffering human beeing is not much of a problem in my book.

I really don't care much for the viewpoint of the blob of cells beeing "a potential human life". If we walk down that path we might end upp where we want to condemn preventives and equals. Imho, resarch on embryonic stem cells is not even as bad as an abortion, since aborted featueses often (always?) are more developed than the ones used for stem cell resaerch (btw, I am not against abortions). Some might argue that the featuses do respond to stimuli and pain and therefore shouldn't be used. Well, so does beetles and flowers. We still wouldn't hesitate to use them for the sake of science.

Regarding bone marrow stem cells. Yes, there are studies showing that they might have the same potential as embryonic stem cells, but afaik no conclusions have still been drawn and embryonic cells still have the most potential, even though some drawbacks have recently been discovered there too.

Ranting and Ravings

[benevold]

It would seem even the mighty media can mislead us! Maybe the perception of the average person is changing but it seems that most people can't distinguish between cloning human cells and cloning a human. Most people see cloning as the bad sci-fi movies portray it, person goes in onside of the machine, two or more people come out the other side, identical in every way. Blah BLah Blah, it goes on and on. Hopefully one of these days the journalists will do some informed research before posting these things.

Title is a little misleading

[giel]

SU researchers probably will have to clone stem cells of human embryos, which is something different (in my opinion) than cloning human embryos.

Still an interesting question remains. If they will clone stem cells, will that be a next step to the cloning of human beings? Usually having a technique means it will be used...

Cloning stem cells..

[MongooseCN]

The intent of the project is to produce stem cells for medical research.

And why isn't everyone doing this? Oh right, it's against the presidents religious beliefs. Is it really suprising that people would rather pursue research that might aid in a cure for cancer, rather than follow a law set by Bush that stem cell research is against his religious beliefs?

I'm glad.

[leereyno]

I've always been of the opinion that cloning, genetic engineering, etc were Good Things. This is technology that can potentially cure genetic diseases like cystic fibrosis or Huntington's disease in people who already suffer from it as well as prevent it from ever showing up in the first place. Then of course there is cancer. Imagine treatments that would simply repair the sections of our DNA sequence that MUST be damaged in order for any cancer to form. Forget radiation and chemotherapy that are simply attempts to kill the cancer without killing the patient. Fix the anti-cancer genes in the cancer cells and they kill themselves.

I think that genetic engineering can, in the hands of those who are honest, wise, and well intentioned, also be used to enhance human abilities without trying to alter human nature. Human nature might not be perfect, but I don't trust anyone to try and make it better. This is where genetic engineering gets risky in my opinion, when it gives people with an agenda for who and what mankind should be the tools to warp human beings into their twisted model of human behavior. Just imagine if the looney left or the religious right were to become the keepers of the technology. How many bolsheviks and bible thumpers could they create? There are already enough idiots and brainwashed buffoons in the world without a breeding program to manufacture them.

Anyway I'm glad this is being done by Stanford. Of course you'll hear nothing but screaming from the idiots of the world, but such is the burden of scientific progress. At least nowadays you don't have to worry about the inquisition murdering you for daring to contradict the codified superstition that passes for mankind's understanding of the divine.

Lee

Re:That makes them criminals

[leereyno]

I'm not sure I follow you. WHAT exactly are they doing that makes them criminals? You say that they are playing with life and the implication is that it is somehow wrong. Isn't playing with life exactly what biologists and medical researchers have been doing all along? I guess you'd rather we do without things like anti-biotics and vaccines, both of which were created/discovered by the process of playing with life that you seem to have a problem with.

Lee

W.Post: Private funding protects Stanford research

[rhwalker22]

Read The Washington Post's article, which notes: "The new institute, which will aim to create stem cell therapies for cancer and other diseases, is to be established with $12 million from an anonymous donor. Under a Bush administration policy announced last year, federally funded researchers wishing to work with human embryonic stem cells must limit their endeavors to a small number of approved cell colonies created before Aug. 9, 2001. But because the Stanford institute will be privately funded, researchers there will be able to create and experiment on new colonies."

Re:Proud of them, you should be.

[operagost]

It's not about science and religion, but science and ethics. Without making an ethics check now and then, the scientific community may find itself moving further from Hippocrates and closer to Mengele.

Bush's decision was based on his own moral standard, which does happen to have a biblical base. Others may have a moral system based on other religions, or a professional standard such as the Hippocratic Oath, or some amorphous PC nonstandard that changes from day to day, depending on which special interest group wants justification for their "lifestyle".

As we move closer to the end of the age, look for more decisions to be made based on the "common good", "world order", and "tolerance" rather than individual rights and dignity.

Here's a hint

[cat_jesus]

Your use of the word "Pro-abortion" gives your position away immediately. No matter how rational you try to make yourself sound, you kill your argument by using such rhetoric.

To answer your question, you are not a human being until you have a functioning brain. An embryo is not a human but rather human tissue with the potential to become a human. Potential is not actual. I have a penis therefor I am potentially a rapist. I am not a rapist, however.

The difference is not as subtle as you believe.

Very inaccurate...

[encino]

I'm a biochemist here at Stanford and Irv Weissman (the dude in charge of the project) is not talking about cloning at all. He's talking about taking existing stem cell lines, and swapping in new genetic material. It's a modification of existing cell lines that involves no new egg cells (or sperm cells), no fertilization, and no organismic development. Even the US Catholic League is okay with this. Besides, if it fell under the definition of human cloning, Stanford would lose federal funding, which it is certainly not willing to risk. I am very much against actual human cloning for a variety of ethical reasons, but this honestly isn't even close. Swapping interesting genes in and out of an existing cell line in order to study them is really not a big deal.

Sentience is irrelevant

[Valdrax]

I suppose you've opened the proverbial can of worms already, so I'll clarify the stance of those opposed to fetal cell research for you: When does a human life become worth protecting?

What makes childbirth a defining moment between being a human being and not a human being? If that's not the moment at which to protect a human against death, then when does it happen? Is it in the 3rd trimester? Is it at two years old? Is it when they pass some formal IQ test?

What I don't like about both abortion and fetal stem cell research is that someone is arbitrarily deciding that a human lifeform doesn't have a right to live based on their own or someone else's selfish needs. It's ethically no different from killing someone for food because you're poor and you need it to live. Sure, you can argue about the sentience of an embryo, but then do you advocate allowing people to kill and harvest life-saving organs from severely retarded people or people in comas? What about people in cryogenic suspension? Should we treat them as "corpsicles" and take their organs for living people too? At what point does a human's right to live end (or never begin) without connection to any actions that they have done? These arguments over the worth of a human life and human dignity aren't any different from those who advocated slavery and forced sterilization on the basis of the inferiority of the victims in comparison to enfranchised society. If you place any value on human life beyond that of your immediate friends and family, then you should object to an arbitrarily drawn line on human worth.

That is why many of us object to fetal stem cell research. There are so many possibilities for bone marrow research that could save lives without creating and killing them. We explore them fully before less ethically sound path just because it's easier.