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Published online 9 March 2009 | Nature | doi:10.1038/458130a
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Obama overturns stem-cell ban
President's executive order will allow US human embryonic stem-cell research to thrive at last.
Scientists and research advocates worldwide are celebrating the removal of rules limiting research on human embryonic stem cells in the United States, which they say have restricted the field's progress for seven and a half years.
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Maryland, is now working out policies that will allow researchers to apply for grant money from the agency to study some of the hundreds of cell lines created since 9 August 2001, when President George W.
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This is excellent news, even if iPS cells fulfill their promise there is still an need for continued human ESC research to guide the development of stem cell medicine. Scientists shouldn't let their guard down though, the so-called "Republican War on Science" may be over for now, but other threats to science and science based medicine remain as strong as ever. We need to redouble our efforts to make the best use of the window of opportunity that has just opened. http://speakingofresearch.com/2009/03/10/restoring-science-to-its-rightful-place/
I welcome this overturn because it will give stem cell researchers better opportunities to learn the developmental process of NATURAL stem cells rather than ALTERED stem cells such as iPSCs. In addition, with more ESCs available for comparison with iPSCs, more and more distinctions may be found between them for overturning an ?indistinguishable? claim made earlier. The promise of iPSCs for therapeutic cloning and regenerative medicine rests on the capability of completely removing the introduced factors and avoid the cancer-forming tendency as repeatedly shown in various published studies on iPSCs. In addition, whether the reprogramming in iPSCs has been done correctly or not is still an open question. Understanding the normal development program of ESCs will help us in reaching an answer to this question. So ESCs are much needed, indeed. (see more at http://im1.biz and http://blog.sina.com.cn/im1 ).
With all respect to the excellent news, the public should keep in mind that just having embryonic stem cells research with adequate funding is not a guarantee for near future embryonic stem cells remedies. Legitimate embryonic stem cells research has been conducted in a number of countries around the world where such restrictions were not imposed for more than a decade. Cell lines were produced and many problems in maintaining such cells were solved. Nevertheless, major technical and biological obstacles make the translation of the use of such cells into a component of tissue regeneration therapies still exist. These include the adoption of the donor histocompatiblily profile upon differentiation of the stem cells, which may result in their rejection as a mismatch organ transplant, the tendency of such cells to form teratomas and other cancers and, more importantly, the lack of adequate techniques to engineer the cells in the tissues to reach adequate therapeutic outcome. In many ways one could compare the way to go in the application of embryonic stem cells to invention of the single transistor on the road to the currently used integrated circuits, when you do not know yet if this is the actual component on which the integrated chips will be based on eventually.
Science (knowledge) is indeed a powerful and effective tool, in itself neither good nor bad. By necessity, ethical considerations will arise at every instance when the human person is using this powerful tool. Therefore, any use of science must be subject to the ethical standards of the community. A mere lack of community (ethical) control does not mean an absence of ethics in doing science (every human behavior is governed by and expresses some kind of ethical consideration). It only means an absence of commonly agreed upon and accepted ethical standards and the presence of ethical standards that serve the interest of some. Interestingly, this is how dictatorships work also: some own and use powerful tools that serve their interest, at the expense of others. There is no such thing as apolitical science, as President Obama claims. Every human activity happens within the community (polis ? city, community), it impacts the community and as such it is intrinsically political. Therefore, President Obama?s statement about a science not influenced by politics and ?ideology? is inconceivable and as such, totally illogical. He just happened to have a different political and/or ideological standard than his predecessor had. The question remains, who and what authority will decide which one is more ethical? The practice of science (not science?s inner logic) has to be governed by ethical considerations. Otherwise we end up with a ?scientific barbarism,? of which we have sadly experienced the consequences during the Second World War, and afterwards during the nuclear crisis. This cannot happen again. A lack of open and frank ethical debate on life issues (such as the ethical and legal status of the human embryo) was not encouraged by the previous administration. Sadly enough, this new administration seems to be set to repeat the same mistake.
If Jack is fatally injured and Jill volunteers to give up her life to save Jack's, we applaud her selflessness. But if Jack is fatally injured, and Jill kills a nearby baby to save Jack's life, what do we do? In the US, we fund more research on Jill's technique. This is what Embryonic Stem Cell Research is.