The Stem Cell Wars are Over

February 2009

While this serious barrier to clinical use has not been solved, one dramatic advance in embryonic stem cell science was seen in 2008. Science's "Breakthrough of the Year," was a fundamentally new way of producing cells identical to embryonic stem cells - but which, crucially, involves neither creating nor destroying embryos. Inducible pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) are made very simply (compared to cloning human embryos) by taking adult cells and artificially activating certain genes. This effectively turns back the cell "clock": it de-differentiates, gaining the properties and characteristics of embryonic stem cells, but without ethical compromise.

Sir Martin Evans, 2008 Nobel Laureate and discoverer 30 years ago of mouse embryonic stem cells, viewed this remarkable technique as "the writing...on the wall" for research using embryos. Over the past year, embryonic stem cell scientists everywhere have adopted it, abandoning work with human embryos. Professor James Thomson of Madison, Wisconsin, who first discovered human embryonic stem cells, predicted that "a decade from now, [research using human embryos] will be just a funny historical footnote."

But not so funny in ethical terms. As Thomson himself said, "If human embryonic stem cell research doesn't make you at least a little bit uncomfortable, you have not thought about it enough." The ethics are not complex. Human embryonic stem cells cannot be obtained without destroying embryos. Since no biologist or physician could ever deny that a human individual's life commences at conception (not birth, nor implantation, nor the time the primitive nervous system appears: these are stages of human life, not stages before life), embryonic stem cell research cannot occur without destroying living human beings.

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Alexander

February 9th, 2009
1:02 AM

Dear Mr Kaufman, would Stanford be reliable enough as a source for hESC? Or is Wikipedia the only scientific source you acknowledge? http://ora.stanford.edu/hesc/default.asp Will I have to assume that your name is made up?

Sir Desmond Kaufman

February 5th, 2009
11:02 PM

To infinity and beyond indeed. I don't know what hESC is and i got no hits on Wikipedia, so I'll have to assume that you're making it up. I'm guessing that ESC stands for embryonic stem cell, but what is the "h" for? No offence Thomas Friedl, but your name sounds made up.

Thomas Friedl

February 4th, 2009
11:02 PM

I am writing to you from Germany. What Neil Scolding is saying finds some affirmation in what recently happened over here. We just had a "stem cell war" which started in late 2006 when the German research foundation DFG published a paper calling for liberalisation of the Stem Cell Act. The Stem Cell Act stipulates that only embryonic stem cells (hESC) derived from human embryos before a certain cut-off date are eligible for importation for "high-ranking" research projects approved of by a special hESC ethics committee and in pursuance of a license issued by the Robert Koch Institute. The cut-off date used to be January 1, 2002. Derivation of hESC from human embryos is banned by our Embryo Protection Act, anyway. During the stem cell debate, more recently derived hESC have been depicted as absolutely indispensable by the German hESC research community. Finally, after much debate, in April 2008, the law was changed and the cut-off date was shifted to May 1, 2007, now allowing importation of many, many more recently established hESC. The new law took effect on August 21, 2008. But what happened? Quite contrary to what you might expect, there was no rush. Only four importation licenses have been granted since then. Most astonishingly, all of them relate to "old" NIH-registered hESC lines (established well before January 1, 2002) which had been readily eligible before as well. What can we conclude from this? Why are German hESC researchers not taking advantage of the liberalised law? Neil Scolding may be quite right: the embryonic stem cell wars appear to be over. This seems to be true for Germany, and probably beyond.

Prof David Alber Jones

February 4th, 2009
10:02 AM

Thank you for this helpful presentation of where we are with stem cell research. The public has been persuded to back embryonic stem cell research just as scientists are moving on to adult stem cells and iPS cells. How wonderfully ironic. Hopefully we now move beyond the culture wars and get on with science that is both ethical and effective.

Sir Desmond Kaufman

February 3rd, 2009
3:02 AM

I am the representative from the Stem Cell Awesomeness Group in Brunswick, Maine. It is a very official group that I set up on facebook. I think that this article is very good for those people who do not have to write a 5+ page paper and prepare a debate, which will be moderated by a waxy-haired, tie wearing, animal loving, pen twirling supreme member of the teacher's guild. A person who did have to write a 5+ page paper and prepare a debate on stem-cell research, then this article would prove completely useless. Also, the author, Neil Scolding, should change his last name to something like "Down".

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