Embryonic Stem Cell Research Policy

Rob Stein’s article in yesterday’s Washington Post was one of the few reports to recognize that in announcing his support for federal funding for embryonic stem cell research, President Obama left several big questions unanswered.

According to Stein, NIH insiders were caught off guard. They had expected Obama to say that cell lines derived at any date from donated embryos would be eligible for research dollars. That step removes the barrier set by Pres. Bush, who made funds available but only for cells from donated embryos and derived before August 2001.

But Obama’s statement raised new questions:

First, will federal funding be available for research involving embryonic stem cells taken from embryos that were created specifically for research? Second, will funding be available for cells taken from cloned embryos?

The first of these questions is of course the more urgent of the two. A majority of Americans appear to support the view that research using cells taken from donated embryos is morally acceptable. These embryos already exists by the hundreds of thousands in storage in the nation’s fertility clinics. Most seem to think that it is better donate them for research that could lead to medical breakthroughs than destroy them.

But is it right for scientists to create the embryos, just for research that will not help the embryo but will instead destroy it? Here’s where many draw a line. It will be interesting, to put it mildly, to see if NIH agrees. What NIH will need to do, of course, is to assess carefully the impact of funding research on cells from donated embryos but not on cells from embryos created specifically for research. Will such a line really hold back science?

My own view is that, within strict limits and only if there is a need that cannot be met another way, it is permissible to create embryos for research. I believe that position can be argued on the basis of Christian theology and ethics. I also know that I am in a minority, and I am willing to recognize that policy in this field must be respectful of the deeply-held moral views of the majority. Recognizing that this area of research is contentious, I think it might be wise for NIH not to press too far in changing the guidelines. Unless it can be shown that science is seriously compromised by limiting federal funds to cells from donated embryos, it would be wise to put the limit right there.

The second question—whether federal funds will be available for research on cells from cloned embryos—is a bit more speculative. One of the great hopes for cloned embryos is that researchers could develop patient-specific stem cell lines, first to test drugs on human cell cultures but perhaps to implant in patients without provoking the immune system. Now these hopes are largely addressed with the 2006-2007 breakthroughs in induced pluripotency. Whether cloning still provides a significant scientific advantage over induced pluripotency is something that will have to be argued.

If the argument for the need for cloned stem cells is compelling, then perhaps NIH should recommend that these cells be eligible for use in federally funded studies. But if not, then it would be best, I think, for the NIH to exclude this source of cells.

In his statement yesterday, President Obama was clear that he did not wish to open the door to reproductive cloning. Reproductive cloning is, of course, a far different thing that using cloning (more precisely, nuclear transfer) to create a cloned embryo for research. Even so, many in the general public link the two and object equally to both. Perhaps the most convincing way to close the door to reproductive cloning is to exclude funding for work on cells from cloned embryos.

On top of everything else, NIH will need to consider rules for informed consent, first of all for couples who donate embryos for research, but also for anyone who donates cells that are induced to become pluripotent stem cells. If that’s not enough, NIH and other agencies need to move forward to get ready to oversee clinical trials in this field.

All this is to say that the NIH will be doing two things at once. It will be closing the first stem cell debate (the Bush-era debate over the embryo as the source) and opening a whole new era of stem cell ethics, centered around the pluripotency of cells and of what they might become—in the laboratory, in the body of patients, and in the future of regenerative medicine

Stem Cells Research and Christian Ethics

President Obama has opened a new era for stem cell research in America. He has asked the National Institutes of Health to draft new funding guidelines that will make federal research dollars available to US stem cell researchers without imposing unnecessary restrictions.

The restrictions were imposed on August 9, 2001, by Pres. George W. Bush. He approved the use of federal funds for embryonic stem cell research (something that outraged the religious right at the time), provided the cells were derived before the moment he gave the speech. Since then, the number of qualifying cell lines has shrunk while the number of new, unfunded lines has expanded.

Very few of us ever could grasp the moral difference between an embryo destroyed before August 2001 and one destroyed afterward. And most Americans favor embryonic stem cell research if it uses cells from embryos already created for fertility clinics but unused and ready to be destroyed anyway.

What's not so well known is that several religious groups support the Obama position. Jewish scholars are very clear in their support, as are experts in Islamic law. Christians are of course divided. The Vatican clearly opposes any use of embryos, but not all individual Catholics agree. Some Protestant denominations--the Presbyterian Church (USA), for example, or my own United Church of Christ--have gone on record supporting this research.

In the next few months, it will be interesting to see whether the NIH draft provides for funding for stem cell research on cell lines derived from embryos that were created especially for research. Here, more Americans are opposed, and NIH might be wise to draw a line: Offer funding for lines from donated embryos but not from embryos created expressly for research. Drawing the line at that point would also rule out cloning or nuclear transfer, since any cloned embryo is by definition created for research.

In the meantime, congratulations to Pres. Obama for recognizing the promise of this field of research, the moral complexities that lie ahead, and the need to set aside the artificial limits of the past while working toward consensus on the moral vision that guides the future.

Enhancement and Christianity

Last week I gave a talk at Oxford on "Human Enhancement and Christianity: A Case of Friendly Fire?" The talk was co-sponsored by the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics, the Future of Humanity Institute, and Sophia Europa Oxford. An audio version is available on the Uehiro Centre site or by going directly to this page.

I just sent a text version of the talk, which should be posted on the Uehiro site in the next day or two.

In the talk, I compare the goals of the secular enhancement project with the vision of traditional Christianity, suggesting point by point that the overlap between the two is not just strong but quite overwhelming. Of course, Christians might say that technological enhancement is an illegitimate means to achieve a worthy goal. But the question I pose at the end is whether theology can look at technology as an alien power, or whether it must say that technology is an emerging tool in the hands of the unfailing Creator.

Charles Darwin on Religion

What did Charles Darwin actually think about the religious questions raised by evolution? For an expert discussion, I heartily recommend a new statement coming from the International Society for Science and Religion and written by the distinguished historian, John Hedley Brooke. As Darwin's 200th birthday approaches on February 12, many clergy will be searching for ways to address the challenges of evolution. Brooke's statement is really helpful toward that end.

Are Cybrids Even Possible?

A study published this morning by Robert Lanza's team at Advanced Cell Technology suggests that cybrids--a controversial attempt to create a cloned human/nonhuman embryo--may not even work.

What is a cybrid? The word is short for "cytoplasmic hybrid embryo." The idea is to use nuclear transfer or cloning to create a cloned embryo as a resource for stem cell research. But in the case of a cybrid, the human nucleus is transferred, not to an enucleated human egg, but to an egg from a cow or a rabbit.

Last year, the government of the United Kingdom, following a particularly nasty debate, passed legislation allowing researchers to create cybrids. No sooner had the legislation passed, however, that "induced pluripotency" became widely accepted as a technically easier way to achieve many of the goals that motivated scientists to want to create cybrids. Not just technically easier, of course, but morally easier, because induced pluripotency creates pluripotent stem cells without embryos--cybrid, cloned, or IVF.

Now comes the Lanza study, suggesting that the interplay between the human and nonhuman genes prevents the cybrid from developing at all, not even to the point of being useful for deriving pluripotent stem cells.

The whole cybrid question is intriguing theologically. Are they human, these strange entities that have human nuclear DNA but the mitochondrial DNA of a cow or a rabbit? For more on the religious and ethical questions, let me refer you to a statement that I helped to co-author, available through the International Society for Science and Religion. Sadly, the cybrid controversy marked a new low-point in the UK on the religion-science front, with the moral concerns of religious people often misconstrued as being anti-science. On the brighter side, the question of the cybrid challenges theology and ethics to engage research as it develops while asking the perennial questions, such as what does it mean to be human.

The Quest for Pluripotency

Mark Johnson of the Milwaukee Sentinel Journal has just published a three-part series on the global quest by stem cell scientists for pluripotent stem cells. The series, "Targeting the Good Cell," appeared in the Sentinel Journal on December 13-16. Based on 90 interviews with leading scientists, this is one of the best pieces of science journalism I have seen.

The story involves the question for the human pluripotent stem cell, which is capable of producing every cell type in the human body. In 1998, scientists achieved this long-sought goal, but did so by taking cells from embryos, something that is objectionable to many. More recently, scientists have found other ways to get cells to be pluripotent, and Johnson tells the tale as if it were the story of a great race.

In telling the story, he reminds us that science is hard work, that scientists are human, that they are motivated (like all of us) by many things, and that the result of their work is anything but predictable at the outset.

Journalism, too, can be hard work, and Johnson has done it well.

Dignitas Personae: Theology and Stem Cell Research

The long-awaited Vatican Instruction, Dignitas Personae, was released today. It is a complex document that will require careful analysis. For instance, compared to Donum Vitae, does Dignitas assert that an embryo is a person from conception, something that Donum avoided asserting? Both agree, of course, that the embryo must be respected morally as a person from conception.

Two points stand out for me on my first reading. They concern Germline Modification and Altered Nuclear Transfer.

Regarding human germline modification, Dignitas is decidedly more negative compared to other recent Vatican statements. According to Dignitas, gene therapy that affects only the patient--"somatic cell gene therapy"--is acceptable. However,

The moral evaluation of germ line cell therapy is different. Whatever genetic modifications are effected on the germ cells of a person will be transmitted to any potential offspring. Because the risks connected to any genetic manipulation are considerable and as yet not fully controllable, in the present state of research, it is not morally permissible to act in a way that may cause possible harm to the resulting progeny. In the hypothesis of gene therapy on the embryo, it needs to be added that this only takes place in the context of in vitro fertilization and thus runs up against all the ethical objections to such procedures. For these reasons, therefore, it must be stated that, in its current state, germ line cell therapy in all its forms is morally illicit.

This rather bleak statement is in clear contrast to a previous Vatican statement entitled "Communion and Stewardship: Human Persons Created in the Image of God," which stated:

Germ line genetic engineering with a therapeutic goal in man would in itself be acceptable were it not for the fact that is it is hard to imagine how this could be achieved without disproportionate risks especially in the first experimental stage, such as the huge loss of embryos and the incidence of mishaps, and without the use of reproductive techniques. A possible alternative would be the use of gene therapy in the stem cells that produce a man’s sperm, whereby he can beget healthy offspring with his own seed by means of the conjugal act.

What is remarkable about the "Communion and Stewardship" text is that the statement actually suggested a way forward for research that could lead to a Vatican-approved approach to human germline modification. What is even more remarkable is that because of recent advances in stem cell research, especially induced pluripotency, research someday may actually achieve success in meeting the previously stated Vatican requirements. Now, however, Dignitas seems to back away from the previous endorsement. For more on this, see my recent book, Design and Destiny, from MIT Press.

The second issue has to do with "Altered Nuclear Transfer" (ANT), a provocative proposal that was seriously debated by the US President's Council on Bioethics. The idea, as championed by Bill Hurlbut, a member of the Council, was to create an "artifact" that might provide embryonic stem cells without being an embryo. The hope of the advocates of ANT was that those who oppose embryo research would see ANT as creating something that was decidely not an embryo and therefore an acceptable object for research. Now the Vatican has raised doubts:

These proposals [explicitly including ANT] have been met with questions of both a scientific and an ethical nature regarding above all the ontological status of the "product” obtained in this way. Until these doubts have been clarified, the statement of the Encyclical Evangelium vitae needs to be kept in mind: “what is at stake is so important that, from the standpoint of moral obligation, the mere probability that a human person is involved would suffice to justify an absolutely clear prohibition of any intervention aimed at killing a human embryo”.

If the Vatican has its doubts, then it's not clear who ANT is meant to placate. Sure, some individuals will say they oppose embryo research but find ANT acceptable. But the big institutional player, the Vatican, has just raised serious doubts and then asserted that doubt means no. As usual, the National Catholic Reporter provides a nice discussion of these issues, including quotes from Hurlbut.

Personally, I have never been a supporter of ANT, but I feel sorry for its advocates, who made the proposal in good faith in hopes that individuals and institutions would see it as a way around the difficult question of the use of the human embryo in research.