The National Institutes of Health recently announced the approval of 13 human embryonic stem cell lines for use in federally funded stem cell research. Eleven of these cell lines are from Boston Children’s Hospital, two from Rockefeller University. All were established with private funding, but qualified for public research funding under revised guidelines promulgated by the NIH for human embryonic stem cell research after President Obama issued an executive order last year ending the federal ban on federal funding of research on new embryonic stem cell lines previously established by President Bush. While these cell lines did not qualify under the initial version of the NIH guidelines for funding human embryoderived stem cell lines (they did not meet the very stringent criteria for documentation of informed consent in the initial guidelines, the NIH indicates), they were “grandfathered” in as existing cell lines that had equivalentdocumentation under revised NIH guidelines. While the details of the consent for donation of embryos to establish these cell lines were not described in the NIH announcement, we are assured that indeed the documentation was equivalent ethically to the initial NIH guidelines, as reviewed by NIH personnel. More cells lines are under consideration and will likely be approved for NIH-funded research in the near future. The number of cell lines available for federal research funding could expand rapidly. The NIH guidelines for qualification for funding for human embryonic stem cell lines are a model of bioethics. Cell lines are to be derived from embryos from IVF clinics that are produced for clinical use only, and are ultimately not suitable for or needed for fertility purposes (e.g., would otherwise be discarded). Clear informed consent documentation is required from the onset of fertility treatment, with all possible options regarding the potential fate of the embryos to be discussed and documented. There is an unbreachable wall between clinicians treating the patient and researchers seeking to produce human embryonic stem cell lines from donated excess IVF clinic embryos, so there will be no conflict of interest with a clinician arranging for donation of cells to him- or herself for research purposes. The individuals who contributed to the production of the embryos (parents) are empowered as the only and ultimate deciders of the donation of excess embryos for stem cell research, vs alternative uses (such as donation to another couple for fertility purposes) or disposition. Embryos can only be donated, not purchased. No financial or professional incentives are allowed for donors or clinicians. No taxpayer dollars are used to create the cell lines from donated embryos, and tax-payer funding is used only for approved cell lines created with private funding that meet NIH ethical guidelines. These embryonic stem cell lines currently cannot be used for therapeutic cloning with federal funding (or for reproductive cloning under any circumstances). It is hard to imagine better ethical guidelines for human embryonic stem cell line approval for federal research funding. Some professional societies however are pushing for expansion of the guidelines to allow for federal funding of the creation of human embryonic stem cells lines from IVF-derived embryos, and for federal funding for creation of embryonic stem cell lines via somatic cell nuclear transfer, an approach that was not included in President Obama’s executive order (this procedure uses an unfertilized human egg, from which the nucleus is extracted, and replace with the nucleus extracted from an adult cell; the cell thus created is induced to begin to divide and develop, producing an embryo with nuclear DNA, but not cytoplasmic mitochondrial DNA, from the adult donor cell, e.g., a cloned embryo). Researchers, physicians, medical organizations, healthcare workers, patients and their families who might ultimately benefit from human embryonic stem cell research, and interested and enlightened parties across the nation have enthusiastically applauded the guidelines, and the added opportunities and funding for research, and the potential medical advancements that might result. While adult stem cell research proceeds apace (hampered somewhat by more limited pluripotency as compared to embryonic stem cells), and induced pluripotent cell lines have been developed from adult non-stem cells, and peripheral blood stem cells as well as amniotic fluid stem cells have been found, investigations that give impetus to stem cell research, including embryonic, are increasingly reported. For example, a recent report in the New England Journal of Medicine detailed the success of peripheral blood-derived (hematopoetic) stem cell transplantation from HLA-matched siblings in patients with Sickle Cell disease. Some patients could not be treated due to lack of an HLA-matched sibling. The same procedure for transplant of peripheral blood-derived stem cells obtained from HLA-matched unrelated individuals would be a reasonable next step to test. On the other hand, embryonic stem cell research might eventually lead to the ability to produce an embryonic stem cell line developed from an excess “sibling” embryo from an IVF procedure in the patient’s mother that could provide an unlimited HLA-matched source of hematopoetic stem cells for transplant to treat sickle cell disease. On still another hand, pre-implantation screening of IVF-obtained embryos in couples at risk for offspring with sickle cell disease might hold the potential to eliminate sickle cell disease entirely. Eventually either a cloned stem cell line using somatic cell nuclear transplant into a maternal egg, or use of an induced pluripotent stem cell from the affected individual, with subsequent genetic engineering of the cell line to replace the abnormal hemoglobin genes, then induced to become red blood cell precursors, thus avoiding HLA matching problems, may become possible. Recently, success has been reported in obtaining stem cells from a single cell extracted from mice embryos at the 8 cell stage, which, if developed in humans could obviate the destruction of embryos in the process of obtaining stem cells from them. Currently, extracting a single cell from a very early embryo is employed in pre-implantation diagnosis with IVF, for offspring at risk for genetic diseases such as Fabry's and multiple other inherited diseases, including Sickle Cell disease as mentioned above, to avoid implantation of an affected embryo. Thus far that approach seems to be safe for the developing embryo, but it will take about two decades to ascertain if the procedure is without risk in human embryos. One might speculate, for example, that removal of a single cell from the blastocyst might sufficiently affect later neurologic development in the fetus, creating an assymetry of some sort in the hemispheres of the cerebral cortex or the cerebellum, that might affect language skills or handedness, with dyslexic individuals who are particularly uncoordinated (yes, you will argue, we already have a lot of those...). One can envision the advertisements now: "Have you or a loved one been subjected to a single cell biopsy in the embryonic 8 cell stage, and suffer from language difficulties or in coordination? If so, you may have a claim. Call the law offices of -------- for a free legal consultation." Single cell extraction from the very early embryo is justified currently to prevent severe genetic disease for which the embryo is at a specific known risk with an affected or carrier parent or parents, but its safety has not been established for non-clinical purposes, such as obtaining embryonic stem cells alone. The technique could, however, very quickly allow the establishment of embryonic stem cell lines affected by known genetic diseases, which would be extremely useful for studying those diseases. There is one major problem with the NIH guidelines, setting aside the fact that human embryos are destroyed in the process of establishing stem cell lines from them using current techniques, and many members of the electorate object to the use of public funds for research on cells derived via, and that perforce encourage, embryo destruction: That one major problem is that the NIH guidelines are based on a problematic legal foundation, e.g., the human embryos derived from IFV are legally considered to be property. Notably, the NIH guidelines mention nothing about the legal status of human embryos as property; nor is that legal status generally discussed in ethical treatises on the guidelines in the medical literature. There is a rather broad silence on this point. It seems to be studiously ignored. While the biomedical community vehemently decries the patenting of human genes (essentially giving a status of intellectual property to individual human genes, such as the BRCA1 gene), there is silence on the designation of an intact, viable human organism as property. Admittedly, the NIH guidelines allow federal funding for cell lines derived from donated embryos created with private funding, and forbid any financial inducements for their donation. Nevertheless, the technical ability that will result from federally funded human embryonic stem cell research may well result in therapeutic uses of stem cells, that may then with private funding be created via embryo destruction and used for therapeutic purposes. In that circumstance, questions of ownership and financial proceeds accruing to the owners from clinical use of stem cells will certainly arise. A somewhat analogous situation would be the ability to produce large quantities of human growth hormone in the 1980’ s. Up to that time, human growth hormone was derived from cadaveric pituitary glands, and existed in very limited supplies, and was found to be contaminated with Kreutzfeld-Jakob disease producing prions. When a process for growing growth hormone in genetically engineered E. Coli bacteria was developed, the supply of growth hormone became plentiful, concerns over Kreutzfeld-Jakob disease were obviated, and the clinical use, appropriate and inappropriate--and clandestine athletic use--of growth hormone expanded exponentially. Genentech was created as a company, with the involvement of the researchers who developed the genetic engineering process, to produce Human Growth Hormone, and other genetically engineered products. With the advent of abundant Human Growth Hormone for clinical use, clinical and ethical and legal questions arose regarding its use. It became a controlled substance. It was used extensively illicitly by high level athletes, as well as middle-aged men who perceived some anti-aging benefits to its use (never mind the acromegaly induced by the excess dosing in this population, or the potential increased risks of prostate and colon cancer associated with using the hormone). Disagreement continues as to its use in specific populations, such as debilitated elderly patients, or even in growth hormone deficient adults who can no longer benefit from its growth effects, and studies are ongoing in various childhood disorders accompanied by short stature. Experience with the Human Genome Project is illustrative of the commercial interests involved. Craig Venter, with funding from drug companies, developed a rapid approach to human genome sequencing that competed with the leisurely publicly funded effort, and appeared on track to achieve the genome sequencing before Francis Collins’ and his collaborators. His privately funded competition raised the possibility that the human genome would become the proprietary property of large drug companies, and the public effort was accelerated in part to counter that possibility, to allow the human genome to remain in the public domain. The proprietary interests are illustrated by another example from the 1980’s at the Bethesda Naval Hospital. The chief of infectious diseases there had been given a quantity of Interferon to do some small studies by a large drug company. At that time Interferon was not approved for any use and was not being used clinically for treatment of any disease. Later, when Interferon became clinically used, it was a valuable commodity. Congress initiated an corruption investigation of the chief of infectious diseases for accepting a gift of what then amounted to an extremely valuable supply of Interferon. Ultimately, Congress stopped the investigation when it was pointed out that at the time the physician accepted the Interferon sample, it was valueless. Medical advances led to the later high value of the sample. Interferon is currently effective in treating chronic viral hepatitis, albeit with considerable side effects, and is a very valuable and effective treatment, a profound innovation in the medical armamentarium for a disease that was lethal, for which no treatment was previously available. Even scientific claims to fame, in being first to accomplish particular goals, can lead to controversial activity by scientists and physicians. For example, back in the late 1980's, Martin Kline, the chief of hematology and oncology at UCLA at the time, attempted to treat severe beta-thalassemia, a debilitating and lethal genetic hemoglobin variant disease, by removing bone marrow from a patient, genetically engineering that bone marrow to insert the normal hemoglobin gene, then, after radiating an area of bone at the hip to locally eradicate the native bone marrow, attempted to implant the genetically engineered marrow, in the hope that it would "take" and produce normal red blood cells, thus correcting the genetic disease. Since the patients being so treated were in Israel, despite the fact that he engineered the bone marrow in his lab at UCLA, he did not have his protocol reviewed by the human use committee at UCLA. When he reported his study, an uproar ensued because of his failure to obtain institutional review of the ethics and medicine involved. His approach was not likely to cause any problems in the patients, yet if success, the treatment would have been life-saving, Dr. Kline would have been the first to successfully treat a lethal genetic disease, and he would have been the Louis Pasteur of the 20th Century. The scientific and reputational benefits outweighed the risks for Dr. Kline, apparently, but he lost his chairmanship of the department over this incident. Today, with the rather extreme politicization of science, and the ethical compromises tempting researchers and physicians, one is less confident that the peer oversight will be sufficient to dissuade researchers from attempting high stakes investigation without transparency or peer approbation, or that all concerns will be heard, aired, and honestly vetted. Eventually, couples or individuals may be paid to provide eggs and sperm to create embryos that will be used to obtain stem cells that will potentially be highly valuable. Researchers who create them may benefit financially by producing suchcells. Corporations will be established to produce stem cells on an industrial scale for therapeutic purposes, once those uses become possible. Pharmaceutical companies will purchase rights to cell lines. Anyone who manages to culture large quantities of insulin-producing pancreatic islet cells, for example, may reap a windfall by providing such cells for transplant to cure type 1 diabetes. The process may be quite specific or selective: An individual who is homozygous (guaranteeing an embryo heterozygous for the abnormal gene) for an inactivating mutation in the myostatin gene (allowing greater muscle development) may be sought to contribute to embryo production to obtain stem cell lines that contain the inactivating gene that eventually may be used to treat patients with muscular dystrophy or other neuro or muscular disorders (or, less ethically, used to enhance athletic performance). The wholesale production of human embryos to derive embryonic stem cells for therapeutic purposes with private funds will likely expand rapidly once therapeutic efficacy of a given type of cell is demonstrated. One should not underestimate the speed with which this is likely to occur. To date, little attention has been paid to these concerns. A further issue that is rarely addressed regards the development stage of the embryo used for stem cell acquisition. Currently, the blastocyst stage embryo is used, inasmuch as beyond the blastocyst stage, implantation of the embryo into a receptive endometrium (inner lining of the uterus) is required for further development. Implantation occurs within the first week of embryo development in humans, at the blastocyst stage. The outer cells of the blastocyst become the cells critical to implantation and placenta and amnion development. (The reason the blastocyst must be destroyed to obtain stem cells is because the outer cells of the blastocyst, critical for implantation, are already committed to their role in implantation and are not pluripotent stem cells. At the earliest stage of embryonic development, cells in the blastocyst are already differentiated. The outer cells of the blastocyst have to be removed in order to access the pluripotent stem cells. This may not continue to be the case, as an eight cell stage embryo can have one cell removed for pre- implantation genetic analysis, without apparent damage to the developing blastocyst, and that one cell may be sufficient, in cell culture, to provide a pluripotent embryonic stem cell line, so embryonic stem cells may not require embryo destruction, as discussed above. Again, on the other hand, the removal of one cell from an eight cell stage embryo may cause subtle abnormalities that may take a lifetime to become evident.). Currently proprietary and patent issues are major considerations in genetic testing and analysis and potential therapeutics, and are roiling the biotech field. The move to patent the BRCA1 gene (the first oncogene identified directly by genetic analysis, with the protein product derived from the gene sequence) by Myriad Genetics raised an uproar, for example. Proprietary and patent issues are likely to be even greater with stem cell technologies, and will be particularly sensitive regarding human embryonic stem cells considered for clinical use. Proprietary and patent issues cannot be extricated from ethical considerations. The ethical considerations are extraordinarily complex. The human embryo, in all of this, may well become a microscopic soccer ball, passed hither and yon under competing financial and proprietary interests, exploited as a commodity, and it will indeed be such with its current status as property, which uniquely and unequivocally qualifies it for the category of “human capital” in its full sense. The only other circumstance in which the term “human capital” is appropriate, despite the propensity of politicians, pundits, and policy makers to use the term loosely and inappropriately (I remember listening to a Bill Clinton speech during the 1990’ s in which he discussed improving our “human capital,” a favorite progressive trope, in a perversely positive sense; I happened to be on a trip in Europe at the time, and that same day visited Auschwitz. The jarring sensation of reading the stark black metal inscription over the entrance to the camp, “Arbeit Mach Frei” and almost simultaneously hearing the President of the United States use the term “human capital” has never left me, particularly after seeing the horrors reflected in that camp), is slavery. A human embryo is a complete, unique, intact, viable human organism. For any given human embryo it can be said that that uniquely defined human organism has never before existed in the history of the Universe, and, once destroyed, will never exist again in the remaining history of the Universe (John Tipler and his physics of resurrection notwithstanding). It has a potential that we cannot fully envision. It’s evolutionary implications likewise are not fully knowable. One might argue that a human embryo is the most remarkable entity in the Universe. It contains the capacity for awareness of the Universe, and represents the ability of the Universe to become aware of itself, a point that such as Arthur C. Clarke sought to understand and contemplate through science fiction, Walker Percy through fiction, the literary essay, semiotics, and his Delta function, and Milton through epic poetry. It most fully reflects, of anything in the Universe, the inherent characteristic of the Universe to produce life and consciousness, for good or ill. It represents the highest and most exquisite product of the processes of the Universe. The act of dispersing the outer cell layers of a human blastocyst, to access the inner cell mass, the embryonic stem cells, is a symbolic abnegation of the whole of human history and achievement. To do that on a wholesale scale is an attack not just on humanity and the human species, but the entire natural world and the Universe. It is an unnatural act. Such an act, performed on a human organism that is considered property, undermines and degrades the status of the human and the core of being human, just as the blastocyst outer cell layer disperses and the inner cell mass is appropriated, as property, for cell culture. Such an act attacks the most fundamental concept of humanity, that of natural right, the key idea of Western civilization, developed rationally by such as Socrates and Plato, and elaborated and enhanced, as Habermas, the philosopher of the public square puts it, under the "Judaic concepts of Justice and the Christian concepts of Love", and applied as the core idea of our entire form of self-governance, stated emphatically and axiomatically as the first right under natural right, the right to Life, in our Declaration of Independence. No due process is due a human embryo (or a fetus) under our law. Until an infant is born, it has no legal status or protection (and there are those, such as our current President, who would equivocate on any rights for the newborn infant, depending on the circumstances of birth). We profoundly contradict ourselves thusly. We have become again a house divided against itself. The model ethical guidelines developed by the NIH, based on our current legal system, are not, at base, ethical. How did we decide to consider the human blastocyst property? It starts with a legal notion of substantive due process, first used tacitly in the Dred Scott decision (arguably the most egregious Supreme Court decision preceding Roe v Wade), which vitiated the Missouri compromise, and led directly to the Civil War. After a long and checkered history over more than a century, that notion of substantive due process was combined with the emanations of a penumbra to intuit a right to privacy that is nowhere stated in the Constitution but construed from other enumerated rights, such as the Constitutional ban on unwarranted searches and seizures, with the right to privacy now enshrined in Griswold v. Connecticut. The issue in the case was a Connecticut law banning private use of contraceptives. Subsequently, the intuited right to privacy and the idea of substantive due process was applied in Roe v. Wade to establish an unlimited and unrestricted absolute right to privacy and control of a woman's body by herself to permit a right to abortion, up until the time of parturition. In order to do that, the fetus had to be considered a part of a woman's body, like a kidney, spleen, gall bladder or appendix, over which the woman had an unrestricted right to privacy and decision making. Of course, this is completely contrary to biological fact. A developing fetus in a mother's womb is not simply a part of the woman's body. It is a genetically unique human organism. The fertilized embryo may exist successfully outside of the mother, otherwise Invitro fertilization and implantation would not be possible. Many of those embryos produced from Invitro fertilization are in liquid nitrogen storage in fertility clinics, not in the mother's womb, and are the subject of President Obama's recent executive order allowing their use for federally funded stem cell research. They may be donated for implantation in another woman's womb, apart from the biological mother. Further, the state of pregnancy is an immunosuppressed state, evolved to avoid rejection of the fetus by the mother's immune system, hence the mother's or the baby's immune system can identify the other as not-self. The mother or the baby may not even be a compatible organ donor for the other party. That the immune systems of baby and mother are different is evidenced by Rh incompatibility that is routinely treated with Rhogam injections. The developing fetus is able to survive outside the mother's womb as early as the 22nd week of gestation, supported in a Neonatal intensive care unit with sophisticated methods of support. The baby itself is fully formed by eight weeks of gestation (organogenesis is complete), and matures and grows from that point. Hence, the legal status of the fetus, as a part of the woman's body and hence as her property and subject to her unrestricted right to privacy and abortion, is contrary to biological fact. The same is true for the blastocyst obtained by invitro fertilization, prior to implantation. Anyone who has had a high school biology class would understand this. Nevertheless, our current body of law ignores it, or, worse, contravenes it. The blastocyst, along with the fetus, is a legal Rodney Dangerfield; it gets no respect in the form of due process or Constitutional protections of any kind. Such King Canute type circumstances erode public confidence in our political and legal institutions, not to mention our medical and scientific ones, which acquiesce to such inaccuracies as if they were incidental. Further, the question of what stage of development is to be allowed before the embryo is destroyed to harvest stem cells is avoided. Currently, the embryo at the blastocyst or blastula stage is stored at liquid nitrogen temperatures, which prevents development. The blastocyst, if donated for stem cell research, is destroyed to harvest stem cells. But maintaining the developing embryo beyond the blastocyst stage is not inconceivable. It may prove possible to allow "implantation" of a blastocyst on a layer of endometrial cells in cell culture, appropriately primed with estrogen and progesterone, that might allow gastrulation and germ layer formation (ectoderm, endoderm, mesoderm), even perhaps neuraltube development, and early organogenesis. It may happen that diseases like Parkinson's, which involve dopaminergic neurons in the substantia nigra, require cells that can only be obtained and cultured from embryos that have begun forming neural tissue to implant and function in the brain to replace the function of the damaged cells. While this is science fiction at present, something similar could place emphasis on allowing embryonic development beyond the blastocyst stage in order to obtain cells suitable for treatment of disease. Differentiation to the gastrula stage may be necessary to provide cells that can be cultured to islet cells to treat type 1 diabetes; or to provide cells that can differentiate into retinal cells to treat blindness. What are we to do if commercial interests in such cells skyrocket? Will we allow trading in fetal parts in order to obtain the desired cells? Might it become possible to support a developing embryo through organogenesis entirely (eight weeks) artificially, outside the mother's womb? Or even further? Such a brave new world development may become possible much sooner than we might expect. What should the status of a blastocyst, a human embryo, be? It should be assigned rights as an individual human. No one should "own" it, as property, or have propriety rights to it. Parents should be empowered to make decisions regarding its fate, but those decisions should be constrainable by societal interests, in a way analogous to parental rights regarding medical care of their children, or the education of their children, subject to both civil and criminal protections for the child (a child who is being abused by parents can be placed under court protection, and assigned to the care of a relative or a guardian, etc.). The parental rights would obviously include the power to decide to donate an unused embryo, particularly one found unsuitable for implantation for fertility purposes, for use in stem cell research. Parental rights would also include donating an embryo for fertility purposes for another couple, just as children can be given up for adoption. There are codified legal systems in every state regarding who is empowered to donate organs, when organs can be donated, and the processes of informed consent and harvesting and use of organs. Human embryos currently have fewer legal protections (e.g., none) than individuals who are candidates to donate organs (not that there are no excesses or abuses in obtaining organs for donation or in their use), such as the young motorcycle-accident victim who is brain dead. The current status of human embryos derived by IVF precludes any such body of law or regulation, at either a state or federal level, from being developed. The reason that a human embryo will be accorded no recognition as a human organism is that it would then, of course, have competing rights with the mother, and the related unrestricted right to abortion to the time of parturition (and some such as Obama would extend lack of status post-partum in given circumstances) would be difficult if not impossible to allow. Abortion would not automatically be banned, obviously, but legislation and court rulings would have to balance more carefully the rights of the mother with those of the embryo or fetus. To accord rights to an embryo, or even recognition of an embryo as a human organism that could not be "owned" as property, would vitiate Roe v. Wade. Unfortunately, as our Chief Justice has affirmed, Roe v. Wade is established or settled law, regardless of whether it takes biological fact into account or not. Thus have we created a system of law that insults our own intelligence, not to mention undermines the most basic aspects of ethics and makes a mockery of our existence, and our reproduction, as humans. In order to achieve more coherence and biological appropriateness in our law, it is necessary to provide the human embryo, and the human fetus, some status other than that of property. It will not be possible to correct the house divided we have willfully if incompetently and incoherently created for ourselves until we do that. To fail to do that will risk a political and social schism as profound as that that resulted in the Civil War. We have seen more than thirty years of extreme political discord, with atrocities that exceed John Brown's actions or the acts of slaveholders, or the Kansas- Missouri wars, and which promise to get worse as we debate federal funding for abortions, and the potential extent of the use of embryos for stem cell research, and therapeutic, and potentially reproductive, cloning, not to mention assisted reproduction generally. It appears that we may need an Emancipation Proclamation giving some sort of legal status to the blastocyst and the fetus, along with a Constitutional Amendment to firmly establish that status. Otherwise, we may wind up in another Civil War over the question. What other considerations are there regarding human embryonic stem cell researchthat the current NIH guidelines do not address? For one, if indeed the point currently is research for potential disease treatment, should we not emphasize that point in selection of embryos for destruction? Embryos are assessed for potential viability before implantation, and this is becoming safer and more efficient, with reports of the effective use of genetic material from the polar body of the egg to assist embryo evaluation. Donation for stem cell research of those embryos that are rejected as unsuitable for clinical fertility purposes should be a first consideration. The quality of those embryos might make them more difficult to use to establish viable cell lines, nevertheless, it would certainly be more comfortable to initially use such embryos than the highest quality embryos or those judged to be the most viable. The NIH guidelines are silent on this point. In regard to genetic diseases, pre-implantation genetic screening of embryos has been used fairly extensively, for inherited diseases such as Fabry's disease, to avoid implantation of an affected embryo. In terms of studying disease processes, should not affected embryos be those first used for stem cell research? There are a large number of inherited diseases that could be identified pre-implantation, from Gardner's or familial polyposis coli, to Huntington's chorea, beta- Thalassemia, inherited breast and ovarian cancer, medullary thyroid cancer, inherited forms of diabetes and severe lipid disorders, chondrodysplasias, familial multiple endocrine syndromes, Alport's and Polycystic Kidney disease, various cancers, developmental disorders, chromosomal disorders such as Trisomy 21 and Turner's disease, and many others, whose cellular processes studied in cultured pluripotent embryonic stem cells could be extremely helpful to understanding and treating such diseases and their counterparts that are not as simply inherited. In contrast to the investigation of disease states and their biological mechanisms via embryonic stem cells, the treatment potential for obtaining large quantities of normal pancreatic islet cells for transplant for patients with diabetes might be appropriately approached using adult stem cells, before destroying high quality viable embryos to attempt to achieve that end, particularly if multiple embryos were needed to obtain sufficient cells for wholesale use clinically. Again, the NIH guidelines aresilent on such questions. Over time, such considerations will likely influence the development of stem cell lines, which may proliferate in number and diversity as massively as knock-out mice models have, for studying the basic cellularmechanisms of disease and their treatment. Recent developments in preimplantation genetic screening may make stem cells derived from embryos with genetic disorders plentiful. Yet the NIH and the biomedical community are relatively silent on these issues, and the general public is virtually unaware of the questions. The sort of protests and questions we do hear are whether or not sufficient genetic (read "racial" or "ethnic") diversity is being or will be achieved in the approval process for research on embryonic stem cell lines, with accusations that currently approved cell lines are sufficiently racially diverse. Discrimination is suggested in the established processes for approval of embryonic stem cell lines for research, inasmuch as there is evidence from information on single nucleotide polymorphisms from cell line characterization that the approved cell lines are from a very limited segment of the US population. Those who self- identify as minorities are clamoring for the destruction of embryos representative of theirgenetics so as to achieve equality in research funding. Everything, it seems, is condensed to issues of race and racial awareness in America, despite the marked genetic diversity and genetic admixture of our population, which is probably the most extensive of any population on earth, and despite the pressing need to discuss many other ethical issues that the field requires, and which seem to get drowned out in the increasingly manufactured cacophony over race. What about all the excess embryos in storage at IVF facilities? IVF is likely to increase exponentially, particularly with an increasingly sophisticated ability to screen embryos pre-implantation, as parents seek to improve the genetic prospects of their off-spring, not necessarily just from a disease prevention perspective (a whole other ethics topic in itself--we seem headed back to the future toward a new eugenics, which fell from favor with the Holocaust). Hence, the number of excess embryos is likely to also increase exponentially. What are we to do with these? Are they all to be used for medical experiments, reminiscent of a scene out of Monty Python? Are they to be stored indefinitely, and at what cost, borne by whom? One might suggest one or more (preferable) repositories for excess embryos, with careful record- keeping, as extensive and complete as possible, of provenance and characterization, and consent, funded publicly or privately or both, as depots for future use in the event of some humanitarian and/or reproductivecatastrophe (nuclear holocaust, for example), stored securely in hardened facilities, with fail-safe protections for preservation, akin to the seed storage facility in Iceland, or the Mormon repository of genealogical records in the Wasatch Front. One could include sperm and potentially even egg storage in the same facilities. These ideas appear to have little traction at the moment, as calls from international conferences (Copenhagen) are much more concerned with curtailing human reproduction to ostensibly save the planet, in a massively Malthusian mindset of the elite. From an elite perspective today, one shared in the past by such as Saddam Hussein, Stalin, Mao, and his successors, the human species has been far too successful and is far too destructive and wasteful of the resources of the planet, which are too limited, to allow it to reproduce with abandon and live with ever-increasing expectations of abundance, as it has done in the past, at least in America. It is after all, just one species among many, and it is the most destructiveof all the other species, is it not? No exceptionalism here except in a negative way, in the perspective of our progressive elites. The planet is in peril from this ascendant species, and it must be controlled. We seem to be entering a new, more radical, and likely far more dangerous, progressive eugenics era than even the 20th Century produced. Global one-child policies are little different than forced sterilizations, and guarantee extinction if carried to the extreme (as Russia is illustrating, and Europe and Japan are starting to demonstrate as well--demographics define the future of nations). Thus, the ethical issues surrounding human embryonic stem cell research are likely to receive short shrift from the political or scientific elite (who now seem to be colluding to foist concocted science on a presumably ignorant and gullible public in Climategate--the oxymoronic term "political science" now might more appropriately be considered a redundancy, consistent with the politicized nature of science in our time) in the coming years. The political climate, however, if not the global climate, is heating up, and unexpected developments are to be expected. |
| Status of Humans, America 2010 By Kent Lyon |