Ethical cord blood research will help patients

OVER the last two weeks many arguments have been made in the face of the news that UCC were considering allowing embryonic stem cell research and more recently that the governing body had decided to allow it given suitable projects.

A great deal of private research funds followed from the private sector. However, the potentiality and vitality of the embryo stem cells proved to be their biggest liability because they proved to be unmanageable, multiplied quickly and reverted to cell types developing tumours in research specimens.

With the failure of embryos to produce marketable treatments, the private money began to dry up and be increasingly attracted by the stunning successes being achieved in the area of adult stem cells, cord blood and placenta stem cells. So the advocates of embryonic research turned to governments and other taxpayer-funded research programs. In Europe, there are several such funds, however, the fullest honeypot is the EU Seventh Framework Research Program which has a budget estimated at more than €7 billion a year to spend on R&D including embryonic stem cell research. There are three advantages of the EU research fund for academics over the private one:

* Secure funds.

* Prestige in taking part in collaborative EU projects.

* Funding is not contingent on outcome.

UCC has obviously got its sights on Seventh Framework Funds and this raises questions for taxpayers who will be forced to support this embryo destruction regardless of their belief about the sanctity of life.

Though I do not agree with Dr. Stephen Sullivan's support of embryo destructive research in his letter to the Irish Examiner, I do agree wholeheartedly with him when he says “Ireland is not doing all it could for patients with life debilitating diseases”. It is to help patients that I encourage ethical adult and cord blood research and have urged Cork University Maternity Hospital to initiate a program of cord blood donation. It is interesting that among the diseases Dr Sullivan cites, he mentions diabetes. Last year, an Irish stem cell scientist in Britain in collaboration with a specialist diabetes centre in Texas, got cord blood stem cells to become insulin producing pancreatic cells.

This breakthrough gives real hope to diabetes sufferers of an eventual cure, yet at CMUH we incinerate thousands of infants’ cords every year without giving parents the opportunity to donate them for use in the more than 100 established treatments that have been developed from both cord blood and the stem cells it contains.

Kathy Sinnott

MEP for Munster

EIRE, Campaign for Ethical Irish Research