Stem cell option with no ‘ethical baggage’

HUMAN embryonic stem cell (HESC) research is promoted publicly on the basis that it will soon cure a variety of human diseases.

This is simply an over-optimistic projection. The truth is that we can only hope that cures will soon be discovered, but we certainly cannot be sure. This is the nature of research.

In 1970, US President Richard Nixon announced a War on Cancer. It was confidently predicted cancer would be defeated by 1980.

We all know where we stand with a cure for cancer today, nearly 40 years on and after spending trillions of dollars on cancer research.

People who suffer from disease are understandably desperate for a cure, as illustrated by the touching letters you published from Barbara Carlile and Cormac McAdam (December 1). But they needn’t pin their hopes any longer on ethically repugnant HESC research, which entails the deliberate destruction of human embryos.

Scientists can now make stem cells by genetically reprogramming adult cells — induced pluripotent stem cells (IPSC). In tests carried out to date, IPSCs have been shown to have the same potential to provide cures for disease as embryonic stem cells, and use of IPSC poses no ethical problems.

Also, research on adult stem cells is producing breakthroughs almost on a weekly basis and, again, this research has no ethical downside.

A few years ago it could be argued that the flexibility of embryonic stem cells offered more potential to find cures than the less flexible adult stem cells and therefore HESC research should proceed despite its ethical problems.

Today that argument is deflated because IPSC can substitute for embryonic stem cells.

HESC research now merely adds another research option. Adding another option isn’t worth the very heavy ethical baggage that HESC research carries.

Prof William Reville

Department of

Biochemistry

UCC