Saturday, January 13, 2007

Luddites and moralists

From time to time, the stem cells wars flare up. The US famously doesn't allow public money to be spent on this research (mostly because of George Bush's ideological objections) but I thought the UK was a always a bit more sensible. Well, not any more. The government wants to ban the creation of hybrid animal-human embryos as a source of stem cells in its new white paper on fertility legislation. Why? Because the public says so, apparently.

It's pig-headed ignorance from the government and, if their attempts to ban the work are successful, what a horrible mistake it will be. (An interesting addendum to all this - a new source of stem cells from amniotic fluid.)

A ban on the use of hybrid embryos will be the consequence of ill conceived pressure

Thursday January 11, 2007
The Guardian

The honeymoon for British stem cell scientists is coming to an end. What began as a model partnership between researchers and the government in how to navigate a controversial area is at risk of disintegrating into a messy divorce, a split fuelled by misconceptions, a Luddite fear of technology and more than a whiff of inappropriate political pressure.

Two research teams in London find out today whether they will be allowed to create animal-human hybrid embryos as part of their work. Informally, they have already been told by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) that their application is unlikely to succeed, despite it being allowed under current regulations. Last week several scientists got together to express deep concerns about the impending decision and delivered a stark message: banning the creation of hybrids will stifle development of treatments for diseases such as diabetes and Parkinson's.

In the US, where public funding of stem cell research has been curtailed by George Bush's ideological objections, such a move might not have caused much of a storm. But in the UK it is unprecedented. The HFEA's ethical stance on fertility and stem cell research is well respected and its decisions have always taken into account the latest scientific thinking.

The scientists' argument is one of necessity - to make any headway in stem cell work, researchers need raw materials. This means as many stem cells as they can lay their hands on and, typically, these come from the fertilised embryos left over from IVF treatments that are donated for research. But this resource is very small and animal eggs are much easier to come by.

In making the hybrid, the animal egg is hollowed of all genetic information and replaced with the nucleus of a human cell. The resulting cell is then induced to divide and eventually becomes an early-stage embryo. Genetically, the hybrid is 99.5% human and the embryo is terminated before it reaches 14 days' old, at which time it is a ball of cells no bigger than a pinhead. The stem cells exist inside this early-stage embryo, ready to be extracted for research.

But when public health minister Caroline Flint unveiled the white paper on fertility research last month, the clause on animal-human hybrid embryos flew in the face of all of the scientific advice, proposing that it should not be allowed. Flint cited a preceding consultation as justification for the government's reversal of support. But the extent to which these sorts of consultations can be hijacked by pressure groups is well known.

There are also inadvertent victims in this sudden government hostility. Last year, scientists created a model of Down's syndrome by fusing human cells with embryonic stem cells from mice. The resulting animals were hailed as a crucial tool in the study of a condition that affects 60,000 people in the UK alone. Were the government to get its way, the Down's mouse would fall foul of the new legislation.

If the HFEA confirms today that it will not allow scientists to create hybrids, the spotlight will shift to the authority. Why does an independent scientific agency feel the need to prevent hybrid research? Indeed, why is it going against its own advice on the issue?

The only conceivable explanation is that the HFEA is feeling undue political pressure from its host department. The Department of Health seems to have made its decision based on a misconception about public unease over hybrid research. It is difficult not to conclude that the HFEA is worried that funds will be cut off if it doesn't fall into line.

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