AP science writer Malcolm Ritter yesterday reported, ” Scientists have made ordinary human skin cells take on the chameleon-like powers of embryonic stem cells, a startling breakthrough that might someday deliver the medical payoffs of embryo cloning without the controversy.”
The method promises not just to be a substitute for embryo cloning but to be superior to it medically and ethically:
The new work shows that the direct reprogramming technique can also produce versatile cells that are genetically matched to a person. But it avoids several problems that have bedeviled the cloning approach.
For one thing, it doesn’t require a supply of unfertilized human eggs, which are hard to obtain for research and subjects the women donating them to a surgical procedure. Using eggs also raises the ethical questions of whether women should be paid for them.
In cloning, those eggs are used to make embryos from which stem cells are harvested. But that destroys the embryos, which has led to political opposition from President Bush, the Roman Catholic church and others.
Those were “show-stopping ethical problems,” said Laurie Zoloth, director of Northwestern University’s Center for Bioethics, Science and Society.
The new work, she said, “redefines the ethical terrain.”
Richard Doerflinger, deputy director of pro-life activities for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, called the new work “a very significant breakthrough in finding morally unproblematic alternatives to cloning. … I think this is something that would be readily acceptable to Catholics.”
The story is frontpage news today at the Washington Post and the New York Times. Another article in the Washinton Post asks whether this vindicates President Bush’s policy of refusing to fund embryonic stem cell research. The NYT also looks at the politics, reminding readers that Bush “steadfastly maintained that scientists would come up with an alternative method of developing embryonic stem cells, one that did not involve killing embryos. Critics were skeptical.”