ESCR without harming embryos

In November, scientists discovered how to turn adult skin cells into stem cells. Now scientists from Advanced Cell Technology have made another scientific and ethical advance. They have reportedly figured out how to extract embryonic stem cells without harming embryos.

Researchers allowed fertilized mice eggs to develop into eight-celled blastocysts. Then researchers removed one cell for embryonic stem cell purposes, turning it into blood cells, neurons, heart cells, cartilage, and other cell types. They reported that the seven-celled eggs continued to develop normally.

An ACT press release said, "These new results have the potential to end the ethical debate surrounding the use of embryos to derive stem cells." Robert Lanza, chief scientific officer at ACT, urged the White House to approve the research: "This is a working technology that exists here and now. It could be used to increase the number of stem cell lines available to federal researchers immediately."

Michael Sleasman, managing director and research scholar at Center for Bioethics and Human Dignity, told WoW the discovery was another encouraging development: "I think it demonstrates that scientists are trying to find ways that are not necessarily destructive to the embryo, to find research that has promise for medical advances."

Still, Sleasman and others aren't wholly sold on the idea. About 80 percent of Lanza's embryos continued to develop, around the same percentage that survives when scientists remove one cell in an assisted reproduction technique called pre-implantation genetic diagnosis. Some ethicists, including Stanford bioethicist William Hurlbut, say that number isn't high enough. Sleasman has reservations about the research's effect on the remaining embryos: "I would be concerned that the few days they allow the embryo to develop are not enough for us to fully know the full implications. … You're unnecessarily subjecting the embryo to the potential for harm."

The National Institutes of Health will review the technique and then report to President Bush for final approval.