Mothers' wombs could provide source of stem cells, without the ethical controversy; Discovery a boost for medical researchers; New process avoids using unwanted IVF embryos Alok Jha, science correspondent Monday January 08 2007 The Guardian
Scientists
have found a new source of stem cells that does not involve destroying
embryos. The cells can be harvested easily from the fluid surrounding
developing babies in the womb and could help overcome ethical concerns.
It
has been known for decades that the placenta and the amniotic fluid in
the womb contain important cells. "We asked the question: is there a
possibility that within this cell population we can capture true stem
cells? The answer is yes," said Anthony Atala, director of the
Institute for Regenerative Medicine at Wake Forest, who led the
research.
Stem cells can grow into any type of body tissue and
are used to research cures for conditions such as diabetes and brain
disorders, including Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease. It is hoped
that one day they may be used to grow replacement tissue that is a
perfect genetic match for patients with damaged organs.
Stem
cells from embryos are highly prized because they are the most
adaptable. They are hard to obtain, however, because they are normally
harvested from embryos left over from fertility treatments.
Anti-abortion campaigners argue this leads to destruction of human
life. Adults also have stem cells, but these can turn into fewer types
of body tissue.
Researchers said the newly discovered amniotic
fluid-derived stem (AFS) cells represent an intermediate stage between
embryonic and adult stem cells. They grew AFS cells into muscle, bone,
fat, blood vessel, nerve and liver cells. "Our hope is that these cells
will provide a valuable resource for tissue repair and for engineered
organs as well," said Prof Atala. His results are published today in
the journal Nature Biotechnology.
"These cells are capable of
extensive self-renewal, a defining property of stem cells," he said.
"They also can be used to produce a broad range of cells that may be
valuable for therapy."
Aside from ethical concerns, it is
difficult to extract cells from leftover embryos, which are often of
poor quality. AFS cells are readily available from samples taken for
amniocentesis - which involves testing the amniotic fluid for signs of
genetic disorders - and from the placenta. Around 1% of cells in these
samples have been found to be stem cells. They grow quickly without
turning into tumours, a problem for other types of stem cell.
"So
far we've been successful with every cell type we've attempted to
produce from these stem cells," said Prof Atala. "The AFS cells can
also produce mature cells that meet tests of function, which suggests
their therapeutic value."
In one test researchers grew brain
cells from AFS cells and implanted them into mice suffering from a
degenerative brain disease. The cells successfully repopulated the
damaged parts of the brain. Viable bone cells were made the same way.
Prof Atala said 100,000 samples of AFS cells could supply perfect genetic matches to treat 99% of the US population.
Jo Brodie of Diabetes UK said the results were another development offering hope of a cure for the disease.
Last
week scientists warned the search for therapies for diabetes and
Alzheimer's disease would be hampered if they were not allowed to
source more stem cells by creating embryos that are part animal, part
human. These arise from injecting human genes into eggs from cows or
rabbits. Scientists are awaiting approval for the research.
FAQ: Fluid option
What is amniotic fluid?
The
liquid that envelops a developing baby - it allows movement of the
foetus while protecting it from injury. It contains a small amount of
nutrients and cell material.
Is extracting the fluid safe?
Amniocentesis
involves inserting a needle to extract amniotic fluid, usually to test
for genetic abnormalities in the baby. It is straightforward but
complications can arise if pathogens are introduced by the needle or
the wound does not heal properly.
How can the cells be used?
If
they prove useful the stem cells could be stored in a cell bank and
cloned indefinitely for research or to provide therapies such as
growing tissue that is genetically matched to damaged tissue in a
patient.
We're having an interesting, albeit somewhat testy, debate in the comment section to a post over at my blog over the distinction between just and minimum wages in Catholic social thought, which might interest some MoJ readers.
ZENIT has this interview up, with my friend, Fr. Thomas Williams, about abortion and Catholic Social Teaching. Here is a taste:
Q: What does Catholic social thought offer to the debate on abortion that bioethics doesn't? What is its specific contribution?
Father Williams: Since Catholic social teaching contributes so much to this discussion, it is impossible for me to do this question justice here. In its analysis of the socio-cultural, political, familial and economic dimensions of human action, the Church's social teaching offers invaluable points of reference for a public discussion of abortion.
As I mentioned earlier, the Church's teaching on the content and requirements of the "common good" sheds important light on respect and reverence for human life as a pillar of the just society.
Moreover, the principle of equality, based on the equal dignity of all human beings, not only grounds our democratic system but also demands that we deprive no one of this essential dignity.
Historically the greatest social evils perpetrated on humanity -- genocide, racism, abortion, slavery -- have always violated the principle of equality, relegating an entire sector of the human family to an inferior status, with a dignity lower than the rest. Since human rights flow from human dignity, once the latter is called into question, rights fall at the same time.
As a legal "right," abortion brings forth countless social issues requiring a reasoned response: questions of conscientious objection, the rule of law in a democracy, the pedagogical function of law, and the role of moral truth in a democratic system, to name but a few.
A few months ago, I -- like many other bloggers -- linked to and discussed Diana Henriques's New York Timesseries on religious exemptions. I also linked to Dr. John Dilulio's very critical response, which appeared in the Weekly Standard. I should have also linked to this letter, which Ms. Henriques sent to the Standard, in which she replies to DiIulio's critique.
Here is a long and thoughtful response, by Russell Arben Fox, to Damon Linker's recent TNR essay -- about which I blogged here --- on Mitt Romney, Mormonism, and politics. And here is law prof Nate Oman, of the Times and Seasons blog. Really good stuff, and (obviously) relevant to the question we so often address, in various forms, here, i.e., what does the Catholic faith mean for politics?
Here is the abstract of a new paper, "The Religious Lawyering Critique," by Bruce Green:
There is a developing body of legal scholarship on the relevance of religion to lawyers' work. Some authors offer a critique of the legal profession that views its norms as hostile to religious belief and identity, as inconsistent with religious and ordinary social morality, and as presupposing an amoral lawyering style. This article, which grew out of an AALS program on Professional Responsibility and the Religious Traditions, examines the religious lawyering critique. Initially, it notes that prior legal-ethics scholarship challenges both the critique's descriptive premises, such as that the profession has endorsed the extreme "hired gun" conception, and its normative premises, such as that a lawyer's personal values should dominate the legal representation. The article then explores how the critique is in tension with other writings on religious lawyering that assume that religious lawyers can generally practice consistently with the legal profession's norms, that it is not "amoral" to implement lawful instructions to which one is morally opposed, that helping clients achieve their ends can be a moral good in itself, and that professional values are largely consistent with religious ones at least at a level of generality. Finally, the article questions the critics' premise that when religious and professional expectations do conflict, religious expectations are necessarily better.
Church-state experts Bob Tuttle and Chip Lupu have a new paper, examining the new book by Christopher L. Eisgruber and Lawrence G. Sager, Religious Freedom and the Constitution. Here is the abstract (thanks to Larry Solum):
This essay is a review of Christopher L. Eisgruber and Lawrence G. Sager, Religious Freedom and the Constitution (Harvard University Press, 2007). Eisgruber and Sager reject many conventional notions of church-state separation. They offer an approach to religious liberty based on two basic principles, conjoined under the label “Equal Liberty.” First, “no members of our political community ought to be devalued on account of the spiritual foundations of their important commitments and projects.” Second, all members of the political community have a general set of liberty rights, including freedom of speech, personal autonomy, associational freedom, and private property, which allow a broad range of religious beliefs to flourish. From these principles, they develop elaborate accounts of the proper role of the free exercise clause and the establishment clause in our constitutional law.
This review essay focuses primarily on Eisgruber's and Sager's approach to the establishment clause. They claim that “Equal Liberty” provides an overarching framework for evaluating the permissibility of all government-sponsored religious speech, including current limitations on public school sponsorship of religious expression. They also claim that Equal Liberty can bring coherence to the vexed question of government financial partnerships with religious institutions.
In the review, we argue that Equal Liberty is not fully up to the task of either policing government religious speech, or measuring the permissibility of government financial relationships with religious providers of educational or other services. We question whether all religion-protecting norms can be fully explained in the authors' individualistic, rights-oriented, egalitarian terms. And we assert that religious commitments and religious institutions occupy a constitutionally distinctive place that Eisgruber & Sager are at pains to deny.
Sam Schulman thinks today's celebrity atheists have no new arguments, and lack their forebears' charm:
What is new about the new atheists? It's not their arguments. Spend as much time as you like with a pile of the recent anti-religion books, but you won't encounter a single point you didn't hear in your freshman dormitory. It's their tone that is novel. Belief, in their eyes, is not just misguided but contemptible, the product of provincial minds, the mark of people who need to be told how to think and how to vote--both of which, the new atheists assure us, they do in lockstep with the pope and Jerry Falwell.
For them, belief in God is beyond childish, it is unsuitable for children. Today's atheists are particularly disgusted by the religious training of young people--which Dr. Dawkins calls "a form of child abuse." He even floats the idea that the state should intervene to protect children from their parents' religious beliefs.
For the new atheists, believing in God is a form of stupidity, which sets off their own intelligence. They write as if they were the first to discover that biblical miracles are improbable, that Parson Weems was a fabulist, that religion is full of superstition. They write as if great minds had never before wrestled with the big questions of creation, moral law and the contending versions of revealed truth. They argue as if these questions are easily answered by their own blunt materialism. Most of all, they assume that no intelligent, reflective person could ever defend religion rather than dismiss it. The reviewer of Dr. Dawkins's volume in a recent New York Review of Books noted his unwillingness to take theology seriously, a starting point for any considered debate over religion.
More and more observers who keep score on
politicians, especially as they approach campaigns for office, have been
chronicling changes on some of the issues most would describe as basic. In
each case, the chronicles point to movements that we would have to call
"about-faces" or "180-degree turns." That repositioning goes on in
politics every day is an everyday observation, so it would not normally inspire
curiosity. But when defining issues get redefined, commentators take note,
and not necessarily in order to play "Gotcha!" or to cry "Fraud!" though some
may do so. They do it to discern what are the hot issues, the sticky
sticking points -- why they are, and what can change. In my files is an
example from columnist Steve Chapman in the Chicago Tribune, one December
day.
Chapman first feels for Governor Mitt Romney of Massachusetts, the
staunch Mormon who should be as good as his word -- his early word as well as
his recent word. For years Romney courted Massachusetts liberal voters by
siding with them; he was pro-Roe v. Wade, and said, "I believe abortion
should be safe and legal." Now he hungers for a Republican nomination
where the base is rooted in opposition to "safe and legal" and Roe v.
Wade. He backtracked and reversed himself and gave reasons for his
about-face: "I'm in a different place than I was probably in 1994."
Critics watch his decisions and say that yes, indeed, he has changed, and his
acts show it.
Chapman cited early and later Ronald Reagan, who signed a
liberal abortion law in California and then went against his younger self.
George H. W. Bush did the same. To keep things even, Chapman shows how
Democrats Jesse Jackson and Al Gore did something similar, and Bill Clinton does
not escape Chapman's Reversal-Meter standards either. The early and the
later stands may both be sincere, and there can be good reasons for
people to be on this side or that side of an issue, and even to convert.
Chapman is suspicious about the timing and quality of the shifts. He's a
pro-lifer who is sure that Romney is sincere and, with wit breaking through on
this one, adds: "I have complete confidence that he will be there until he
isn't."
While changes by leaders in both parties in the matter of support
for the Iraq War "then" and "now" tend to be relative, and economic issues allow
for large varieties, the two issues that draw most fire and do most defining of
the base, abortion and gay marriage, are pictured as absolutely set apart -- by
scripture, say some, by theological ethics, and by ideologies about
freedom. Yet moves from the ideology that holds the base together might
also lead observers to conclude that the "absolute" side of these has been
overplayed. Most successful American politicians are pragmatists,
broken-field runners; they are out of character when they feel constrained to
recertify themselves all the time.
Can their back-and-forth motions also
suggest that there is some fluidity even on this putatively solid-rock front,
and that we may see some compromises and reconfigurations in the years
ahead? If Romney and Gore, Reagan and Jackson could switch in times of
climate change, who's next and what's
next?
References:
Steve Chapman's article "Former stances die in
'different place'" (Chicago Tribune, December 17, 2006), can be read
here:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/chi-0612170456dec17,1,6028076.column?coll=chi-news-col.
----------
Sightings comes from the Martin Marty Center at the
University of Chicago Divinity School.
As William James wrote in 1890, the whole “sting and excitement” of life comes from “our sense that in it things are really being decided from one moment to another, and that it is not the dull rattling off of a chain that was forged innumerable ages ago.” Get over it, Dr. James. Go get yourself fitted for a new chain-mail vest. A bevy of experiments in recent years suggest that the conscious mind is like a monkey riding a tiger of subconscious decisions and actions in progress, frantically making up stories about being in control.
As a result, physicists, neuroscientists and computer scientists have joined the heirs of Plato and Aristotle in arguing about what free will is, whether we have it, and if not, why we ever thought we did in the first place. . . .
The death of free will, or its exposure as a convenient illusion, some worry, could wreak havoc on our sense of moral and legal responsibility. According to those who believe that free will and determinism are incompatible, Dr. Silberstein said in an e-mail message, it would mean that “people are no more responsible for their actions than asteroids or planets.” Anything would go.
Dr. Wegner of Harvard said: “We worry that explaining evil condones it. We have to maintain our outrage at Hitler. But wouldn’t it be nice to have a theory of evil in advance that could keep him from coming to power?”
He added, “A system a bit more focused on helping people change rather than paying them back for what they’ve done might be a good thing.”
Dr. Wegner said he thought that exposing free will as an illusion would have little effect on people’s lives or on their feelings of self-worth. Most of them would remain in denial.
