EMBRYONIC STEM CELLS TO FEED ON ABORTED BABY TISSUE
Another horror story behind the manufacture of human embryonic stem cells
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Life Site News reports....
SYDNEY, August 6, 2002
(LSN.ca) - A political debate in Australia has let the cat out of the bag on another horror behind the manufacture of human embryonic stem cells. Australia's foremost scientist, Professor Alan
Trounson, has enraged the Prime Minster by revealing that human embryonic stem cells are to be fed with tissue from aborted babies.
Full Text of the Story
Abortions
set to fuel stem cell research
By Julie
Robotham and Deborah Smith
August 5 2002
Tissue from aborted human foetuses will be used in the culture of embryonic stem
cells for the first time in Australia if the creation of new stem-cell lines is
approved, the country's leading scientist in the field has revealed. The
disclosure by Alan Trounson, director of the institute of reproduction and
development at Monash University, is certain to inflame the debate around the
issue. The Catholic Church has already branded the research based on cells from
days-old embryos as morally unacceptable and is likely to see any use of tissue
from foetuses aborted in early pregnancy as compounding the offence.
Professor
Trounson was speaking after a Singaporean team with which he is associated
demonstrated for the first time the growth of human embryonic stem cells on
human tissue cultures.
Previously,
all human embryonic stem cells had been grown on cultures made from the skin
cells of foetal mice. These cells are useful for basic research, but scientists
would be reluctant to try to use them to cure human diseases because of the
possibility of infection by mouse viruses.
Professor Trounson said: ``If we're able to [create new embryonic stem cell
colonies] ourselves we would look at a broad range of [culture] cell types. We
have candidate cells in mind.''
The
Monash group would test tissue from adults as the culture layer, including
tissue from the reproductive tract, but Professor Trounson said he would also
want to test the use of aborted foetal tissue as a culture medium, to establish
which tissue type worked best. People who opposed such research on moral grounds
needed to appreciate that doctors had always been allowed to use tissue from
aborted foetuses, with the parents' consent, ``for experimentation and even
transplantation''.
``Here
in Australia we would be allowed to use it. There would be no impediment to
that.'' About 90,000 abortions are performed in Australia each year. The
relative abundance of foetal tissue available was one attraction to scientists,
he said.
As well, Australia would gain an important advantage in the biotechnology
industry if local scientists were able to create new embryonic stem-cell lines
using cultures derived from humans. This was because of the recent moratorium by
the United States Government on further taxpayer-funded grants for the creation
of new embryonic stem-cell lines. The National University of Singapore team, led
by Dr Ariff Bongso, reported that the embryonic stem cells had grown just as
well, if not better, than those on mouse cells.
But the researchers were aware that the use of foetal tissue would be
controversial. ``We are in the process of evaluating other commercially
available adult human [cultures] because of ethical concerns regarding the
derivation of foetal cells from human abortuses.'' They had also experimented
with tissue from the fallopian tubes of women undergoing hysterectomy.
The
research is reported today in the journal Nature Biotechnology.
Human embryonic stem cells, which scientists believe have the potential to treat
many conditions, including diabetes, Parkinson's disease and motor neurone
disease, tend to turn unpredictably into different types of tissue in the
laboratory dish. To keep them growing in an unchanged state, scientists have had
to nurture them carefully with special solutions and culture tissue. Some
researchers have grown them on specially coated plastic beds, but they had to
use mouse cells in the nourishing solution.
The
Singaporean cell colony is the first to be grown in mouse-free conditions.
This
story was found at: http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/08/05/1028157895589.html
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