A draft report by the National Bioethics Advisory Commission recommends that Congress should rescind part of its ban on research involving human embryos—a move that could pave the way for research involving the growth of replacement tissues and even organs.
The report is expected to be released in June.
Efforts to lift Congress's four-year-old ban on embryo research gained momentum after two teams of privately funded researchers announced in November that they had isolated human embryonic stem cells, which are thought to be able to be grown into virtually any type of human tissue. The Department of Health and Human Services subsequently concluded that using federal money to study the cells would not violate the congressional ban so long as government scientists did not isolate the cells from embryos themselves but, instead, studied cells lines from the privately isolated cells.
The new recommendations go a step further. Instead of allowing research only on laboratory-grown cells from human embryos, the draft report proposes research on certain embryos themselves—those that have been formed during infertility treatments and are no longer wanted by the parents.
The report is expected to escalate national debate over abortion and the status of embryos. A statement by American Life League President Judie Brown called the destruction of an embryo for the good of another person "criminal, unethical, and despicable."
In an interview with Medcast Networks, ethicist Arthur Caplan said that the only issue behind the congressional ban on embryo research "is abortion politics."
For Your Information:
National Bioethics Advisory Commission
The draft recommendations are posted at http://bioethics.gov/briefings/index.html#draft, and a variety of background materials are posted at http://bioethics.gov/news.html.Yahoo! News
News articles and related websites can be accessed at http://headlines.yahoo.com/Full_Coverage/Science/Stem_Cell_Research/
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