Playing With The Stuff Of Life, But Is It Ethical?

The Age

Wednesday December 21, 2005

JO CHANDLER

IN HER Clayton laboratory six years ago, Megan Munsie did something extraordinary. She took a single cell from an adult mouse, extracted the nucleus, put it inside the hollowed egg of another mouse, and made an embryonic mouse clone.

Over about four days, Dr Munsie watched this historic, microscopic mass of cells divide.

"The really exciting part was when they stopped being just a cluster of cells and began to show the characteristics of embryonic stem cells," she recalled yesterday.

These are the cells that appear at the beginning of all life and have the capacity to grow into anything - legs, a liver, skin, blood. For years now their pluripotent potential has raised enormous scientific and public interest.

At that point Dr Munsie isolated the cells, in the process destroying the embryo, and cultivated a stem cell "line" - winning a place in scientific history.

The experiment made Dr Munsie, who works for the Melbourne-based private laboratory Stem Cell Sciences, the first person in the world to perform a somatic cell nuclear transfer. The process is best known as therapeutic cloning - the creation of an embryonic clone for research.

In the human context, this process is deeply controversial and banned in Australia, although it is permitted under special licence in Britain, in privately-funded labs in the United States, and in countries like South Korea.

But after six months of inquiry, a Federal Government committee on Monday recommended a dramatic relaxation of the laws on cloning and embryo research. In theory, if the recommendations are adopted, it means Dr Munsie's laboratory, or any other in Australia, may be allowed to repeat her experiment using human cells.

And the significance of that? This is the question The Age put to a half dozen Melbourne scientists - still recognised leaders in the field internationally - working for public and private laboratories at Monash University's Clayton campus.

At the moment, scientists in Australia can create "generic" embryonic stem cell lines from unwanted IVF embryos. But through therapeutic cloning they could develop stem cells that are tailored to specific individuals or specific diseases, said Andrew Elefanty of Monash Immunology and Stem Cell Laboratories.

So if scientists' best hopes are realised, a person who needs a blood transfusion can receive blood derived from their own stem cells, tailor-made for them.

Using cell lines derived from individual patients "would virtually do away with all the problems of immunological rejection that (transplant patients) now experience," said Dr Elefanty. It means customised blood, organs and therapies - "hugely reducing the burden of disease".

In the field of Dr Munsie's company, the most exciting prospect would be developing disease-specific assays - petrie dishes full of cells with a particular disease, like cancer or cystic fibrosis - which could be used to test new drugs. The hope would be to produce better remedies faster.

At the top of Monash stem cell researcher Dr Alan Trounson's wishlist is another twist on the scientific possibilities brought about by therapeutic cloning - to look for treatments by gaining a better understanding of the causes of disease.

"What I would want to do immediately, if the recommendations went through, is to make embryonic stem cell lines from patients with motor neurone disease, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and a number of different cancers," he said.

"These are complex diseases, for which we really don't know the cause, so we would hope embryonic stem cells would allow us to determine what brings about the changes that cause disease - is it in the genetics, is it environmental change?"

Last night, Dr Trounson was preparing to attend a small gathering honouring his colleague and fellow IVF pioneer, Dr Carl Wood, now suffering advanced Alzheimer's.

It would be fitting, he said, to use cells from "Carl or someone like him" - scientific pioneers - to discover treatments for such devastating conditions.

A STEM CELL PRIMER

WHAT ARE THEY?

Cells that can develop into other kinds of cells. They can be derived from embryos, adults and umbilical cord blood.

WHY ALL THE FUSS?

They have enormous potential to provide custom-made repair kits for people with diseases, including diabetes, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, Huntington's, motorneurone disease and even spinal cord injuries. They can also be used to produce diseased human cells for research and drug development. But scientists do not know what would happen if transplanted stem cell derivatives were transplanted into humans.

WHY THE CONTROVERSY?

Few people have ethical concerns about using stem cells from adults or umbilical cords.

But taking them from embryos - even spare ones - raises ethical and moral questions.

WHAT'S CLONING GOT TO DO WITH IT?

It's a way of generating specific types of stem cells. By putting an adult cell into a hollowed human egg, a clone embryo is created.

In therapeutic cloning, the embryo is allowed to develop for five to seven days and is destroyed when the stem cells are extracted. This differs from reproductive cloning, in that the intention is not to allow the embryo to develop. But the technology is similar.

WHAT IS THE LEGAL SITUATION IN AUSTRALIA?

It is illegal to experiment on naturally conceived embryos.

Embryonic stem cells are taken from spare embryos from eggs fertilised in an IVF clinic - embryos that would be discarded - and are donated by the parents for research. Therapeutic and reproductive cloning is prohibited.

WHAT THEY SAID: FOR AND AGAINST

TREASURER PETER COSTELLO

I would be against creating embryos for the purpose of destroying them in medical research. I think that is taking a callous view of life ...

I think the capacity for medical research to treat diseases like Parkinson's disease is so important, but I do not believe that potential lives can be created and destroyed.

INDUSTRY, TOURISM AND RESOURCES MINISTER IAN MACFARLANE

By refusing to allow this research, we have no idea what future benefits, cures or medical breakthroughs we are slamming the door on for living Australians.

HEALTH MINISTER TONY ABBOTT

Deliberately destroying an embryo, for whatever reason, is akin to giving a lethal injection ... At the very least it seems to me that the embryo is worthy of respect. At the very least it seems to me that it cannot be treated with no more respect than a laboratory rat destined to be sacrificed for the sake of science.

HUMAN SERVICES MINISTER JOE HOCKEY

If a child is born with one arm, there is a reasonable case for therapeutic cloning for another arm or something which may assist in giving that child a normal life.

FINANCE AND ADMINISTRATION MINISTER NICK MINCHIN

The practical, biological and ethical problems therapeutic cloning entails are insurmountable ... The community is right to deplore and reject any form of human cloning.

IMMIGRATION MINISTER AMANDA VANSTONE

I haven't seen the report but I am a strong supporter of stem cell research, including embryonic stem cell research.We have to give Australian science every chance to be in front.

© 2005 The Age

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