PROFESSIONAL ISSUES

Proposal may solve stem cell dilemma

Creation of a new biological entity could bypass ethical problems of research on human embryos.

By Andis Robeznieks, AMNews staff. Jan. 3/10, 2005.

The embryonic stem cell research debate shows no signs of resolution, but a new proposal has been made that could offer a compromise and, in the process, develop new ways of defining "humanity."

The proposal involves creating a new type of biological entity that can produce stem cells but would not rise to the moral status of a human embryo. Reaction has been mixed, but with embryonic stem cell research opponents -- including an influential official of the Catholic church -- expressing interest, both sides might be persuaded to give it another look.

At last month's meeting of the President's Council on Bioethics, council member William B. Hurlbut, MD, a Stanford University consulting professor in human biology, presented a plan to alter a cell's genetic makeup to create an entity that produces embryonic stem cells but would lack the ability to develop into an embryo.

"The chief complaint from one side is that I was proposing to create true embryos with a defect," he said. "The criticism from the other side is, 'Why should science accommodate the private religious views of a small number of people?' "

The answer to that question, he said, is because the United States is a democracy where minority views are respected. The answer to the first complaint is more complicated.

"If we're going to go forward with our new powers over developmental biology, we're going to have to do the hard work of defining what we mean by 'organism,' 'embryo' and 'human being,' " Dr. Hurlbut said.

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