Government Recommends Embryo Research

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Government Recommends Embryo Research

Monday, May 24, 1999

[From the big guy who knows a lot about ethics. In today's Reuters News.]

http://ipn.intelihealth.com/ipn/ihtIPN?c=224999

President Clinton's top advisory panel on medical ethics is recommending

government financing of limited forms of research on human embryos to build

on discoveries promising huge medical advances.

The National Bioethics Advisory Commission acknowledged the report was

likely to raise controversy but said the research's promise for the

betterment of mankind merits the recommendations.

A draft report outlining reasons for the decision by the National Bioethics

Advisory Commission says Congress should rescind parts of its four-year ban

on spending federal money for embryonic research.

Instead, it recommends a regime of tightly controlled experiments to obtain

so-called " stem cells " from embryos left over from procedures at fertility

clinics. They would be used only with the consent of the parents for whom

the embryos were created.

Stem cells have been shown in recent years to be building blocks for almost

all human tissue. Scientists say the cells' capability to grow into

virtually any tissue raises the possibility of growing spare body parts or

correcting disorders such as Parkinson's disease or diabetes.

" This research is allied with a noble cause, and any taint that might attach

from the source of the stem cells diminishes in proportion to the potential

good which the research may yield, " the report says.

The bioethics panel's recommendation, being announced officially next month,

goes further than a proposal last month from a National Institutes of Health

advisory committee on financing research in stem cells, which are obtainable

only from human embryos or very early fetuses. The NIH rules would allow the

institutes to finance studies only on cell cultures grown in laboratories

and not taken from embryos.

Embryos are destroyed in the process of harvesting stem cells, a reason such

research has raised emotional debate in Congress and elsewhere between

people on both sides of the abortion question. At least 75 members of

Congress have said all stem-cell research violates the money ban, which has

been extended annually since its enactment in 1994.

Committee members reported wide agreement that women should not be allowed

to terminate a pregnancy to donate the fetal material for research. In

discussing a possible abortion, it said, the possibility of research on the

aborted material should not be brought up by the physician unless asked.

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editor: Lenny Schafer east coast editor: , Ph.D.

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