Claim: "Embryo-friendly technique produces stem cells"

This bioethics story has been getting a fair amount of coverage today so let's take a look at what it claims.

"Embryo-friendly technique produces stem cells", the Reuters headline reads.

The procedure:

Massachusetts-based Advanced Cell Technology has been working with a method sometimes used to test embryos for severe genetic diseases. Called preimplantation genetic diagnosis, it involves taking a single cell from an embryo when it contains only eight or so cells.

The method usually does not harm the embryo, which is frozen for possible future implantation into the mother's womb. The ACT team also froze the embryos and used the single cell that was removed as a source of human embryonic stem cells.

This process doesn't appear to be anything new, and the article admits that this method is already "sometimes used to test embryos for severe genetic diseases." The embryos that provide the stem cells in this process are brought about through in vitro fertilization, which is unethical in itself.

Also, the admission that the process "usually does not harm the embryo" implies that sometimes, in fact, it does. Experimentation cannot be done on an innocent embryo if it does not have that particular embryo's best interests at heart - you cannot sacrifice individual human lives for scientific progress.

So why are the proponents of this process claiming it is better than current techniques?

Dr. Robert Lanza, ACT's scientific director, said it provides a way to create mass quantities of embryonic stem cells without harming a human embryo. Current stem cell technologies require the embryo's destruction.

True enough, but the new process still involves bringing a human being into existence in a petri dish, possibly killing it by removing 1/8th of its cell mass, and dooming it to a frozen existence with - realistically - only a slim chance of ever being implanted at a future date into a womb.

The article also features a typically superfluous and needlessly inflammatory quotation:

"If the White House approves this new methodology, researchers could effectively double or triple the number of stem cell lines available within a few months. Too many needless deaths continue to occur while this research is being held up," Lanza said.

"I hope the president will act now and approve these stem cell lines quickly."

You know what also causes needless deaths? Hunger. But that doesn't mean every person who isn't actively fighting to eliminate hunger somehow intends or is complacent with starvation.

Reading through the rest of the article and the people it quotes, its continuous language of urgency and dogmatism ("scientists must continue to study true embryonic stem cells.") belies to me another example of researchers slightly tweaking an already-ruled-out technique and then rushing it through the examination process in hopes that the legal and ethical scrutinizers will miss what is actually happening.

Say what you want, my money is still on induced pluripotent stem cells (derived from adults).

Related: my Bioethics essay "Direct Reprogramming & the End of Embryonic Research"