Another Korean Breakthrough

Dr. Woo Suk Hwang and his team have announced that they can reliably generate cloned stem cell lines for a wide variety of patients. Hwang's team was the group that produced the first stem cell line from a cloned embryo last year. These guys are going great guns.

The links:


1. The official report is published in Science. Science also has two other articles on the breakthrough, all free with registration, accessible from here. Hey did you know Hwang was trained as a vet?

One of the articles in Science is a policy piece that deals with international oversight, the ethics of oocyte donation, and creating unreasonable expectations. The oocyte donation issue is very difficult. There are a lot of medical problems associated with harvasting your eggs, and the donor receives no theraputic benefit from the procedure. What's more, paying the donor is generally frowned upon, because we do not want to create a market for eggs or create a situation where poor women become egg factories for wealthy ones. The authors of the Science policy piece point out that right now stem cell researchers are envisioning relying on women to donate their eggs to strangers for purely altruistic reasons. However, we don't allow altruistic live organ donation to strangers because it is seen as asking to much of people.

2. Here's the NYT story. Note the Old Gray Lady gave their top gun, Gina Kolata, the headline for the story, but working dog Sheryl Gay Stolberg did the footwork. (Also, has anyone noticed that the NYT Stable Link Generator just isn't working anymore?)

3. PZ Myers has a post on the science piece. He seems to think that the main ethical problem with oocyte donation is that younger donors (under 30) give the best eggs. I'm not sure this is an issue. My instinct is to treat young adults just like adults.

4. Bioethics.net has three pieces up so far. Here is a piece by David Magnus, who wrote the policy article in Science with Mildred Cho, explaining why this isn't a step forward for reproductive cloning.Here is a piece on other aspects of the research, which includes a suggestion that we should pay people for eggs. Here is note about our dear leader's response to the Korean announcement. ("I plan to propel the United States into the Dark Ages, to promote witch hunts and supress science")

5. Magnus and Cho have a op ed in the San Jose Mercury News which recaps in ordinary language the concerns they raised in the science policy piece.

Treatments from this research are still a long way off. Still, one can imagine that in my lifetime, or at least Caroline's lifetime, sick wealthy people will be flying off to South Korea for treatment that the US couldn't develop, because of moral concern for an embryo with the mental life of c. elegans.