Harvard Stem Cell Institute to Extract Stem Cells from Cloned Human Embryos.

On June 6 the Harvard Stem Cell Institute announced that researchers at Harvard University and Children's Hospital are going to attempt to extract stem cells from cloned human embryos. A story that appeared the next day in the New York Times pointed out that the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) had done the same thing "less conspicuously a month ago, resuming a program abandoned in 2001."

As is typically the case, the press release used scientific jargon"Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer"to avoid bringing up the obvious: that the researchers are creating human lives by cloning and then destroying them.

In its coverage of the press conference, the Boston Globe pointed out the many practical and ethical landmines.

"These goals are distant hopes because there is no assurance that cloned human embryonic stem cells can even be made," wrote the Globe's Gareth Cook. "Although cloning has been used successfully in many animals, each species presents a unique set of technical challenges."

In addition, "Beyond the biological puzzles, there are practical obstacles, such as finding women who are willing to donate the eggs needed for cloning. The research is controversial because scientists destroy days-old embryos, which some opponents say is essentially taking human lives, and because the research uses human eggs, which can place donors at a slight risk of side effects."

Even one of the speakers at the press conference, George Daley of Children's Hospital Boston, conceded, "Clinical applications may be a decade or even more away." Daley was joined by Douglas Melton and Kevin Eggan of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute.

Critics were quick to point out that not so long ago proponents insisted that "all" researchers wanted were "spare embryos" which were "left over" from fertility clinics. The rationalization was that they were, in many cases, not going to be implanted and/or that they would "die anyway."