Therapeutic Cloning Ignores Fate of Embryos.(Brief Article)

Many of our loved ones, neighbors, and patients suffer from incurable diseases such as Parkinson?s, Alzheimer?s, multiple sclerosis, and Lou Gehrig?s. One of the next frontiers of medicine will be regenerating damaged organs such as the brain that normally poorly repair themselves.

The ?holy grail? of the emerging field of regenerative medicine is to find stem cells that can make new nerve cells and build new organs but not grow into something unwanted, like a tumor.

There are two potential sources of these stem cells: adult stem cells derived from adult brains, bone marrow, or even skin, and embryonic stem cells derived from human embryos. These embryonic stem cells could be obtained from ?spare? embryos at in vitro fertilization clinics or from specially prepared cloned embryos, a process known as therapeutic cloning.

As presented by its proponents, therapeutic cloning is seductive and attractive, beckoning us with promises of cures for debilitating disease. Some say all the opposition to cloning is just ?political.? Well, some of it is, but it is more than that.

Therapeutic cloning, also called ?nuclear transplantation to produce stem cells,? involves removing the nucleus from an egg cell and replacing it with the nucleus from an adult cell.

This nuclear-transplanted cell with the genetic material from one parent is then allowed to divide until it forms a few hundred cells, an early embryo stage called a blastocyst.

Stem cells are harvested from the inner cell mass of the blastocyst, but this always involves the destruction of the embryo. The crux of the issue is what human status you accord this blastocyst.