The first article is background information on therapeutic cloning

First steps in therapeutic cloning taken as stem cells collected from cloned mouse embryos produce neurons, cells.(Brief Article)
Transplant News - May 12, 2001
Word count: 783.
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Two teams of scientists have extracted stem cells from cloned mouse embryos and used them to form both basic and specialized cells, including a type of neuron that is deficient in Parkinson's disease and insulin-producing cells that are damaged in diabetes.
If these first successful attempts at therapeutic cloning work in humans, it might one day be possible to treat degenerative diseases such as Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, and multiple sclerosis, as well as illnesses like diabetes, using stem cells harvested from embryos cloned from the patient's own cells. The replacement tissue would be genetically identical to the person's own cells, virtually eliminating the risk of immune system rejection.
In a study published in the April 27th issue of Science, researchers from Rockefeller University and Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York described using adult mouse cells to create cloned embryos. One week later, after the embryos had reached the blastocyst stage and contained approximately 100 cells each, the scientists removed the stem cells and expanded them in culture. The cells then were coaxed into forming either ectodermal, mesodermal, or endodermal cell types-the most basic cells of early development-or specialized brain cells. This achievement, according to Teruhiko Wakayama, PhD and coauthors, demonstrated that the stem cells truly were pluripotent and capable of developing into a variety of cell types from the most primitive to the most specialized.
In another study appearing in the April 26th online issue of Sciencexpress, investigators at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke in Bethesda, MD reported the generation of insulin-producing clusters from mouse embryonic stem cells-again cloned from adult mouse cells. When implanted into diabetic mice, the cell clusters functioned like normal pancreata, producing insulin and other hormones required to maintain healthy blood sugar levels. Furthermore, glucose from food triggered the release of insulin from the cells through a mechanism similar to the body's natural insulin-release mechanism.
"This is the first example of assembling a functional, multicellular organ from cells grown in the lab," said Ron McKay, PhD and coauthors.
The possibility of developing new treatments through human therapeutic cloning led British lawmakers in January to pass a law allowing it (but not human reproductive cloning), so long as embryos are not permitted to develop beyond 14 days. The Bush administration has delayed the first meeting of a committee charged with reviewing applications for government funding of embryonic stem cell research. President Bush has said he is opposed to such investigations, and a bill was introduced in Congress on April 26th that would ban all human cloning, including therapeutic cloning. But other officials, including Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson, have supported the work.
The debate pits researchers against religious conservatives, with opponents contending that creating or harvesting human embryos for stem cells is tantamount to murder. But many scientists who oppose human reproductive cloning believe that therapeutic cloning research holds the potential for fantastic medical advances and should be permitted. Rudolf Jaenisch, PhD, a professor of biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, is a critic of reproductive cloning because animal studies suggest the technique can produce abnormal offspring. But he and other researchers argue that before the cloned embryo is implanted in a uterus and starts forming specialized tissues, it essentially is an undefined "ball of cells."
"Is this a small person? Some people would probably believe it is," Jaenisch said. "I think the majority of scientists do not believe that." Similar arguments are made for embryonic stem cell research that does not involve cloning, said Jaenisch. Most of this work, done with private funding, uses extra embryos originally created for in vitro fertilization.
In an editorial appearing in the same issue of Science, Nobel laureate David Baltimore, president of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, warned that a moratorium on embryo stem cell research and transplantation could be "devastating." Although work with adult stem cells is promising, it still is only a hope, Baltimore wrote, "and it would be foolish to abandon the surer path for the unproven one." If US researchers do not move ahead on such work, he warned, advances may come from Britain and other nations where the research is permitted.
Robert Lanza, vice present for research at Advanced Cell Technology in Worcester, MA which plans on pursuing therapeutic cloning in humans, said he believes other nations surely will move ahead with therapeutic cloning even if the United States does not. "I would say at least one or two groups will report something within the next year," Lanza said.


Citation Details
Title: First steps in therapeutic cloning taken as stem cells collected from cloned mouse embryos produce neurons, cells.(Brief Article)
Publication: Transplant News (Newsletter)
Date: May 12, 2001
Publisher: Transplant Communications, Inc.
Volume: 11 Issue: 9 Page: NA


















This next article is an editorial against therapeutic cloning by a person in the right to life movement.


Therapeutic Dreaming: The false promise of experimental cloning.
National Right to Life News - October 1, 2003
Wesley J. Smith
Word count: 1418.
citation details

Polls show that most Americans want to ban all human cloning. President Bush is eager to sign such a measure into law. The House has twice enacted a strong legal prohibition with wide, bipartisan votes. But cloning advocates have so far blocked passage of a ban in the Senate (Brownback/Landrieu) by asserting that "therapeutic cloning" might someday provide stem cell treatments for horrible illnesses such as Parkinson's and multiple sclerosis. (I believe the term "therapeutic cloning," is loaded and misleading. However, I use it here because the term is currently part of the popular lexicon.)
According to the Biotechnology Industry Organization, the biotech industry's lobbying arm, here's how therapeutic cloning would work:
Suppose a middle-aged man suffers a serious heart attack while hiking in a remote part of a National Park. By the time he reaches the hospital, only a third of his heart is still working, and it is unlikely he will be able to return to his formerly active life. He provides scientists a small sample of skin cells. Technicians remove the genetic material from the cells and inject it into donated human eggs from which the chromosomes have been removed. These altered eggs [actually, cloned embryos] will yield stem cells that are able to form heart muscle cells. Since they are a perfect genetic match for the patient, these cells can be transplanted into his heart without causing his immune system to reject them. They grow and replace the cells lost during the heart attack, returning him to health and strength.
This scenario is typical of the hype that has pervaded discussions of therapeutic cloning over the last few years. But now, cold reality is setting in. Biotech researchers and cloning advocates are admitting difficulties in their professional journals, if not yet in the popular press, that make therapeutic cloning look more like a pipe dream than a realistic hope.
Consider a paper by Peter Mombaerts of Rockefeller University, "Therapeutic Cloning in the Mouse," just published by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS). Mombaerts has been investigating therapeutic cloning techniques in mice. It has been tough going. Of these efforts, he sadly reports, "The efficiency, or perhaps better, the lack of efficiency thereof, is remarkably consistent." It takes about 100 tries to obtain one viable cloned mouse embryonic stem cell line.
Mombaerts notes that creating human cloned embryos using "nuclear transfer is unlikely to be much more efficient" than it is in mice, especially given that "the efficiency of nuclear transfer has not increased over the years in any of the mammalian species cloned." Nuclear transfer, more precisely somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT), is the same procedure used to create Dolly the sheep. The nucleus from an egg is removed and replaced with the nucleus from a clone donor's somatic cell, such as a skin cell. The modified egg is stimulated with an electric current. If the cloning "works," a cloned embryo is created that then develops just like a naturally created embryo.
Given the significant difficulties researchers have already had, deriving cloned embryonic stem cell lines is likely to be far less efficient in humans than it has been in mice (assuming that it can be accomplished at all).
This is big news and let's hope senators are paying attention. If they are, it should sink the rival to Brownback/Landrieu, Orrin Hatch and Dianne Feinstein's cynically misnamed Human Cloning Ban and Stem Cell Research Protection Act of 2003, which would not outlaw human cloning at all but would explicitly legalize it. If it takes 100 or more tries to make a single human cloned embryonic stem cell line, therapeutic cloning is all but doomed as a viable future medical treatment.
It's a simple matter of resources. There are more than 100 million Americans, according to the National Academy of Sciences, who might one day benefit from therapeutic cloning if all the high hopes for it panned out. Each therapeutic cloning attempt would require one human egg. If it takes 100 tries per patient for a cloned embryonic stem cell line to be successfully created, therapeutic cloning will never become a widely available therapy in medicine's armamentarium because there will never be enough eggs.
Do the math: 100 million patients at 100 eggs each would mean that biotechnologists would need access to at least 10 billion eggs just to treat the Americans the NAS has identified as having degenerative conditions that might respond positively to stem cell therapy. Even if we decided to strictly ration therapeutic cloning to, say, the sickest 100,000 patients, you would still need 10 million eggs! Even this strict rationing would require one million women of childbearing age to submit to egg extraction. These numbers are mind-boggling.
Is there a way out of this egg dearth? Mombaert's article suggested two potentialities, to which I add a horrific third:
(1) Researchers could use animal eggs. Animal eggs are more readily available than human eggs, which would reduce the price of therapeutic cloning considerably. But using animal eggs would mean creating human embryos containing some non-human dna. I doubt the American people would stand for this violation of nature's laws. (Mombaerts understates the case when he admits, "The idea of generating embryos with mixed human/animal properties, even transiently, is offensive to many people.") From a practical standpoint, the stem cells and indeed all tissues that would be extracted from such human/animal hybrids would contain nonhuman mitochondrial DNA. This could easily stimulate an auto-immune response or risk mitochondrial diseases in patients.
(2) Researchers might be able to learn how to transform embryonic stem cells taken from fertilized embryos into fully formed human eggs. This has been done in mice, but it will take many years to determine whether it can also be done with humans. But even if researchers learn how to morph stem cells into eggs, that does not mean they would be ready for use in cloning. Researchers would also have to ensure that they were not genetically defective and learn how to mature these eggs to the point where they would be usable for cloning. And even if they were able to learn how to do that, considering the huge number of eggs that would have to be produced in this way for therapeutic cloning to become widely available, morphing eggs out of embryonic stem cells hardly seems a plausible answer to the implacable egg dearth.
(3) Researchers could take the ovaries from female fetuses destroyed in late-term abortions, and maintain them in the hope of harvesting and maturing their eggs. I know this is revolting, but, sad to say, Dutch and Israeli researchers are already experimenting on this very thing with second- and third-trimester aborted fetuses, toward the goal of obtaining eggs for use in infertility treatments. Not only does this macabre research open the possibility that an aborted baby girl could become a mother, but if the procedure were perfected, it could result in aborted late-term female fetuses becoming a prime source of eggs for use in human cloning. As if that weren't troubling enough, the abortions of these female fetuses would have to be done in a way that did not damage their nascent ovaries, perhaps providing utilitarian impetus for the odious partial-birth abortion technique.
To pursue therapeutic cloning is to chase a mirage. On the other hand, adult stem cell research, a practical and moral alternative to therapeutic cloning, is already in human trials and moving ahead at tremendous speed. It was just announced, for example, that four out of five seriously ill human heart patients in a trial in Brazil no longer need heart transplants after being treated by their own bone marrow stem cells.
With all of the serious problems, both moral and practical, associated with human cloning, there is no longer any excuse for the current political impasse. The time has come for our senators to toss the Hatch/Feinstein phony cloning ban in the round file and pass the Brownback/Landrieu ban without further delay.
Wesley J. Smith, a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute, is writing a book about the science, morality, and business of human cloning. This article first appeared in the Weekly Standard in a slightly different form.>EN





























This article is for therapeutic cloning and written by a scientist.


Take therapeutic cloning forward
The Scientist - July 22, 2002
Arlene Judith Klotzko
Word count: 1470.
citation details

What will the US Senate actually do about therapeutic cloning-the procedure of using nuclear transfer to derive embryonic stem cells? The saga continues with the sudden plot changes, reversals of fortune, mischievous machinations, and the cliff-hanger ending worthy of a mystery thriller. The latest twist has not occurred in the Senate itself but in the laboratory. The journal Nature published two reports on stem cells in rodent models that are no less than thrilling to those of us who hope for-and wait for-- cures. Ron McKay and his team at the National Institutes of Health have shown that stem-cell therapy actually works.1 In a rat model, mouse embryonic stem cells differentiated into neurons, secreting dopamine, and actually reversed the symptoms of Parkinson disease.
Research by Catherine Verfaillie and her team at the University of Minnesota demonstrates that a certain type of adult bone marrow cell, called MAPC, can differentiate into a wide range of cell types.2 Until now, it was believed that only embryonic stem cells had such an open biological future. MAPCs are remarkably malleable; they are also far less morally contentious.
Before this research became known, US Sen. Sam Brownback's (R-Kan.) bill to criminalize therapeutic cloning seemed virtually dead. His fallback position is said to be a moratorium rather than an outright ban. Indeed, in a 10-7 split vote, President George W. Bush's bioethics advisory council has just recommended a four-year moratorium on all forms of cloning. A competing bill-cosponsored by Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), and Ted Kennedy (DMass.)-that would allow and regulate therapeutic cloning was given an excellent chance of reaching the magic number of 60 votes. How should the Senate view the two Nature papers in the context of the emerging consensus for the Feinstein bill? Is it still important to leave this avenue open to scientists? Yes, more than ever.
Opponents of therapeutic cloning and stem cell research say that what is at stake is the very idea of what it means to be human. I would put it rather differently. At stake, right here, right now, is the sense that Americans have that we are masters of our fate. That we can face the future with confidence. That we can grow and change and thrive in a new world lying just beyond the horizon.
This was the belief that drew millions of immigrants to our shores to embrace lives they did not yet know. This same belief gave courage to those who headed west in covered wagons. And it is the core belief that has made Americans the people we arethe optimists and doers of the world, the people for whom the frontier is a challenge, not a barrier.
The 21st century will be the century of biology. With information from the human genome sequence and with stem cell technology, medicine will move from treatments that are often clumsy, toxic, and just not very effective to disease prevention, and to self-- repair. Devastating illnesses that have blighted our lives could, one day, be stopped in their tracks. Such a paradigm shift is possible only if we face the future with confidence and humility. And with a commitment to plumb the depths of this new knowledge to extract the good and avoid the bad.
No society venerates the law as much as ours. How strange then that so many see the law as powerless in the face of biotechnology. How strange and how wrong. Powerful technologies need to be guided-to be reined in. We can do that. Therapeutic cloning unites two scientific discoveries that closed out the old millennium and promise to transform the new one. The cloning of Dolly the sheep3 was breathtaking biology. Scientists had taken a cell that only knew how to do and be one thing and tricked it into providing the instructions to reconstruct a new organism. Then, in 1998, John Gearhart at Johns Hopkins and Jamie Thomson at the University of Wisconsin published papers showing that they had derived human pluripotent stem cells4,5-- cells that divided indefinitely in culture and had the potential to produce all the cell and tissue types in the human body.
Therapeutic cloning to derive embryonic stem cells-because it could circumvent the immune rejection elicited by therapies derived from generic stem cells-might give us our own body repair kit. And, even if it does not make it into the clinic as a practical and cost-effective tool, basic therapeutic-cloning research could elucidate the still mysterious biological mechanisms that turned one body cell into a sheep. We could then avoid the morally contentious embryo stage altogether and, say, transform a skin cell directly into a neural cell to cure our own Parkinson disease. The McKay research shows us that neurons derived from embryonic stem cells can alleviate Parkinson disease-perhaps permanently. An estimated 500,ooo Americans have this terrible disease, and another 50,000 cases are diagnosed yearly. Is it really right to turn our backs on them? The moral case made by opponents of this research is based on the absolute sanctity of the very early embryo-- a five-day-old ball of cells no larger than a grain of sand. But what of the moral case to be made for the sick and the dying?
Americans have always stepped lightly from the past. It has not shackled us. It has not prevented us from dreaming big dreams. For 18 months, I have been an expatriate in Britain. Especially now, in the year of Queen Elizabeth's Golden Jubilee, the irony of our disparate responses to therapeutic cloning has been striking. So much of Britain-its culture, its governmental institutions, its gentle way of life-- is anchored in the past. Yet, Tony Blair recently gave a speech championing science as an engine for human progress. The United Kingdom will forge ahead in all three areas-adult and embryonic stem cells and therapeutic cloning-and is poised to lead the world.
The British have been pondering the moral and policy issues surrounding embryo research for almost 20 years. When Dolly came along, when human embryonic stem cells were derived in culture, when therapeutic cloning became a real possibility, they had a legal framework within which to situate it all.
We, alas, do not. And we have suddenly realized that we have been flying by the seats of our legal pants in areas that the British have tightly regulated for a dozen years. It is far easier to venture into morally complex territory-which therapeutic cloning certainly is-when there are clear rules, norms, and procedures. It is not only easier, it is smarter and safer. The best way forward is not criminalization of science out of fear. Nor is it a continuation of the unregulated status quo. The Feinstein bill would allow cloning for therapies (not reproduction), subject to strict scientific and ethical regulation. This is the environment of British science. Americans and American science deserve no less.
Scientists do not want to be our collective conscience; nor should they be. It is up to us as a society to decide on permissible uses of technology. Evidence of potential and of efficacy is coming thick and fast, but we are still a long way from knowing which kinds of therapies-those derived from embryonic or adult stem cells-will work for particular diseases. The widest range of options must be kept open. Cutting science off at the knees-throwing away the benefits because we have inchoate, science fiction-generated fears about sinister applications at the bottom of slippery slopes-is what is criminal, what should be criminal. Not therapeutic cloning. It should be allowed and regulated now.
References
1. J.-H. Kim et al., "Dopamine neurons derived from embryonic stem cells function in an animal model of Parkinson's disease," Nature, 418:5o-6, July 4, 2002.
2. Y Jiang et al., "Pluripotency of mesenchymal stem cells derived from adult marrow," Nature, 418:41-9, July 4, 2002.
3. I. Wilmut et al., "Viable offspring derived from fetal and adult mammalian cells," Nature, 386:80-3,1997.
4. J. Thomson et al., "Embryonic stem cell lines derived from human blastocysts," Science, 282:1145-7,1998.
5. M.J. Shamblott et al., "Derivation of pluripotent stem cells from cultured human primordial germ cells," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 95:13726-31, 1998.
ARLENE JUDITH KLOTZKO, a lawyer and bioethicist, is writer in residence at the Science Museum, London, and adviser on science and society, Medical Research Council Clinical Sciences Centre. She is editor of The Cloning Sourcebook and author of the forthcoming A Clone of Your Own?, both published by Oxford University Press.