Over at the Family Research Council Blog, David Prentice has a brief but illuminating article on a facet of the embryonic stem cell controversy that has received almost no attention; namely, the limited ethnic diversity of existing stem cell lines. He reports that a couple of recent prestigious studies confirmed that most of the lines represent European and Middle Eastern, as well as some East Asian, ethnicity.And in a bizarre distortion of equality, that means some are committed to making sure tiny babies from other races are used for lethal experimentation too.
Concludes Prentice,
...Of course, it’s also not a surprise that the embryonic stem cell researchers want more embryos, especially minority embryos, from whom to wring their embryonic stem cells. It’s never enough with some of these people. Supposedly having at their disposal several hundred new hESC lines was satisfactory, plus the open-ended promise from President Obama of as many fertility-clinic embryos as they would like. But Michigan’s Sean Morrison “will also make it a priority to derive new embryonic stem cell lines from underrepresented groups, including African-Americans.”
So, apparently Prof. Morrison is going to be stalking minority couples at IVF clinics, targeting their embryos for his lab. Or soliciting egg and sperm donors to create custom-made embryos specifically for the experiments. Or trying to make cloning work. All of this is legal in the U.S. But not all of this can garner federal taxpayer dollars. The next step, already propounded in a Detroit Free Press editorial (complete with the usual hype about “potential” embryonic stem cell medicine), is to do away with any federal limits on the use of taxpayer funds for human embryo research.
There are easier, better, and already-fundable routes, of course. One is creation of new iPS cell (induced pluripotent stem cell) lines, which can be created directly from virtually any tissue of any person. Morrison mentions this in passing in his paper, but Laurent et al. actually analyze several human iPS cell lines, and point out: “In fact, given that hiPSCs can be generated from hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) isolated from human cord blood, existing cord blood banks could become a valuable source of ethnically diverse cells for reprogramming into hiPSCs.”
But a real way to address social justice in the stem cell realm would be to focus on making more adult stem cell treatments available to patients. Such as treatments for sickle cell anemia, including for adult sickle-cell patients, and treatments for multiple sclerosis, and spinal cord injury. Focus on the patients first.
