1 Boring Old Man

Scientists overcome hurdles to stem cell alternatives
Washington Post
By Rob Stein
September 30, 2010

Scientists have invented an efficient way to produce apparently safe alternatives to human embryonic stem cells without destroying embryos, a long-sought step toward bypassing the moral morass surrounding one of the most promising fields in medicine. A team of researchers at the Harvard Stem Cell Institute in Boston published a series of experiments Thursday showing that synthetic biological signals can quickly reprogram ordinary skin cells into entities that appear virtually identical to embryonic stem cells. Moreover, the same strategy can then turn those cells into ones that could be used for transplants.

"This is going to be very exciting to the research community," said Derrick J. Rossi of the Children’s Hospital Boston, who led the research published in the journal Cell Stem Cell. "We now have an experimental paradigm for generating patient-specific cells highly efficiently and safely and also taking those cells to clinically useful cell types."

Scientists hope stem cells will lead to cures for diabetes, Alzheimer’s disease, spinal cord injuries, heart attacks and many other ailments because they can turn into almost any tissue in the body, potentially providing an invaluable source of cells to replace those damaged by disease or injury. But the cells can be obtained only by destroying days-old embryos.

The cells produced by the Harvard team, known as induced pluripotent stem cells, or iPS cells, would avoid that ethical objection and could in some ways be superior to embryonic stem cells. For example, iPS cells could enable scientists to take an easily obtainable skin cell from any patient and use it to create perfectly matched cells, tissue and potentially even entire organs for transplants that would be immune to rejection…

Last weekend, I was at a retreat. And what do psychoanalysts do for diversion? We watch a movie together and discuss it. This time, we watched "Doubt" with Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Meryl Streep, Viola Davis, and Amy Adams. The author, John Patrick Shanley, created a Scenario that felt like a who-done-it, but it was unresolvable. He said that he wanted to help people learn to value doubt. His point is that in modern times, people are too certain and tend to argue rather than debate. One of the main stimuli for his play was the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq when people who doubted were vilified as unpatriotic. In the course of one of his interviews, he said something like "liberals should open their minds too." For example, "they’ve defended Abortion so long that it’s become rote, and maybe they should reopen it for consideration." His comment struck me, because he was right. I do have a doubt about Abortion and I’ve been trying to do what he suggests – explore that doubt.

As I think about it, my real doubts are not about the sanctity of an early embryo or any of the things I hear from the Abortion foes. My felt doubts are about something else. And they’re not about the notion of Abortion promotes promiscuity. I just don’t think that’s true, at least I haven’t seen it to be true. I think my own doubts are that Abortion is a way of skirting the problem, of avoiding the real debate. In the US, 54% of pregnancies are reported to be unwanted. And of those, some 40% are terminated by Abortion – meaning about 1 in 5 pregnancies. In my own mind, that skirts the two problems that seem to me to be central ones for our future.

The first is overpopulation. Almost every problem we have right now seems to me to be related to overpopulation – too many people, too many cars, too much fighting, too much hunger, etc. So even with legal Abortion and modern birth control, our population and the world’s population continues to grow. That has to end. The second problem is closer to home for me. I’m sure that the single best predictor of mental health and a good life is being a wanted child. Using those numbers above, of the 80% of pregnancies that go to term, 60% are wanted 40% are unwanted. That’s still a hell of a lot of unwanted kids [and I expect that the real percentage is higher]. Somehow, it seems to me that the availability of Abortion gives the illusion that we’re addressing the problem – but we’re not. I think we need to be approaching it differently – making pregnancy a "choice" rather than simply a biological side effect of sexuality. So that’s my doubt – that we’re avoiding both the problems of overcrowding and mental health instead of facing them directly. I guess I’m "pro-decent-life."