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(OSV News) — When the International Society for Stem Cell Research recently held its annual meeting in Boston, the more than 4,000 assembled scientists from 75 countries were promised “the future starts here.”
That future, they were told — in a plenary address by professor Magdalena Zernicka-Goetz of the University of Cambridge in England and the California Institute of Technology — now includes synthetic human embryos.
No eggs or sperm were used; the “models” were instead grown from single living stem cells, which were derived from a real human embryo. They were not developed beyond a 14-day period, since the regulations governing the research use of human embryos do not allow for it in the United Kingdom and most other countries.
After something of a media uproar ensued, Zernicka-Goetz took to Twitter: “These tiny clusters of cells mimicking aspects of post-implantation human embryos that we and others make, have no developmental potential and are not real embryos,” she posted. “Nevertheless, they help to understand why many pregnancies fail.” Another tweet emphasized, “It is important to stress that these are not synthetic embryos, but embryo models and our research isn’t to create life, but to save it.”
It’s not yet the Central London Hatchery of Aldous Huxley’s dystopian novel “Brave New World” — where natural birth no longer existed and babies were mass-produced from lab-grown embryos. But the announcement by the International Society for Stem Cell Research, and another like it at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, nonetheless raised ethical and moral questions from two prominent Catholic experts who spoke to OSV News.
Continued below.
www.oursundayvisitor.com
That future, they were told — in a plenary address by professor Magdalena Zernicka-Goetz of the University of Cambridge in England and the California Institute of Technology — now includes synthetic human embryos.
No eggs or sperm were used; the “models” were instead grown from single living stem cells, which were derived from a real human embryo. They were not developed beyond a 14-day period, since the regulations governing the research use of human embryos do not allow for it in the United Kingdom and most other countries.
After something of a media uproar ensued, Zernicka-Goetz took to Twitter: “These tiny clusters of cells mimicking aspects of post-implantation human embryos that we and others make, have no developmental potential and are not real embryos,” she posted. “Nevertheless, they help to understand why many pregnancies fail.” Another tweet emphasized, “It is important to stress that these are not synthetic embryos, but embryo models and our research isn’t to create life, but to save it.”
It’s not yet the Central London Hatchery of Aldous Huxley’s dystopian novel “Brave New World” — where natural birth no longer existed and babies were mass-produced from lab-grown embryos. But the announcement by the International Society for Stem Cell Research, and another like it at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, nonetheless raised ethical and moral questions from two prominent Catholic experts who spoke to OSV News.
Continued below.
Ethicists voice concern over reprogramming human embryonic cells for research
At International Society for Stem Cell Research's annual meeting in Boston, more than 4,000 assembled scientists from 75 countries learn the future includes synthetic human embryos -- but the future is already here.
www.oursundayvisitor.com
