Stem Cells: New Science may Change the Debate

What would happen if a scientist could change any of your body’s cells into an embryonic stem cell, instead of having to kill an embryo to farm one? The stem cell debate would change.

During the last election Michael J. Fox leaped into American politics, telling voters in several states that George W. and his fellow Republicans were staunching off embryonic stem cell research funding and basically annihilating the science that could cure every known disease. At best, Mr. Fox’s and the Democrats’ attacks were duplicitous.

The political debate regarding stem cell research, like most political debate, is based on short fiery phrases and emotional rhetoric. As free speech goes, it is generally powerful stuff. Honestly, though, is not the best friend of political rhetoric, and when the debate is about science, honesty is distilled further because most of us (and the politicians) do not have access to information about the science or an inclination to learn about it.

To give a bit of clarity to the stem cell debate, a little science may help.

Broadly there are two types of stems cells; embryonic and adult. As one might guess, adult stem cells (there are 220 types – blood, skin, hair, etc) are found in adults. Adult stem cells regenerate our bodys’ cells with new blood cells, brain cells, skin cells and more. Embryonic stem cells are produced in the embryo and guide the growing child from fertilized egg to full term child.

The debate focuses on funding embryonic stem cell research. The issue is that the extraction of embryonic stem cells kills the embryo. Many Americans believe this is kills a human life. Contrary to this train of thought, many Americans think the killing of the embryo is outweighed by the potential benefits that might accrue from the research. This is today’s debate: should the government fund research that kills an embryo or not.

President Bush was the first President to fund embryonic research and did so on 78 embryonic stem cell lines that had already been discovered. To date, hundreds of millions of federal dollars have been allocated for this research. Listening to the media, one might believe that no funding has been provided by the federal government. This is simply not true. Federal funding will not be provided for any new research that would kill embryos. Private research dollars are not affected.

The debate, however, may be about to change dramatically.

Scientists in Canada, Japan and the United States have done something quite extraordinary; they have been able to change a monkey’s skin cell into an embryonic cell. Though not conducted with human cells, this experiment is amazing. A real life comparison is a bit hard, but it may be a little like changing your Yugo into a Lexus by adding a couple of drops of water. Duplicating this feat with human cells will take stem cell research into a new realm.

Over the few last years, several core science facts have been demolished. Scientists had believed that stem cells, as they changed from their embryonic form through a short cascade of diminishingly less powerful adult stems, could not return up the power ladder. A multipotent stem cell could not become the more powerful pluripotent or totipotent stem cell. They also believed that once a stem cell turned into specific type of adult stem cell, say blood cell, that it would forever be that kind of cell.

Not only have scientists shown adult stem cells to have ‘plasticity,’ the ability to change into different types of adult stem cells, but now the possibility arises that embryonic stem cells may be created from any cell in our bodies.

As these new possibilities arise it becomes apparent that our genes are more powerful than we have imagined. The monkey skin cell was transformed into its embryonic state by vectoring in a few very specialized genes into the cell. Specifically, the OCT4 gene is thought to be the controlling gene that transforms the cell from somatic to embryonic. Scientists also have shown that only about 1155 genes control the pattern of growth from an embryo to a living child, and that the OCT4 gene may be the stick shift of the progression.

By 2008, we will know more about the realities somatic to embryonic conversion, the plasticity of stem cells, and the specifics of embryonic development. The embryonic stem cell debate, however, may already be forever changed and the results to follow will probably mean that if not any cell in the body, at least adult stem cells may be altered to present a wholly different type adult stem cell or, even better, an embryonic cell.

Politicians are short on scientific knowledge and long on electioneering, but this new research will hopefully quell the bombast and allow scientists to maneuver past the moral dilemma of killing an embryo to acquire embryonic stem cells – and get on with what looks like fantastic life-saving science.