Mexico City, Mexico, Jan 11, 2010 / 13:01 pm
Archbishop Emeritus Carlos Quintero Arce of Hermosillo in Mexico encouraged the use of adult stem cells in medical research last week, underscoring that such a practice does not violate the right to life of embryos and respects the integrity of human life.
In a statement, the archbishop recalled that the use of embryonic stem cells raises “moral and ethical problems” because embryos are destroyed in the process. He then pointed to scientific studies which have shown that such cells are often rejected by the immune system when transplanted into patients.
In contrast, he continued, adult stem cells are often not rejected by the patient's immune system and they do not pose any ethical or moral issues. However, adult stem cells “do not proliferate in abundance and cannot be applied to all the cells of the body. For this reason, some scientists use embryonic stem cells more” despite the inconveniences.
For this reason, Archbishop Quintero praised the discoveries by Japanese scientist Shinya Yamanaka, who announced he had successfully reprogrammed ordinary cells from the tips of mouse tails to make them virtually indistinguishable from embryonic stem cells. He later carried out new re-programming experiments using human skin cells.