Oct 17, 2005 / 22:00 pm
A new and promising scientific technique may satisfy researchers who want embryonic stem cells without the moral dilemma of destroying the embryo, says ethicist Fr. Thomas Berg.
A recent study published in this week’s issue of Nature suggests scientists are closer to devising ways of getting stem cells with qualities like those of embryonic stem cells, but without destroying embryos in the process.
“I see it as a potential breakthrough,” said Fr. Berg, the director of the Westchester Institute for Ethics and the Human Person, a Catholic think-tank based in Thornwood, N.Y. “This kind of research is directing us away from the moral impasse over embryo destructive research and toward solutions we can all live with.”
Nature reported that MIT researchers Alexander Meissner and Rudolf Jaenisch are the first to use a technique called altered nuclear transfer (ANT) in laboratory mice to derive a line of “fully competent” mouse embryonic stem cells. This stem-cell line did not come from a normal mouse embryo but from a biologically engineered source that appears to lack the organization necessary to be a mouse embryo.