The North East England Stem Cell Institute in Newcastle and the Stem Cell Biology Laboratory Wolfson Centre for Age-Related Diseases in London, King's College, have been granted licences to research on hybrid embryos. Fantastic news!
Contrary to some of the more lurid press reports, these are not Frankenstein scientists but researchers using a cow cell to host DNA from a human so that the cell mechanism can be used to produce what's called a blastocyst, a collection of undifferentiated cells which have the potential to develop into all kinds of other tissue.
The law says these blastocysts will have to be destroyed after 14 days but in the meantime they provide a source of stem cells. These are really vital for research because they can be triggered to develop into different types of tissue. Understanding the triggers for that differentiation will help us develop the possibility of using human cells, for example skin cells, to produce, in turn, stem cells which can then be triggered to provide replacement cells for damaged or diseased tissue.
Why is this important? If we have to transplant organs there is a high risk of rejection because cells are typed - donors have to be compatible with the recipient and often there's a close match but one which has to be managed by suppressing the immune system. That's a hugely invasive and damaging process for the patient putting them at risk of serious infections. If the tissue actually came from the recipient themselves, it wouldn't be rejected, they wouldn't need immunosuppresants and wouldn't risk infections.
For example, if a diabetic lacked cells in their pancreas to produce insulin, they can already get cells transplanted from donors but the transplanted cells don't survive long. If they were produced as the result of extracting stem cells from the patient themselves, those cells would continue to live - the patient would get a cure.
For Parkinson's patients or those with nerve damage, there is the potential for a cure based on the development of replacement tissue from the patient themselves. Curing blindness, paralysis, deafness, chronic nerve damage, degenerative illnesses are all on the horizon.
The conditions for scientific work in this area are strictly controlled by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority who issue the licences:
http://www.hfea.gov.uk/en/1640.html
But once the mechanism of cell differentiation is understood and controllable, there is no longer any need for using the cow cell as a host for the division process - we can use the cells from the patient themselves.
So what of the ethical issues involved? Despite the tabloids frightening themselves, this has nothing to do with ethics and everything to do with religious indignation. The Scottish bishops have been campaigning against what they see as a "monstrous act against human dignity":
http://www.indcatholicnews.com/scmoem325.html
Unfortunately, what they don't really take into account is that cell biology is simply a branch of science and the medical advances will improve human dignity far more than any amount of pontificating. If you read their statement you will notice that having defined the development of stem cells using a cow cell host as "monstrous", they then variously appeal to freedom, democracy, ethics, and simply describe the work as "wrong". They don't mention the indignity suffered by spinal injury patients living their lives in wheelchairs.
They consider the science wrong only because it conflicts with catholic dogma. But in the real world, moral and ethical arguments are situated in human society and it's just not enough to label something bad or wrong. It is unacceptable to restrict scientific advances because believers in a supernatural being think it wouldn't approve.
The advances in cell biology offer thousands a chance of a cure from otherwise incurable illnesses. What really offends the church is that as science advances, the mystery of life becomes less mysterious, more explicable and less miraculous. The advances in cell biology are helping to remove the mysticism surrounding life.
One day, we'll be able to create cells as easily as we can make plastic today. We won't make prosthetics out of steel and plastic - we'll grow them so the patient gets a new hip, a new retina, new nerves. Surgery will be less and less necessary.
Then, as now, religious institutions will still have nothing special to offer ethical discussions. They'll still be calling it monstrous, though I daresay one or two bishops will be availing themselves of modern medicine to get treatments for their now-curable illnesses.
