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Human rights and bioethics updates

A blog dedicated to updating you upon legislation and ethical debates around human rights (principally under the angle of law-enforcement forces) and bioethics (under the angle of the protection of vulnerable persons). You are welcome to leave your comments on any of the posts!

Thursday, October 05, 2006

Stem cells : the Vatican defends research on multipotent cells against totipotent cells

On Saturday 16 September, there was an International Congress of Stem cells in Vatican on stem cell research. The Congress was organized by the Pontifical Academy for Life, the International Federation of Catholic Medical Associations and the Foundation Jerôme Lejeune.

Stem cell research has been generally centered on totipotent cells (initial embryonic cells which may develop into any type of cells), developed from embryos. This type of research is opposed by the Vatican for which the destruction of the embryo (which is required to obtain the cells) is in opposition with the Catholic doctrine of the sanctity of life.

In fact, another track is also followed by researchers: the possibility of using multipotent cells (cells with a limited power of differentiation) to develop cures. The discovery of these type of stem cells notably in the umbilical cord, has been highlighted recently by the news of famed soccer players having congealed the stem cells of their children’s umbilical cord in prevision of possible care for future wounds.

However acceptable the solution might appear for the Catholic church – to which it offers the possibility of appearing as being in phase with progress – the participants to the Congress also insisted that the research on stem cells left many questions open.

Some of the questions left open is notably whether replacing ill cells by healthy one would not lead to an extension of the disease to the grafted cells (the question being especially interesting for degenerative diseases such as the Alzheimer illness).

Other questions considered were the question of scientific fraud (consider notably the Korean fraud upon which we wrote previously in February), and notably arguments by proponents of research on embryonic stem cells that these cells could be taken without damaging the embryo…

The Vatican is trying in fact to orient research on stem cells in a sense more acceptable to Catholic convictions, especially since the potential appeal of treatment by stem cells seems to have convinced public opinion.