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Using Pluripotent Germ Cells in Regenerative Medicine: An Ethical Alternative

Posted on: Saturday, 21 August 2004, 06:00 CDT

Norman M. Ford, Using Pluripotent Germ Cells in Regenerative Medicine: An Ethical Alternative, 2 NAT'L. CATH. BIOETHICS Q. 697 (2003).

Moral respect for human embryos should take precedence over utilitarian and pragmatic considerations of biotechnology companies, researchers, and clinicians. Human life should never be created to be destroyed. This is the response of those who hold that human life and its formative process are morally inviolable.

It is also unethical to use embryonic stem cells, to benefit from their use, or to be in collusion with their use since this "entails proximate material cooperation in the production and manipulation of human embryos on the part of those producing or supplying them." In other words, the use of embryonic stem cells involves tacit approval of and collusion in the destruction of human embryos. The link between the use of embryonic stem cells for therapies and the destruction of human embryos is clear and undeniable.

If therapies based on embryonic stem cells are eventually found to be successful in regenerative medicine, pressure will mount for doctors and hospitals opposed to the destruction of embryos to find an ethical alternative to enable them to participate in the benefits of these new therapies. This means finding a source of pluripotent stem cells that does not involve destroying human embryos. One possible solution may be to look to migrating primordial germ cells in a five-to nine-weeks post-fertilization deceased human embryo- fetus following, for example, a miscarriage in a hospital. An even better way would be to remove them ethically from an ectopic embryo- fetus. This would require using a treatment method which did not involve any direct lethal surgical assault on the life of the embryo- fetus itself.

This suggestion does not apply to pluripotent embryonic germ cells derived from induced abortions because this would involve unethical tacit agreement or collusion in the destruction of human embryos-fetuses. The link between their destruction and the use of pluripotent embryonic germ cells for therapy would be beyond doubt. In any case, the methods used in induced abortions often render much of the tissue unsuitable. On the other hand, pluripotent embryonic germ cells ethically derived from ectopic embryos/fetuses and some miscarried fetuses in a sterile environment offer promise of greater clinical success.

Copyright National Legal Center for the Medically Dependent & Disabled Inc. Summer 2004

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