Aust stem cell laws 'enlightened': US bioethicist

A leading US bioethicist has praised Australia's new stem cell laws, describing them as enlightened.

"I hope we in the United States can come up with something closely comparable," Dr Ernle Young told Australian Biotechnology News.

Young, a former Methodist chaplain who founded Stanford University's Centre for Biomedical Ethics, visited Australia last week to present the inaugural Eric Glasgow Memorial Lecture at Monash University, addressing a range of issues including the therapeutic potential of stem cell research, ethical controversies and international policies.

As the chairman of US stem cell biotechnology company Geron's ethics advisory board, Young and four other bioethicists provide recommendations to the company on the ethical aspects of its work. The independent board is composed of five bioethicists from a variety of theological and philosophical traditions, said Young.

"We have scientists from Geron tell us about what they want us to know and what they want us to think about and... we'll spend a day or two days and we'll discuss these things," said Young. The resulting advice is not always unanimous, and Young said the board had had some very heated exchanges.

While Geron is free to accept or reject the board's recommendations, "we have made it clear to Geron that if they reject our ethical recommendations and go in a different direction from what we think is appropriate, we reserve the right to resign en masse from the board," Young said. He noted that the company to date has displayed the "utmost integrity both scientifically and in terms of trying to proceed in an ethically appropriate way."

Young also criticised the Bush administration's policies, which ban the use of public money to fund embryo research, a move that has driven promising embryo research into the private sector, which now funds much of the university-based research in return for intellectual property.

He noted that Geron funded research at a number of universities including the University of Wisconsin, the University of California at San Francisco and Johns Hopkins University.

But Young said the window of opportunity for companies like Geron was limited, and the restrictions on funding put the pressure on.

"I don't think any company can continue to pump millions into research and not have any return on the investment. These are publicly owned companies and unless they can develop therapeutic products, I think there is a very short half life for any of these companies, which is one of the reasons that companies like Geron are looking at avenues for research outside the United States where the climate may be a little more conducive to the work being done," he said.

US to face brain drain

In Young's view, one of the "great sadnesses" of the situation is that the US stands to lose its lead in the field as well as its best scientists. "People are going to go where they can do the work," he said.

And while a dramatic success with embryonic stem cells might shift the tide of public opinion, he said there would always be opponents of the technology, who believed that it was morally wrong regardless of the good consequences.

In Young's view, the central ethical issue of stem cell research lies with people's perceptions of what entails "personhood." In one view, he said, an embryo becomes a person at the moment of conception, while in the opposing view, personhood implied sentience or cognitive ability, which an embryo lacked.

"You're dealing with fundamental belief systems and these are not always amenable to rational situations," he said. Young noted he had made a conscious decision to separate ethics from morality, which he said was closely tied to religious tradition, in his approaches to bioethical issues.

In Young's opinion, the use of discarded embryos is acceptable, particularly as their fate is to be destroyed whether used for research or not, but he believes there is a considerable difference between using discarded embryos and creating embryos specifically for research.

"Those that see personhood as being with conception are going to be mightily opposed to that," he said.

Young also supports a moratorium on human somatic cell nuclear transfer, the technique that can be used for both reproductive and therapeutic cloning, but not an outright ban, citing safety and technical issues, as well as other avenues for creating stem cell products from discarded embryos.

"There may come a time though, when therapeutic cloning has a greater imperative behind it, for example if histocompatibility should be a problem. I think this is something we have to look at a year from now, two years from now," he said.

"We don't yet know how important this work is."