"Koreans clone embryo to harvest stem cells

BY EARL LANE, NEWSDAY (no relation to me)

WASHINGTON — Researchers in South Korea have produced a line of all-purpose human stem cells from an early-stage cloned embryo, the most significant step yet toward a day when such clones might be used as a source of replacement cells to treat disease.

Such therapeutic cloning, as it is called, would not be aimed at producing a baby. Scientists say it holds great promise for providing compatible tissues for use in treating diabetes, Alzheimer's disease and other ailments.

But critics say the work creates human embryos with the sole intent of destroying them. They also fear that techniques aimed at therapeutic cloning will provide useful information for those who want to produce cloned babies.

The new work in South Korea "turns up the heat on both sides of the debate," said Arthur Caplan, a bioethicist at the University of Pennsylvania. Despite a few methodological issues, specialists said, the newly published work demonstrates for the first time that cloning for stem cells is feasible in humans.

With such research proceeding abroad or in privately funded laboratories here, Caplan said, scientists are likely to renew calls for U.S. federal funding, now prohibited, for efforts to derive stem cells from cloned embryos. Opponents are expected to continue efforts to have Congress ban all forms of cloning.

Ethicists said they also expect more discussion on whether the early-stage embryos, created without the union of sperm and egg and not intended for implantation into the womb, merit special moral status.

The new study was judged to be a substantial advance by several scientists not connected with the work. "They have demonstrated elements of the goal of doing therapeutic cloning," said John Gearhart, a stem-cell specialist at John Hopkins University in Baltimore.

"A report like this in a prestigious journal says, 'Look this works,'" said Michael West, chief executive of Advanced Cell Technology. "There are going to be a lot of scientists champing at the bit." While lines of stem cells already have been isolated from surplus embryos at fertility clinics, some scientists argue the best approach for medical treatment would be to derive them specifically from embryos that are clones of the patients to be treated. If a body cell from the patient is the source of the DNA for the clone, the resulting stem cells would be genetically identical to the donor and less likely to be rejected by that person's immune system, they say."

Ah, another thorny issue for evangelical Christians (of which I consider myself one!)

An E-Mail message sent to CNN this week on the issue asked the question - - "Are We Playing God?"

That is where I would like to begin on this issue.

Are we, indeed, playing God?

How do you do that?

Archaeological digs and finds have found evidence of human kind "playing God" back many thousands or years. What we now know as modern day medical and dental realities began with someone daring to open up someone's body to try to help them - - "playing God" as it were.

Every time you undergo any medical treatment or procedure you are letting someone "play God" with your body.

Friends, here is my take on all of this. God has not given up on us yet. Yes, God is still revealing and creating. We are slow learners and God's great revelation has to come to us in small doses.

We have been accused of "playing God" at every upturn in medical science and practice. We were "playing God" when we replaced the first heart, when we implanted the first kidneys, when we injected the first shot into someone's body.

Dear ones - - If it is of God - - it will prevail. If it is not, it will not!

I believe that God has especially gifted people to whom God reveals insights into creation that others do not see or hear. The Bible is very clear on that!

Those revelations did not stop with the canonization of the Bible or with the coming of the so called modern age. God is still at it - - 24/7/365!

Most people will completely miss the first paragraph above - - "Researchers in South Korea have produced a line of all-purpose human stem cells from an early-stage cloned embryo, the most significant step yet toward a day when such clones might be used as a source of replacement cells to treat disease."

We should be praising and thanking God for this awesome gift to God's creation and love!

Can you imagine a cure for cancer and heart and artery diseases in our time! That is what this new science has the potential to gift us with.

It is up to us to not let the politicians and pontificators take it away from us.

God has no other hands but ours. God uses our hands to do the work of miracles - yes, even now!

Praise be to God for this marvelous gift!



A Jim Lane Commentary
February 13, 2004