There's a straightforward way to sidestep the moral dilemma posed by research on embryonic stem cells, writes Amin Abboud.

Embryonic stem cell research is the biological version of the dot com boom. It promises much and delivers little.

Yet the idea of creating and destroying embryos just to harvest cells for therapeutic purposes is still a live issue in Australia. Canberra and the States are actively exploring uniform regulations on embryonic stem cell research which would try to balance ethical concerns against possible therapeutic gains.

But our legislators should not hesitate to ban such research while we concentrate instead on stem cells that can be acquired from living children or adults or from blood in the umbilical cord.

Indeed, adult stem cell research offers the best hope of helping those suffering from a range of diseases.

Of 15 companies doing privately funded stem cell research in the United States, 12 are working with adult stem cells. They can see where the money will come from.

After research in adult stem cells, surgeons in Taiwan have restored vision to patients with severe eye damage, using stem cells from the patients' own eyes. Harvard Medical School researchers have been able to treat insulin-dependent diabetes in mice with adult stem cells and believe they can do the same with people. British scientists have found that adult stem cells in the bone marrow of mice can turn into liver tissue or functioning heart muscle.

And they are only a few examples of the breathtaking breakthroughs from years of research on adult stem cells.

We now find human stroke victims' brains may be repaired with adult stem cells that become fully functional neurons connecting with existing brain cells, and, elsewhere, new bone and cartilage grown from adult stem cells from marrow can repair damaged knees.

Scientists have been able to find stem cells wherever in the body they have looked and, of course, they are a perfect match for the patients concerned.

The repeated claim that embryonic stem cell research is needed to heal irreversible disease and irreparable injuries has no scientific basis. The only experiments with embryonic stem cells have been on people with Parkinson's disease, and the patients became worse and the trial was stopped.

Three reasons are put forward for the superiority of embryo stem cells over adult stem cells: they are easier to harvest, there are more stem cells in embryos than in adults, and they can be more easily changed into every organ and tissue in the body.

Harvesting is not a problem. Scientists have been extracting some types of human adult stem cells for almost a decade (such as the bone marrow transplants). Several biotech companies have developed proprietary methods to make adult-cell isolation and extraction even easier.

Associate Professor Mark Kirkland and his team at the Douglas Hocking Research Centre in Melbourne have found that umbilical cord blood provides a large reserve of stem cells which can be very useful for research.

It is true that embryos have a higher ratio of stem to non-stem cells. However, scientists have discovered stem cells in adults in virtually every major organ, including the brain, and researchers have identified conditions that would allow for the multiplication of adult stem cells in culture by a million times in a few weeks.

A key argument for using embryonic stem cells is that they are more "plastic", that is, easier to change into other types of cells. While that's true, modern research has learnt to manipulate adult stem cells at an astounding rate.

Dennis Steindler, a professor of neuroscience and neurosurgery at the University of Tennessee, Memphis, told Blood Weekly magazine in May: "These adult tissues don't appear to be as restricted in their fate as we thought they were."

Dr Diane Krause, of the Yale medical school, who is a supporter of embryonic stem-cell research, has found that adult cells are quite plastic, and confessed to being "surprised" by her own research. Stem cells found in the liver were believed to be limited to making liver tissue, stem cells in the skin more skin and so on. "But at least for stem cells found in bone marrow, that is not true," Krause says.

The ethical issues with embryonic stem cell research are significant. Professor Leon Cass, who has just been appointed by President Bush to head a bioethics commission, has been vigorously against embryonic stem cell research. France, normally avant-garde in many ethical issues, has moved to ban embryonic research. We can spare ourselves the ethical dilemmas without compromising our care of those with serious illness by investing in adult stem cell research.

Dr Amin Abboud is an assistant lecturer in medical ethics and health law at the University of NSW and a co-ordinator of Australasian Bioethics Information, a bioethical group for doctors and lawyers. Email: Amin.Abboud@australasianbioethics.org