IN THIS WEEK'S NEWSLETTER
Chinese doctors create babies with two mothers
With this technique, called nuclear transfer, the doctors fertilised an egg from their patient and an egg from a donor. Two embryos resulted. The nucleus of both women's embryos was extracted, and the patient's genetic material was inserted into the empty "eggshell" of the other embryo which, however, contained mitochondria with the other woman's DNA. The procedure gives the infertile woman's embryo the healthy mitochondria it needs to develop -- but it also results in a child with genetic material from one father and two mothers.
After the US Food and Drug Administration had given him two warnings about past experiments with nuclear transfer, he brought his work to China where he could work without onerous restrictions. Even IVF pioneer Lord Robert Winston said that it was an unethical and unjustifiable experiment.
Prominent US bioethicist Jeffrey Kahn, of the University of Minnesota, asked why Dr Grifo, a former president of the Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology, wanted to escape regulations in his own country. "What's next," he said. "A ship out in international waters?" And he pointed out that although Dr Grifo and his colleagues did not clone a baby, his experiment does show that cloning may be possible.
One of the scientists who helped create Dolly the sheep, Alan Colman, now the chief scientific officer of ES Cell International in Singapore, had reservations about the wisdom of evading regulatory hurdles. He noted that Germany holds stem-cell scientists accountable for their actions no matter where they do their work. If a German researcher does unauthorised research abroad, he can be prosecuted when he returns. ~ Baltimore Sun, Oct 17; New York Times, Oct 15 Chinese tightening standards in bioethics
In fact, China recently banned human cloning, trading in eggs for profit, and human nuclear transfer (as reported above). Its apparent "Wild West" approach is more the result of the difficulty of monitoring bioethics standards in such an immense country. He has recently been asked to train Chinese in bioethics. "There is an awareness at the highest levels that much need to be done to bring ethical review practices more into line with international standards," he says. ~ CNSNews.com, Oct 16 French president calls for bioethics treaty
Test threatens disappearance of Down's children
Bannerman tried to redress widespread misconceptions about Down Syndrome. He interviewed a young Down Syndrome woman who is working with computers and has played roles on stage and TV shows. The potential of people with Down Syndrome "doesn't seem to have filtered through to those most in need of hearing it... doctors," says Bannerman. Instead, most doctors advise women to have an abortion. One mother told him that she would probably have aborted her Down Syndrome daughter if she had had the test. Now she feels differently: "She is my joy. She makes my heart burst, she really does." ~ 7.30 Report, Oct 14 German researchers "willingly" worked for Nazis
Correspondence shows that the head of the DFG's medical section was quite aware of the ghastly Nazi research projects. In one letter, for instance, the head of an anthropology institute spoke of "excellent conditions for researchers in Auschwitz". A tropical disease expert infected 1,200 POWs, including many Polish priests, in search of a malaria vaccine. About 400 died. "During the war, the DFG deliberately subordinated medical ethics to the production of fast results," says Marion Hulverscheidt, a science historian at the University of Heidelberg. ~ Nature, Oct 16
Florida court lets brain-damaged woman die
For the last five years the husband and the parents of 39-year-old Theresa "Terri" Schiavo been at loggerheads in a five-year court battle to keep her alive. Her husband Michael contends that she is unconscious and did not want her life prolonged artificially.
Her parents believe that the husband just wants his wife's money.
They claim that shortly before her brain damage she had told them that she wanted a divorce. They are convinced that she is conscious and responds to them. Doctors have testified on their behalf that with intensive therapy she could eat and even speak.
The case has polarised public opinion across the US. Florida Governor Jeb Bush, the President's brother, supported the campaign for Terri's right to live. The "ugliest end-of-life case ever", commented bioethicist Kenneth Goodman, of the University of Miami. ~ Reuters, Oct 16; New York Times, Oct 15 Italian health minister attacks euthanasia
In neighbouring France, the Justice Minister has launched an internet debate about euthanasia on the ministry website following the mercy killing of the blind and mute quadriplegic Vincent Humbert (see ABI, Sept 26). The French Parliament has also created a special commission to investigate the issue. ~ AFP, Oct 12 Adult stem cell research advances
German scientists have found that damage from a heart attack can be reduced by infusing bone marrow stem cells into the coronary arteries that supply blood to the heart muscle. In an article in the journal Circulation, they said that the reduction in damage size was directly related to improvements in cardiac function. They emphasised that large randomised trials are need to prove the success of the technique. ~ Reuters Health, Oct 13 Adult stem cell potential challenged
A team from Stanford University has reported a similar phenomenon in the journal Science. It found that adult bone marrow cells fused with cells in the brain known as Purkinje neurons. Professor Helen Blau also used experiment to insist that all types of stem cells should be studied, not just adult stem cells. ~ Washington Post, Oct 13 
Chinese doctors and an American fertility specialist have reported the creation of babies with the cloning technique which produced Dolly the sheep. Researchers at Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou implanted three embryos in the womb of a 30-year-old infertile woman last year. A triplet pregnancy resulted, they announced at the annual meeting of the American Society for Reproduction Medicine in San Antonio, Texas this week. One of the foetuses was "reduced" to ensure the viability of the pregnancy, but the other two died anyway at 24 and 29 weeks.
The American specialist, Dr James Grifo, of New York University School of Medicine, said that it was irresponsible to confuse his technique with cloning. It simply allows a couple to have their genetic baby, he said, not a clone. Experts in reproductive medicine, however, were taken aback by Dr Grifo's cavalier attitude towards both US and Chinese regulations.
French President Jacques Chirac has called for an international treaty to set standards in bioethics in the face of challenges like euthanasia, surrogate motherhood and trafficking in human organs. In a speech to UNESCO, Chirac said "These are no longer just the worries of prophets of evil. These are the realities of today, driven by the absence of morality, the bait of profit or even madness." He also called for an independent body of experts with "high moral values". ~ AFP, Oct 14
ABC's 7.30 Report has reported that a new pap smear which can accurately test for Down Syndrome babies could lead to their elimination (see ABI, July 18). "It's now clear that without a major education campaign to accompany mass screening for Down Syndrome, we may never see children like this again," says journalist Mark Bannerman. At the moment, 80% of Down Syndrome children are born to women who have not been tested. A survey in a Melbourne hospital has suggested that 98% of women who are tested will have an abortion.
In sharp contrast to the outcome of the Schiavo case, the Italian Health Minister, Girolamo Sirchia, has described calls to remove forced feeding tubes of incompetent patients "one of the subtle ways to carry out euthanasia". The week before he explained that he was not inspired to oppose euthanasia by "religious motivations, but by foundations on which society is based... [we] cannot accept that someone, even when asked by someone who is suffering and perhaps is upset by the conditions of the sick person, can put an end to someone's existence. Accepting this would open a terrible scenario." ~ AGI, Oct 9,13
Women who conceive using frozen embryos are 17 times more likely to have a dangerous ectopic pregnancy than conventional IVF patients, according to research presented at the American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM) conference in San Antonio, Texas.
US researchers at Brown University found that nearly one-third of all frozen embryo pregnancies are ectopic, with the embryo implanting in one of the Fallopian tubes rather than in the uterus.
In other reports from the ASRM annual conference:
Australasian Bioethics Information
ISSN 1446-2117
Website:www.australasianbioethics.org
Director: Dr Amin Abboud
Editor: Michael Cook
New Zealand Associate: Carolyn Moynihan