However, an American bioethicist quickly jumped in to defend the deal since it was done freely and Dinoire probably needed the money. Even if her medical expenses are fully covered by the French national health system, it is hard to see how she would have had an income since she was mauled, how she can work during her recovery or how she will find employment in the future," said Rosamond Rhodes, of Mount Sinai Medical School in New York.
The French transplant team's triumph was a bitter pill for a colleague on the other side of the Channel. British doctors threw away their lead in face-transplant research eight years ago because of ethical concerns, complained the president of the International College of Surgeons. "We have to allow a bit more freedom in advancing medical knowledge. It is sad," says Professor Nadey Hakim. The French team is already planning its second transplant, on a 23- year-old man disfigured as a child in a fireworks accident. ~ ABC News, Dec 8
Three investigations have been launched into the research of therapeutic cloning pioneer Hwang Woo-suk, of South Korea. The journal Science, in which his article about extracting stem cells from cloned human embryos was first published, is conducting an inquiry after mistakes emerged about the presentation of his data. And both the Seoul National University, where Hwang has his lab, and the University of Pittsburgh, which had very close links with Hwang, are also conducting probes into his work. Hwang has said that he will cooperate with the inquiries.
When the controversy first caught fire, it appeared that the only issue was whether the egg donors for the cloning process had been volunteers and whether they had give true informed consent. Scientists outside of Korea expressed confidence in the integrity of his scientific work even after Hwang admitted that he had lied about the donors. However, Korean internet news agency Pressian and TV network MBC dug harder and produced allegations that some of the data had been falsified.
Hwang has admitted that some of the photographs of the 11 stem cell lines which appeared on the on-line version of his article were actually duplicates. This was shrugged off by Science as a minor editing error. But now Pressian has published a transcript of a suppressed interview with a former associate of Hwang, Kim Sun-jong, who told MBC that Hwang had told him to duplicate photographs of cell clusters. There may have been only two stem cell lines, and the other nine may have been duplicates.
According to the Joon Ang Daily, a group of scientists at SNU feel that much of Hwang's data appears unreasonable, particularly the DNA fingerprinting used to match DNA samples. In an appeal to the SNU president to open an inquiry, they wrote: "We are extremely worried that, by keeping silent, we are endangering the international credibility of the Korean scientific community, which in turn will cause irreversible damage to our country."
Under the intense pressure that the affair has generated in Korea, Hwang collapsed. He spent much of last week in hospital recovering from stress. He left on Monday, but soon returned. He has said that he will cooperate with the inquiries. The fracas has not shaken Hwang's belief in the value of therapeutic cloning, however. He told Time magazine in an interview that "stem-cell therapy is the only way to treat patients with degenerative disease".
Australia is about to debate whether or not to legalise therapeutic cloning and researchers fear a backlash because of the scandal. A leading Australian stem cell researcher, Alan Trounson, of Monash University, told The Scientist that it would provide ammunition for critics of therapeutic cloning. "An ethical breach of any description inevitably causes collateral damage to other scientists working within the same field," commented Stephen Livesey, chief scientific officer of the Australian Stem Cell Centre in Melbourne. ~ Time, Dec 5; Washington Post, Dec 10; Joong Ang Daily, Dec 12; The Scientist, Dec 12
ISRAELI COUNTDOWN TO DEATH
An electric timer, rather than the hand of a doctor, will shut off life support for terminally Israeli patients who have a living will. A version of the Sabbath clock used by observant Jews to turn electric appliances on and off on Saturday, will be used to turn off a ventilator under a new law which will soon be approved by the Knesset. "Even those who favour active euthanasia admit that medical personnel don't like the idea of turning off a respirator themselves," commented the chairman of the committee which drafted the proposals, Professor Abraham Steinberg, a doctor, bioethicist and orthodox rabbi.
Although both the London Telegraph and the British Medical Journal described the clock as a euthanasia device, the Israeli law clearly does not allow active euthanasia. As American bioethicist Wesley J. Smith points out in his blog, it is merely "ending unwanted life- sustaining treatment". The legislation also establishes a living will database on the internet. Another innovation is that it gives hospital ethics committees a statutory basis and establishes a national ethics committee so that difficult cases will not have to go through the courts. ~ London Telegraph, Dec 8; BMJ.com, Dec 11; SecondhandSmoke, Dec 7
NEJM FLEXES ITS MUSCLES IN MERCK LAWSUIT
The New England Medical Journal has intervened in a highly public way to influence lawsuits against the pharmaceutical company Merck over Vioxx's links with heart attacks and strokes. Its executive editor, Dr Gregory Curfman has accused Merck of deleting data and underreporting the number of heart attacks in a crucial study published in the NEJM four years ago. "In criticising Merck and the study's authors at a time when the company's credibility is at issue in lawsuits, the journal is taking an extraordinary step," commented the New York Times. "The publication is well respected and widely read by doctors and scientists, with a circulation of almost 200,000."
Merck faces more than 6,000 lawsuits brought by or on behalf of people who suffered heart attacks and strokes after taking Vioxx. Only two have been decided, the first against Merck and the second in its favour. The jury is weighing up the evidence in a third case. ~ New York Times, Dec 9
ANIMAL ACTIVISM WANING IN UK, WAXING IN US AND EUROPE
Oxford University has resumed work on a US$35 million biomedical research centre which has been on ice for 18 months because of protests by animal-rights groups. The identities of the new builders are being kept secret and complex security arrangements are in place to protect workers.
According to Nature, new laws in the UK appear to have diminished the number of attacks by extremists. It has become illegal to protest outside homes if this causes distress and to use harassment to inflict economic damage upon companies. At the same time, scientists have become more open about their research and its benefits to human medicine.
However, as attacks in Britain decline, they appear to be increasing in Europe and the US, with local activists exporting their expertise. "In the first half of 2005, there was an increase in illegal activities in Sweden, Switzerland, the Netherlands and Germany," says Mark Matfield of the European Biomedical Research Association. "Much of it is either organised by British activists or they have travelled abroad to get involved."
In the US, activists claim to have prevented Huntingdon Life Sciences from listing on the New York Stock Exchange. The fierceness of American activism seems to lag about five years behind the UK, says George Goodno, of the Foundation for Biomedical Research, a US group which supports animal research. "It definitely is ramping up," he says. ~ news@nature.com, Dec 7
DUTCH "SUICIDE CONSULTANT" JAILED
A 73-year-old Dutch man has been jailed in the Netherlands over his role in helping a 25-year-old woman to commit suicide in 2003. The court said that even though Jan Hilarius was not present when she committed suicide, he had provided her with advice on how to get poisons over the internet.
Mr Hilarius is the founder of group called De Einder, or Horizon, which helps people find poisons on the internet and provides advice on how to commit suicide. According to its website, De Einder was set up in 1995 to offer "professional help" to people who want to kill themselves. It claims to advise about 350 people each year, of whom 35 people kill themselves. ~ BBC, Dec 8; Herald News Daily, Dec 11
CORD BLOOD SETBACK
Umbilical cord blood has a reputation for being the easiest source of adult stem stems. Businesses have even sprung up to store it at a child's birth as a kind of biological insurance policy. This year a British stem cell bank is touting its facilities as a Christmas present from doting grandparents. "Stem cells are not just for life; they're for Christmas," is the slogan of Smart Cells International.
However, the confidence of investors in this potential treatment has been shaken by the suspension of a clinical trial using cord blood by Viacell, an American biotech. Viacell was trying to use cord blood stem cells to treat blood cancers for patients who were compatible, but not perfectly matched. Two of the participants in the trial developed a severe adverse reaction.
Researchers are not sure where the problem lies. One possibility is the proprietary cocktail of growth factors used to multiply the stem cells. At the moment, scientists do not understand how to force stem cells to replicate themselves in a reliable fashion. Viacell's failure is not a setback for the field as a whole. A competing company, Gamida-Cell is due to begin a trial with its own therapy next year. ~ Nature Biotechnology, December; Guardian, Dec 6
IF IT QUACKS, IT CAN PROVIDE SAFETY DATA
Researchers at prestigious medical schools in the US are telling some of their patients to go overseas for stem cell therapies which are regarded as quackery by some of their colleagues. In a feature in Nature Biotechnology, Monya Baker says that some American doctors who believe in the therapeutic potential of foetal stem cell transplants are forbidden to conduct trials in the US by the Food and Drug Administration. So they have clinics abroad or they collaborate in the work of stem cell clinics whose credentials are far from stellar.
Amit Patel, of the University of Pittsburgh, for instance, is head of the Cardiac Cell Therapy Center, but he does his cutting edge work in Thailand, injecting stem cells from a patient's own bone marrow into their hearts. Stephen Hinderer, of Detroit Medical Center, works with Carlos Lima, a neurologist in Lisbon who has had good results in helping spinal cord trauma victims with nasal cells.
The American doctors want to accumulate enough safety data to persuade the FDA to allow a rigorous clinical trial of foetal stem cells in the US. "Whether you agree with it or not, it's happening," says Dr Hinderer. "To not learn from that doesn't make sense."
Clinics in Bangkok, Beijing, Kiev, Lisbon, Barbados, the Dominican Republic and Moscow offer therapies with stem cells derived from the patient himself or aborted foetuses. Some of them appear to be run by quacks, others by serious physicians. But none of them publish much in scientific journals, despite claims that their work is backed up by decades of research. ~ Nature Biotechnology, December
MIT STEM CELL PROFESSOR LASHES THERAPEUTIC CLONING
Fear of reprisals is one reason why some scientists do not oppose therapeutic cloning, says a professor at the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Associate Professor James Sherley says that "I have asked the leaderships of both the American Society for Cell Biology and the International Society for Stem Cell Research to conduct anonymous on-line polls of their membership regarding their views on human embryo research. Neither has been willing to do so. Many scientists who do not support human embryo research are afraid to speak out because of possible reprisals from powerful scientists who can affect grant success, publication acceptances, tenure promotion, and employment."
Professor Sherley is an expert in adult stem cells and an outspoken critic of embryonic stem cell research because, he argues, it is ethically and scientifically flawed. Not mincing his words, he says that many researchers "can often turn an amazingly blind eye to the contradictions in their position on therapeutic cloning. For example, the same scientists who argue that reproductive cloning would produce disease-ridden individuals insist that tissues created from therapeutic cloning will function normally!"
Cures will come from adult stem cells, he predicts. "It is pure scientific folly to place such emphasis on embryonic stem cells research to the exclusion of support for adult stem cell research," he says. "No matter what the hurdles are for success with adult stem cell-based therapy development, embryonic stem cell research faces the same hurdles and more." ~ MercatorNet, Dec 6 (disclosure: this magazine is also edited by the editor of BioEdge)
IN BRIEF: stem cells; abortion pill
STEM CELL LINES: A mere 150 stem cell lines would provide treatments for 40% of the UK population, claim British geneticists. Based on a study of how kidney donors match transplant recipients, they found that a relatively small number of lines would be compatible -- when stem cell therapy becomes a viable treatment. According to a report in news@nature.com, the best source would be discarded IVF embryos because cloned embryos still develop abnormally. ~ news@nature.com, Dec 9
ABORTION PILL: After reports of four women who died after taking the RU-486 abortion pill, such chemicals appears to carry a notable risk, says Michael Greene, a former chairman of the FDA Reproductive Health Drugs Advisory Committee. He says that the mortality risk to the mother is about 10 times the risk of surgical abortions performed after fewer than eight weeks' gestation. However, the data is still so small that it is hard to calculate the real odds. ~ news@nature.com, Dec 1
The world's first face transplant patient, Isabelle Dinoire, signed a film deal three months before her operation, the London Times, has revealed. Some doctors were disgusted by way Dinoire's doctors cooperated in the project. "It is a real travesty," Dr Raffi Der Sarkissian, a plastic surgeon at Boston University, told ABC News. I would not condone sale of photos, videos or details of the technique for product. With the advent of 'reality shows' and exposure of techniques all over the media, there exists a risk of experimental procedures being done not for the advancement of surgery, but for money and self-aggrandisement."