History or hype? This was the question swirling about the widely publicised announcement by a Massachusetts company that it had mastered a technique for creating "ethical" embryonic stem cells which could break the logjam in America's stem cell politics. Nature rushed its article into an on-line express edition. "We have demonstrated, for the first time, that human embryonic stem cells can be generated without interfering with the embryo's potential for life," said lead author Robert Lanza.

The CEO of Advanced Cell Technology, William Caldwell, delivered the same message: "we do not destroy the embryo. That's the whole purpose of what we perceive to be a major scientific breakthrough." Ronald Green, a bioethicist at Dartmouth who heads ACT's Ethics Advisory Board, gave it his imprimatur. "This technique overcomes this [ethical] hurdle and has the potential to play a critical role in the advancement of regenerative medicine."

However, after Richard Doerflinger, of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, dissected the Nature article it became painfully evident that the company's own press release -- to say nothing of media coverage around the world - was completely wrong. None of the embryos described in the paper had survived. Nature hastily corrected the wording of its own press release.

What Lanza's team had done was to biopsy an eight-cell human embryo and gently remove a single cell -- a standard technique nowadays in IVF. With this cell he created a stem cell line while the embryo continued to develop normally. At least that was what he intended. In fact, although 16 embryos were dismembered into 91 separate cells, Lanza produced only two stem cell lines. "It was a very disruptive, very wasteful, very inefficient procedure, and it left all the old embryos dead, just like the old method did," said Doerflinger. He also claimed that it was deceitful to post a picture of a mature healthy embryo which had survived the removal of a single cell.

Criticism. In a rare moment of consensus on the controversial issue of embryonic stem cells, even supporters of therapeutic cloning dismissed Lanza's work. "A pitiful attempt to look morally acceptable, rather than do valuable science," sneered Glenn McGee, editor of the American Journal of Bioethics. Some critics compared Lanza's economy with the truth to the prevarications of disgraced Korean stem cell scientist Hwang Woo-suk. Although this seems unfair, there is no doubt that the episode shows how credulous the media -- even leading scientific journals -- can be about therapeutic cloning. Lanza's work represented a small technical advance, but it hardly passed muster as a "breakthrough".

Media coverage. The media has a short memory. Only last year the ethics of this experiment had been thoroughly analysed in a major ­ but quickly buried -- white paper by the President's Council for Bioethics. It was criticised then for potentially harming the embryo. The Council also pointed out that the biopsied cell might be totipotent and could therefore be an embryo itself, raising further ethical problems.

Furthermore, Advanced Cell Technology has a track record as a publicity hound. A listed company which is perpetually in the red, it burst onto the front page back in 2001 claiming that it had cloned a human embryo and initiated a stem cell line. Nothing came of that extraordinary wave of publicity, but it no doubt put ACT scientists in the rolodexes of journalists across the world.

Significant advance. A development reported in BioEdge earlier this month was far more significant, even though it has been totally ignored by the media. Japanese scientists reported in another major journal, Cell, that they had reprogrammed an adult mouse cell and converted it into something closely resembling an embryonic stem cell. Scientists from the Harvard Stem Cell group grudgingly acknowledged in a commentary that it was a "significant step" "unencumbered by neither the logistical constraints nor the societal concerns presented by somatic cell nuclear transfer [ie, cloning]." If this success can be replicated with human cells, it might indeed transform America's stem cell politics.   

HEALTH MINISTER ACCUSED OF "SCAREMONGERING"

Australia's minister for health has been accused of "scaremongering" to discourage support for therapeutic cloning by the chair of a committee which recommended it. Professor Loane Skene, of the University of Melbourne, said that Tony Abbott, a blunt, pugnacious social conservative, was wrong to suggest that cloning embryos would eventually lead to reproductive cloning.

Mr Abbott has been campaigning against therapeutic cloning, which will be debated in the Federal Parliament sometime later this year. His stand is that without substantial scientific progress, there is no need to change the existing law. "People are asking us to cross a very serious ethical bridge for no good reason because there is no strong evidence that this kind of research is actually going to produce the massive breakthroughs that people are claiming," Mr Abbott told ABC television.

"I think what we are seeing at the moment is a lot of peddling of hope, but no great evidence that these new and radical research techniques are actually going to produce the breakthroughs that some of the more evangelical scientists are claiming for them." ~ Adelaide Advertiser, Aug 20; ABC, Aug 27   

ISRAELI WOMEN USING SEX SELECTION

This is illegal in Israel whose law does not permit the abortion of healthy children. Dr Morechai Halperin, an ethicist at the health ministry said that he was shocked. "Killing healthy foetuses because families have 'too many' of that sex is immoral, violates universal ethics and indicates moral decline. And public money used for performing [prenatal tests] in these cases could otherwise have been used to treat cancer patients, for example." ~ Jerusalem Post, Aug 24   

UK WOMAN "ADDICTED" TO SURROGACY

If you are seeking bioethics at the coalface, London's Daily Mail is the newspaper for you. Its in-depth interviews with colourful personalities whose lives have been shaped by innovations in reproductive technology are always revealing.

A recent issue featured Jill Hawkins, surrogate mother of seven -- perhaps eight if she fails to conquer her self-confessed "addiction" to pregnancy. Ms Hawkins is a 42-year-old, often-depressed, never- married legal secretary, who lives alone in a flat with three cats and dreams of being thin. After reading about surrogacy in a women's magazine 15 years ago, she had her first baby, with artificial insemination. She loved being pregnant, she says, because "you are allowed to be fat when you are carrying a baby".

But back in 2004, after her sixth baby, disgusted with her obesity, she took an overdose. When she recovered she had an expensive gastric bypass operation which helped her to slim down. Now she hopes that the fee for her seventh pregnancy will help pay for a nip and tuck with cosmetic surgery.

Ms Hawkins keeps in touch with her children, but declares that she feels quite detached from them. She yearns for a husband and possibly her own child, but as the years slip by, that dream is fading. Reporter Helen Weathers asks, "do the childless couples who seek out women like Jill ever know just how emotionally needy or damaged they might be, or question their true motives? And if they do know, do they care enough to think twice about proceeding?" ~ Daily Mail, Aug 25   

ANOTHER US BODY PARTS SCANDAL

This is the second scandal this year in the American body parts industry. Despite Guyett's conviction, he was able to register two companies with the FDA to provide tissue for transplants. "In this business what really rules is: Do you have the goods? Can you give the body parts that I need? If you have a sketchy background, that doesn't really make a difference. People just want to get the parts," said Annie Cheney, author of the book "Body Brokers." ~ AP, Aug 27   

ENGINEERING VIRTUE COULD BE NEXT STEP

This is a possibility which Hughes, the head of the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies in the US, predicts will happen "in the very near future". On his website he foresees that "we will be able to suppress unwelcome desires, enhance compassion and empathy, and expand our understanding... So, contrary to the bioconservative accusation that neurological self-determination and human enhancement will encourage more selfishness in society, it will probably permit people to be even more moral and responsible than they currently are."

Nick Bostrom, an Oxford-based transhumanist, raised the possibility of technology rescuing marriages in an interview in Nature. "An interesting possibility is the use of pharmaceuticals to regulate the pair-bonding mechanism. There are a small number of hormones, such as vasopressin and oxytocin, that might help us form bonds with others. It could be possible to prevent the levels of these chemicals from trailing off, and to infuse romance into fading marriages - like a technological form of counselling." ~ Nature, Aug 22; IEET website   

IN BRIEF: sperm donation, animal rights