ESI was attempting to use hES cells to cure diabetes and heart failure. But, says Colman, it proved "really difficult". A dose for a human would have required a billion cells and delivering this with the necessary standards of purity was straining investors' patience. According to a report in the journal Science, he admits to a "tinge of disappointment that the field is moving more slowly than I had hoped." He has now moved to a new role as head of the Singapore Stem Cell Consortium. "I'll be dealing with all sorts of stem cells, not just human embryonic," he says.
The announcement came as no surprise to leading Australian stem cell scientist Alan Mackay-Sim, director of the National Centre for Adult Stem Cell Research. "If you go to stem cell meetings people are saying that scaling up to the required number is a real problem with embryonic stem cells, as are the problems of immune rejection and tumour formation," he observed.
All is not lost for ESI, however. Under new leadership, it will focus on providing hES cells for other laboratories around the world and on "more immediate revenue-generating activities like drug screening and drug discovery". ~ Science, Jul 20; Bloomberg News, July 9; Courier-Mail, Jul 26
Twelve years ago, three internationally renowned doctors at the University of California, Irvine, Center for Reproductive Health were charged with fraud after taking eggs without consent and implanting them as embryos in other women. At least 70 women were involved, and 10 children were born from stolen eggs. A major news story which destroyed reputations and shattered reputations, the scandal was documented in a 2003 book, Stealing Dreams.
And it may have happened all over again.
The Orange County Register claims that more than 100 fertility doctors in dozens of states may have brokered unauthorised transfers of human eggs. What happened is still unclear, but what has emerged in the wake of the bankruptcy of the Options National Fertility Registry in southern California is not reassuring. Audits of Options' records indicate that 596 embryos and 2,189 eggs are unaccounted for. More than 300 reports had irregularities, involving 80 clinics, 102 doctors and 229 donors.
Bioethicist Arthur Caplan, of the University of Pennsylvania, said that these irregularities were at least a violation of informed consent. "They call these egg donations, but these are egg sales. But even when you agree to sell your eggs, you're agreeing to a specific purpose and a specific couple. As we saw with the UCI problems, people might have reasons for not making their eggs available to certain other people. They do have the right to control the disposition of their eggs."
A records supervisor alerted the newspaper to the missing eggs. "It's inconceivable to me that any doctor would do something like this after the UCI scandal," said Melinda Lansford. "Nobody realised it wasn't an isolated incident, that it could be an industry-wide practice. It has [definitely] happened once and appears to have happened several more times." ~ Orange County Register, July 23
TRANSPLANT DILEMMAS BEHIND BARS
An Israeli jail is an unlikely scenario for a bioethics lecture, but in the latest issue of the Journal of Medical Ethics, a British bioethicist uses it to show the folly of a commercial market in organs. In May last year, three Palestinian prisoners asked the Israel Prison Service for permission to sell their kidneys to support their families. The request was made at a time when employees of the Palestinian Authority had not received salaries for three months. The prisoners wanted to alleviate harsh conditions for their families, compensate for the lack of pension payments and guarantee food and milk for their babies.
It is unclear whether this was just a political stunt or an act of true desperation. In any case, prison authorities have still not responded, although the chance of approving the idea was always slim. The chief medical officer is sceptical: the men might have been coerced into making the offer, he says. "We are responsible for the prisoners' health and we won't lend a hand to endangering the prisoner."
Dr Miran Epstein uses this anecdote to argue that the concept of an organ market supports "political and economic environments which impose tragedy on individuals by forcing them to choose between horrible options -- either poverty or selling body parts." This has a particular resonance in Israel, where half of transplanted kidneys are said to come from overseas donors. Dr Epstein points out that exploitation of these donors is cloaked with rhetorical palaver about autonomous commercial decisions and altruistic donations. "Free, uncoerced people do not choose to face such dilemmas."
Another Palestinian prisoner's kidney problem has also been in the news. Ahmed Tamimi, a Palestinian serving life for murdering an Israeli settler, has kidney disease. Four year ago his nephew volunteered to donate, but up to now the prison authority has refused to pay for the operation because he does not need it urgently. Still, his case looked even worse in 2005 when a lower court judge ruled against him. "Is someone who came to murder us entitled to get finance for a transplant from the small budget that exists to assist people for this procedure?" she asked. Cooler heads appear to have prevailed and after an appeal Mr Tamimi is now being assessed medically.
It's unthinkable that there should be a connection between what a prisoner is judged for and his medical services in prison," said Anat Litvin, of Physicians for Human Rights, Israel. ~ Journal of Medical Ethics, July; ynetnews.com; IRIN, April 17
STEM CELL SCIENTISTS COMPLAIN ABOUT US RESTRICTIONS
US scientists complain that they are unable to test novel techniques of generating embryonic stem cells because of an overly cautious interpretation of President Bush's stem cell policy. Robert Lanza, of Advanced Cell Technology, says that his company has developed a way of creating stem cell lines without destroying embryos, but he still cannot get federal funding. He removes one cell from an eight- cell blastomere and coaxes it to multiply. Although the embryo is not harmed or destroyed, the National Institutes of Health still refuses to consider his grant application.
Apparently the NIH fears that removing one cell from an embryo might be construed as harming it. A 1995 congressional ban on "harming" embryos, backed up by an executive order from the President this year, seems to rule it out. According to the Washington Post, the NIH will probably convene workshops and fund animal tests to assess how much harm is done. But this will not happen quickly. With next year's election on the horizon, stem cell scientists may have to simply wait for a change in the White House. ~ Washington Post, Jul 29
SHOULD ALZHEIMER'S PATIENTS BE TAGGED?
For the first time, Americans have been electronically tagged as a part of their job. Two employees of CityWatcher.com, a manufacturer of surveillance equipment, had glass-encapsulated microchips with miniature antennae embedded in their forearms last year. "To protect high-end secure data, you use more sophisticated techniques," said the company's CEO. "There's a reader outside the door; you walk up to the reader, put your arm under it, and it opens the door."
The use of embedded radio-frequency identification (RFID) chips is growing. Until now it was largely a novelty, at least for American humans. VeriChip, the chip's manufacturer, has already sold 2,000 units world-wide for human implantation. But in May an Alzheimer's care centre in West Palm Beach made the news when it proposed a two- year study in which patients would receive chip implants.
"Is it appropriate to use the most vulnerable members of society for invasive medical research?" asked Katherine Albrecht, an RFID critic. "Should the company be allowed to implant microchips into people whose mental impairments mean they cannot give fully informed consent?"
The counter-argument is that that both the patients and their legal guardians must consent to the implants before receiving them. They could be very handy for identifying lost patients after a hurricane, for instance. Not everyone is convinced. Wisconsin and North Dakota have already passed legislation prohibiting forced implantation and several other states are thinking of doing so.
On the other hand, Oklahoma legislators are debating a bill which would authorise RFID chips for prisoners convicted of violent crime. Some doctors say that it is an ideal way to store medical records in case of an emergency.
The Big Brother-ish technology still has one huge drawback, apart from the fact that surgery is required to remove an implanted chip. It is relatively easy to copy the chip's code and steal the information. Until this kind of identity theft becomes impossible, the idea is unlikely to catch on. ~ Business Week, July 22
HOW MUCH BRAIN DO YOU NEED?
Meaty articles don't always make the best newspaper copy, The Lancet has been reminded once again. In its July 21 issue, it covered a number of weighty issues, but the one that the world media zeroed in on was the Strange Case of the Civil Servant with a Tiny Brain. Somehow, a 44-year-old Frenchman was able to function quite normally despite the fact that his brain had been reduced to a very thin layer of tissue next to his skull over the course of his life. He was married with two children, had an IQ just within the normal range, and worked for the government.
"The whole brain was reduced, frontal, parietal, temporal and occipital lobes, on both left and right sides. These regions control motion, sensibility, language, vision, audition and emotional and cognitive states," French neurologist Lionel Feuillet told the New Scientist. As an infant the man had a shunt to reduce water on the brain, but it had been removed when he was 14. This shows that "the brain is very plastic and can adapt to some brain damage occurring in the pre- and post-natal period when treated appropriately," says Dr Feuillet. ~ Lancet blog, July 29; New Scientist, July 20
"LET'S LEGALISE HUMAN CLONING" SAYS BIOETHICIST
Is human reproductive cloning becoming mainstream? Perhaps, if a leading magazine like New Scientist publishes a vigorous defence of the controversial notion. In its July 18 issue, a professor of bioethics at Glasgow Caledonian University, Hugh McLachlan, contends that cloning should be legalised and that objections are mostly based on baseless fears. "They describe risks that we accept -- and are right to accept -- in other [artificial] methods of reproduction. Let us act rationally, and legalise human cloning now."
McLachlan uses libertarian arguments to demolish reservations. There are risks, he acknowledges, but prospective parents can make their own informed decisions about them. "In a free society, actions should be legal unless there is a case for making them illegal." ~ New Scientist, Jul 18
ASSEMBLY LINE CONCEPTION ON THE WAY
It sounds like a tasteless pun, but Japanese and American scientists are working on automating conception. Teruo Fujii, of the University of Tokyo, is developing a manufacturing process in which egg and sperm are fed in at one end and an early embryo emerges from the other, ready for implantation into a woman. He hopes that his device will improve the success of IVF programs. Currently IVF embryos are still less viable than their in vivo counterparts, partly because eggs or embryos are moved or washed with culture fluid, causing changes in temperature or pH.
The Japanese machine, which is based on a microfluidic chip, provides a more stable environment for the embryo. Dr Fujii found that mice embryos grown on chips were more viable than those grown in conventional IVF systems. He will soon begin experimenting on human embryos. Scientists at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign are working on a similar system. ~ New Scientist, Jul 26
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For the first time, criminal charges have been made against an American transplant surgeon. San Francisco doctor Hootan Roozrokh, 33, is alleged to have hastened the death of a 25-year-old disabled man last year to harvest his organs sooner. If convicted, he could face up to eight years in prison. He maintains that he has committed no crime.