STEM CELLS from aborted foetuses are to be injected directly into human brains in a procedure that could open the door to treating a host of neurological disorders such as Alzheimer's and motor neurone disease.Scientists in the United States have been given the go-ahead to transplant stem cells into six children who suffer from Batten disease, a rare but fatal genetic disorder.
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The idea is to inject the sick children with healthy, immature neural stem cells that will "engraft" in a brain and turn into cells able to produce the missing enzyme.Such an experiment showed promise in Batten-afflicted mice, but such an ethically charged test has never been tried in humans.
"I'm sure there is no threat to anyone's identity," said Arthur Caplan, director of the University of Pennsylvania's Centre for Bioethics. "But we are starting down that road."
What's more, some of the brain cells to be implanted will be derived from aborted foetuses, which Mr Caplan said raised ethical concerns.
Even Art Caplan thinks that there may be some problems with this procedure. Ethically speaking. If this doesn't raise the yuck factor, I'm not sure anything will.
I just want to point out that the Bush NIH has been funding this sort of research. The National Right to Life Committee used to make it a requirement that a candidate oppose federal funding for research using tissue from aborted children, but they have expressly abandoned this fight and are instead focusing everything on the _embryonic_ stem-cell issue. Embryonic stem-cell research is now not federally funded, but stem-cell research with tissue from surgically aborted children is, which is very ironic. NRLC no longer says _anything_ about this issue.