THE COUNCIL EARNS ITS KEEP:

New technique eyed in stem-cell debate (Gareth Cook, November 21, 2004, Boston Globe)

With the nation deadlocked over the morality of using human embryos for research, a member of the President's Council on Bioethics is quietly promoting a proposal that might allow scientists to create the equivalent of embryonic stem cells without destroying embryos, offering a potential path out of the controversy.

Dr. William Hurlbut, a Stanford bioethicist and staunch opponent of research on human embryos, has traveled the country developing and winning support for the idea in consultation with a small circle of scientists and conservative ethicists. The procedure, called altered nuclear transfer, would engineer a human egg that could generate cells with the full potential of embryonic stem cells, but without ever forming an actual embryo.

The technique has not been attempted with human cells, but biologists consider it feasible with today's technology. The larger question is whether the technique could overcome the strong ethical and religious opposition that has led to sharp limits on federal funding for embryonic stem-cell experiments and turned embryonic stem-cell research into a flashpoint in American politics.

So far, three critics of current methods for creating embryonic stem cells -- Archbishop William J. Levada of San Francisco, Robert George, a member of the president's bioethics council, and Nigel M. de S. Cameron, a leading intellectual in the evangelical movement -- have seen Hurlbut's proposal and said they believe it could offer a way around their moral objections. Hurlbut will present his idea to the bioethics council early next month.

It's a singularly American phenomenon that we've approached these issues with such moral seriousness while the rest of the world just chases the money to be made from treatments at the cost of their own souls.

Posted by Orrin Judd at November 24, 2004 12:49 PM