Time to Bring German Science into the 21st Century?
A long-simmering national debate over stem-cell research boiled up
again Monday after a German advisory group, the National Ethics
Council, suggested changes to a five-year-old law that scientists
charge is out of step with the rest of Europe.
[This photo shows a single cell being removed from a human embryo in
a method billed in 2006 as a way to harvest stem cells without
destroying human embryos. But new methods weren't on the table in the
latest debate over a German stem-cell law.]
Stem-cell controversies follow the lines of the abortion debate: When
does life start, and is it acceptable to "harvest" stem cells -- the
most pliable and potent human cells -- from fetuses? Such research
could lead to cures for disabilities like diabetes and Parkinson's
disease; it could also give scientists a way to grow fresh, cloned
organs for patients who need, say, a new kidney or heart.
Religious arguments aside, though, lawmakers in Germany tend to be
conservative about genetic research because of the historical legacy
of the crude experiments conducted on concentration camp inmates
during the Nazi era. A 2002 law barred German scientists from working
on any "new" stem-cell lines -- in effect, any line propagated after
2002 -- to keep Germany from becoming a market for new cells from
human fetuses. A stem cell line is a family of cells produced from a
single parent group of harvested stem cells -- in effect, from a
single fetus.
The National Ethics Council said the pre-2002 lines were growing old
and the law was interfering with new research. "If the current rules
remain, German science will be hopelessly sidelined," said Horst
Dreier, a member of the council who spoke for the narrow majority,
which voted to recommend an abolition of the 2002 cutoff date. It
also called for a new authority to test each individual new line of
stem cells before it comes onto the German market.
German papers on Tuesday morning are largely unimpressed by the
Council's decision, arguing that the scientists themselves had failed
to break new rhetorical ground in the fast-changing field of genetic
research.
The left-leaning Berliner Zeitung writes:
"The Ethics Council's new declaration is no big step forward .... The
council says it's important to found its opinions on a thorough
consideration of diverse arguments. If only it had original arguments
to chew on. But almost everything in the council's report can be
heard or read somewhere else."
"The report has one virtue: It emphasizes, again, how important it is
to have this debate about Germany's stem-cell law -- and to formulate
it in an up-to-date, contemporary way."
The center-left Süddeutsche Zeitung writes:
"It's true: The law against new cell lines needs to be discussed,
because an absolute ban on research was never the law's intention.
But (so far) there's no reason to ease the law .... If scientists
want to demand access to fresh cell lines, they need to show progress
in their research. But therapies that require embryonic stem cells
don't seem to be on the horizon. So there are no new arguments for
liberalizing the law. For now it's just a matter of maintaining the
spirit of the 2002 compromise: Human embryos require real protection,
but the door to new research nevertheless needs to remain slightly
open."
The conservative daily Die Welt argues:
"The National Ethics Council has made a clear call for an amendment
to the strict German stem-cell law .... (But the law) is a half-
hearted compromise. It forbids the harvesting of embryonic stem cells
in Germany and shunts the ethical problem to foreign countries.
Countless embryos are created by artificial insemination and then
killed in order to create the coveted new cell lines -- which is not
in accordance with German law."
"Instead of amending a compromise, politicians should finally grapple
with the ethical challenge and discuss a fundamental change to
(Germany's) 1991 embryo-protection law. Bio-medicine has made
enormous progress in the last several years. This goes for artificial
insemination as well as the work researchers do on embryonic stem
cells. The decisive question is whether stem cells used in Germany
can also be taken from those countless embryos. A 'yes' would be --
at long last -- decisive."
-- Michael Scott Moore, 12 noon CET
http://www.spiegel.
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StemCells subscribers may also be interested in these sites:
Children's Neurobiological Solutions
http://www.CNSfoundation.org/
Cord Blood Registry
http://www.CordBlood.com/at.cgi?a=150123
The CNS Healing Group
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CNS_Healing
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