U.K. Sows Fertile Ground For Stem-Cell Research
By GAUTAM NAIK
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
January 17, 2006; Page A15
Like the proverbial hare, South Korea charged ahead in the hot field of human cloning and stem-cell research. In 2004, its scientists shocked the world by announcing they had cloned the first human embryo. Last year, they said they had created stem-cell lines that were exact genetic matches of potential patients.
Both experiments have now been discredited, and the big scientific prize of therapeutic cloning remains unclaimed.
Scientists around the globe eagerly are pursuing a chance to get to it first, and for now, the lead in this field has reverted to a tortoise in the race: Britain.
A handful of countries, such as China, Spain, Sweden and Australia, are involved in related research involving stem cells. In the U.S., cloning research has been hobbled by cumbersome regulations. Two cloning proposals at Harvard University have been delayed more than a year by paperwork. Academic and corporate researchers say they are moving to restart programs that were halted in part due to the apparent Korean successes.
Meanwhile, British scientists quietly have forged ahead. Last year, a team at Newcastle University created an early-stage human embryo, just as the Koreans had claimed to have done. Another team of scientists, including the creator of Dolly the sheep, hope to use a similar technique to find treatments of motor-neuron disease. In December, the British government said it would double spending on stem-cell research to $180 million over the next two years.
Britain has gotten its lead in a quintessentially European way: carefully, deliberately and using regulation to encourage scientists to pursue truly controversial research, while limiting their ability to step beyond ethical bounds.
"The U.K. is one of the best places to do this work," says Stephen Minger, an American who has lived in Britain for a decade and who is now director of the stem-cell biology lab at Kings College, London. "The landscape here is crystal clear, unlike the U.S.," where permission to conduct such research can depend on whether it is federally or privately funded.
Britain has a rich history in the science of fertility and the embryo; its scientists, for example, created the first test-tube baby in 1978. When it came to cloning and stem-cell research, it relaxed the rules gradually on what was permissible, rather than in one go. And it instituted a stringent set of audits to minimize the risk -- and temptation -- for scientific fraud.
"We have a strong position because we're well-regulated," says Suzi Leather, chief of the U.K.'s Human Fertilization and Embryology Authority, a nongovernmental body in charge of regulating the research. "It's a culture in which scientists understand what the boundaries are."
Consider the ethically tricky question of collecting human eggs for research. Scientists in Britain must provide a meticulous accounting for the origin and use of human eggs. They must also get extremely detailed consent from egg donors. Occasionally, HFEA inspectors will swoop down for a spot audit that can take an entire day.
"It's very hard work, and at times [an audit] seems unnecessarily intrusive," says Alison Murdoch, a gynecologist on the Newcastle team, whose research-egg supply recently was audited by regulators.
But even British research isn't entirely without controversy. The Newcastle team, for example, was accused of breaching good scientific practice by publicizing its breakthrough in a news conference, instead of first making it known via a scientific journal.
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