Stem cell tech fuels US debate

A report that South Korean scientists have used cloning technology to create embryonic stem cells from living human patients gave impetus on...

A report that South Korean scientists have used cloning technology to create embryonic stem cells from living human patients gave impetus on Thursday to both sides in the debate on stem cell research.

Rival bills in both the US House of Representatives and Senate would either ban the research outright, or encourage it with more federal funding. Currently federal funding for work with stem cells taken from human embryos is strictly limited but researchers can use private money as they wish.

Only one specific form of the research is at issue—the use of stem cells from human embryos.

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Currently they are taken from frozen embryos left over in fertility clinics, but they can also be made using the same cloning technology that created Dolly the sheep.

The South Korean work, published in the journal Science, takes a big step toward this very goal.

Woo Suk Hwang and colleagues at the Seoul National University took skin samples from patients with spinal cord injuries, juvenile diabetes and a rare immune disorder, fused the nuclei containing genetic material into hollowed-out egg cells, and grew batches of embryonic stem cells that are genetically almost identical to the patients.

Hwang and other scientists said their method did not actually create a human embryo and thus might not be objectionable to opponents of embryo research. —Reuters