My Gametogenesis

By Marianne Bird

In summery of the article, "Mechanisms of Disease, Nuclear Transplantation, Embryonic Stem Cells, and the Potential for Cell Therapy" published by The New England Journal on July 17, 2003, written by Konrad Hochedlinger, Ph.D., and Rudolf Jaenisch, M.D.

According to this article, the technology that was available then, was able to successfully clone stem cells for use in therapy, but a majority of the attempts to do reproductive cloning, were unsuccessful. In reproductive cloning, complications arose during development, as I understand, because the proper response to subdue some genes and activate others did not occur. Nuclear cloning, otherwise known as nuclear transplant therapy, is not negatively effected by that because the selection for functioning cells does occur. Also the idea is not to develop a full being, but to develop certain cells exactly matching the donor, to help that donor overcome diseases.

I personally support the use of Stem Cells in research. I believe it could be the answer to curing diseases such as cancer. I think even embryonic stem cell research should be done, I think there is a real difference between an embryo and a fetus. I believe that women should have the right to decide if they want to give their eggs for this purpose, to be made fully aware of all the risks and fairly compensated. In regard to animal-human hybrids, I do not think they are immoral if they alleviate the dangerous risks of taking an egg out of a women. I understand there are a lot of regulations in place because of the variety of conditions that could be treated, and each one needs to be carefully and philosophically considered. There are also a variety of risks that need to be attentively analyzed with each case. In the 17 years since that article was written advancements have been made, but still there is a lot of work that needs to be done.

Works Cited:

http://web.mit.edu/7.31/restricted/pdfs/Jaenisch_03_NEJM.pdf

https://bioprocessintl.com/manufacturing/cell-therapies/meeting-regulatory-challenges-for-cell-based-therapies-328057/

https://www.nature.com/articles/stemcells.2007.27