Federal officials are proposing to end a moratorium on funding for research that involves transplanting human stem cells into certain animal embryos, a controversial practice that produces organisms known as “chimeras.”
If approved after a 30-day comment period, the new policy would allow the National Institutes of Health to fund researchers who want to put stem cells in early-stage animal embryos to study diseases, potential therapies and organ transplants. Stem cells can become any kind of human tissue, including organs.
NIH imposed its temporary ban on funding last September, citing ethical concerns. These include worries over animals whose brains contain some human brain cells and what might happen if chimeras were able — and allowed — to reproduce.
But on Thursday, Carrie D. Wolinetz, NIH’s associate director for science policy, announced the new policy proposal, saying it would “enable NIH research community to move this promising area of science forward in a responsible manner.” The request for public comment was also published in the Federal Register.
Animals have long been used in research on human cells, often for the testing of drugs that might attack disease. But because stem cells can become any kind of tissue, human-animal research in the field of “regenerative medicine” raises greater ethical issues and adds, for some, a visceral unease with the organism that could be produced.
Under the proposed NIH policy, taxpayer funds would be allowed for experiments in which human cells are added to early-stage embryos of all animals except nonhuman primates, such as chimpanzees and monkeys, because they are so similar to humans. For those species, the human cells could be added at a later stage of development.
The agency will continue its ban on funding research that would include breeding of animals that could make human eggs or sperm.
By: Lenny Bernstein (The Washington Post).
Photo: CBS News.
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