Debate on Embryo Research Suppressed

by | July 17, 2013 | Bioethics, Human embryo research, News, Publications

Interview with Caroline Roux, General Secretary for Alliance VITA, who expresses her disappointment due to the lack of debate. You can find this interview (in French) on Newsring.

The authorization of research on embryo stem cells and on human embryos is not only ethically unacceptable but also scientifically unjustified. Furthermore, there has been no opportunity to debate this matter. The 2011 Bioethics law, which upheld the principle of excluding research on embryos, proposed the setting up of a commission in times of major ethical changes. Science has made great advances, whether on umbilical cord blood cells, on adult stem cells, or on reprogrammed, induced pluripotent stem cells (also known as IPS cells). Therefore, it was worth having a proper debate of the subject.

The 2011 law was already far from being ideal. We were opposed to this law because we are opposed to using human embryos – a human being at his/her first embryonic stage – as laboratory materials. The ban by principle (with its derogations) at least allowed symbolic embryo protection. But the new legal project goes a step beyond this: the principle of respecting the embryo as a human being will now become the exception.

Embryos used as guinea-pigs

This poses profound ethical questions. In particular one needs to question the large stock of frozen living embryos in France. There are about 171,000 according to latest statistics from the Biomedical Agency. These embryos were created from a very strong desire, and they are destined to be used in research like guinea-pigs. This should challenge our society who acts as a divine power over the smallest and weakest members, those placed at the very beginning of life.

To this day, embryo research has given us nothing, whereas alternative research on adult stem cells has already borne fruit. More than 90 types of disease are now treated with blood cells from umbilical cord tissue. Some countries have advanced greatly on IPS – reprogrammed stem cells, which are far more promising. And if one day we no longer had thousands of spare embryos from in-vitro fertilization, should they be created? We are faced with an extremely serious ethical problem.

At Alliance Vita, we are asking for a moratorium on freezing embryos, so that spare embryos from in-vitro fertilization should no longer be frozen. There is something extremely unjust in fixing embryos, wanting to stop time. You could even have embryos conceived simultaneously who can be born twenty years apart. This already creates whole depths of psychological issues. Producing embryos, born from a desire, that in the end are destroyed, raises serious questions for our society!

Treating infertility rather than using substitute solutions

For years, we have also been asking that real research be carried out on infertility. We must discover means to treat it properly instead of by-passing it. Listening to couples confronted to infertility, one understands that they want the possibility to procreate naturally to do without medical artifice. Yes, one can have children by medically assisted procreation, but medicine has only found substitute solutions that don’t answer the challenge of curing infertility.

As an embryo is ‘another’ genetic being, there may be problems of cell compatibility with the potential recipient. With reprogrammed cells, however, since they are the cells of the same person, there are no rejection problems, and therefore more chances of success. To think that one can be treated with one’s own cells opens large horizons of success. By the way, this is the choice made by Japan.

The Justice Minister said that France is falling behind. I do agree, because our country is still focusing on a standard considered promising in the early years of 2000. In today’s scientific research reviews we see that there is always prevention against using embryonic stem cells, due to ethical aspects and to rejection problems. Things have evolved greatly these last years, notably with Shinya Yamanaka’s research, the Japanese Nobel Prize winner of 2012. The American company Geron has also abandoned its research on embryos as being unprofitable.

Embryo Research: Serious ethical upheaval with no scientific justification

by | July 16, 2013 | Bioethics, Human embryo research, Press Releases

Alliance VITA denounces the brutal enforcement of a proposition of law which aims, without any real debate, at authorizing research which will destroy human embryos. For Alliance VITA, this text overturns the previous embryo and stem cell research conditions, thereby deleting the exclusion by principle, and substituting a much wider and flexible framework. This discussion took place without previously consulting the French people by an enquiry commission – such as it is stated and provided for in the bioethics law of July 7, 2011.

Dr Xavier Mirabel, Alliance VITA’s President says:

            «Authorizing research on embryos is a serious ethical issue, because it classifies a human being at its earliest stage as an object. Furthermore, there is no scientific reason for treating human embryos as laboratory guinea-pigs. The Nobel Prize for Medicine has just been awarded to Japanese Shinya Yamanaka and to British John Gurdon for their discoveries on nuclear reprogramming, which is an ethical technique. But by explicitly authorizing research on human embryos leading to their destruction, this proposition of law overturns a major bioethical principle that confers a symbolic protection to the human embryo. I wish to recal that embryo research has not given us any proven result to this day; also that other countries are turning to reprogrammed (adult) stem cells (IPS). For example, the American company Geron which had announced a clinical test based on embryonic stem cells in 2009, stopped its research in 2011 due to lack of proven results. On the contrary, Japan is in the process of allowing clinical research on (adult) stem cells (IPS), to treat an eye disease, which would be a very promising world’s first.”

Alliance VITA requests the French Parliament and Government to act in favor of ethical research, and insists on a moratorium on freezing human embryos. Without this, the Bioethics law should be strictly followed to, in order to limit the derogations which are given much too freely. VITA notes that France remains in full contradiction to the European orientations which exclude all patents on human embryos, and the Oviedo convention, which in article 18 demands an “adequate protection” of in-vitro embryos.

Alliance VITA, together with the other associations of the group “One of Us”, request a halt to European Union financing for embryo research involving destruction, as called for by the Commission for Juridical Affairs of the European Parliament which is currently analyzing the program for research and innovation, “Horizon 2020”.

The group invites all European citizens who care about ethical research to sign the European citizens’ initiative on www.undenous.fr which calls for a halt to financing this type of research by European Union funds. Already 760,000 Europeans, including 67,000 French citizens have signed within a few weeks.