AMERICAN scientists are to manipulate the genes of aborted foetuses in
an attempt to block genetic diseases in unborn babies. They hope to use
similar techniques to protect unborn babies from HIV-infected mothers.
The projects are being given millions of dollars in grants following
President Clinton's repeal of a five-year moratorium on foetal tissue.
Dozens of applications made to the National Institute of Health --
roughly America's equivalent of the Medical Research Council -- are
bound to increase fears of ''abortion-farming''. According to this
week's issue of Science, the proposals include:
* The use of implanted neurological foetal tissue in diseases like
Parkinson's and Alzheimer's as well as trauma, stroke, and spinal cord
injury;
* Implanting pancreatic cells for insulin-dependent diabetes;
* Grafting foetal liver cells for a host of inherited diseases.
One body, the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, with $1.5m to
spend on foetal research, plans to spend most of this on liver stem cell
research.
One trial involves inserting into the cells a gene code for a protein
which blocks replication of the Aids virus, HIV; the cells would be
injected into the foetuses of mothers with HIV in the hope that the
treatment would produce immune cells to resist infection.
An advantage of foetal tissue cells is their low immunogenicity,
freeing them from the constraints of adult tissue or organ transplants.
Alan Levine, chief of cellular haematology at the NHLBI, said: ''These
procedures can be done without the need for tissue matching, without
immunosuppressive drugs, and without graft-versus-host disease.''
However, one of the biggest grants to date, for a trial on foetal
brain cell transplants to Parkinson patients, has provoked a row among
scientists in the US and Europe.
This is because just one project -- by Curt Freed at the University of
Colorado Health Sciences Centre -- has been awarded $4.5m for the
biggest and most ambitious study in this field to date.
A consortium of European neural transplant scientists accuse the
National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke of putting all
their eggs in one basket.
Because Freed's trial uses only one of many techniques, they, and
Freed's American colleagues, fear that failure could be a major setback
for the whole field of neural transplant.
There are also ethical concerns for half the 40 patients in Freed's
trial who will be used as controls; they will have holes drilled in
their skulls like the treatment group but nothing further will be done,
a significantly invasive procedure with no possibility of benefit.
Last month, Professor Colin Campbell, chairman of the UK Human
Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, said that, in two or three
years, women could become pregnant with eggs from an aborted foetus
using techniques developed experimentally in Edinburgh.
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