Zapped human eggs divide without sperm

A trick that persuades human eggs to divide as if they have been fertilised
could provide a source of embryonic stem cells that sidesteps ethical
objections to existing techniques. It could also be deployed to improve the
success rate of IVF.

"Embryos" created by the procedure do not contain any paternal
chromosomes -
just two sets of chromosomes from the mother - and so cannot develop into
babies. This should remove the ethical objections that some people have to
harvesting from donated human embryos. There are high hopes that stem cells,
which can develop into many different cell types, could be used to treat a
range of diseases.

The tricked eggs divide for four or five days until they reach 50 to 100
cells - the blastocyst stage. These blastocysts should in theory yield stem
cells, but because they are parthenogenetic - produced from the egg only -
they cannot be viewed as a potential human life, says Karl Swann of the
University of Wales College of Medicine in Cardiff, UK.

"This could eliminate one of the main sources of ethical controversy in this
research," says Bob Lanza, head of research at the cloning company Advanced
Cell Technology in Worcester, Massachusetts.

But Josephine Quintavalle of Comment on Reproductive Ethics, a London-based
pro-life lobby group greeted the new procedure with caution. "I'd be happier
if it was beyond all reasonable doubt that it could not become a human
 life." She added that women must not be exploited to provide eggs.

Full Text at New Scientist
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99996733

Posted by
Robert Karl Stonjek
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