Human cloning researchers are again whining that their important work is being held back by a lack of human eggs. This time, it is researchers from Harvard, as reported a few days ago in the Boston Globe. From the story:
Gee, women are reluctant to risk their lives, health, and/or fecundity for unethical human cloning research. Watch out though: As repeatedly reported here, and alluded to in the story, this is leading to a coming drive to buy eggs from destitute women—the new colonialism. In the meantime, perhaps these researchers should work on projects that everyone can support.A year after Harvard University scientists began trying to create cloned human embryonic stem cells, they have been stymied by their failure to persuade a single woman to donate her eggs for the groundbreaking but controversial research.
The goal of the work is to create embryonic stem cells—all-purpose formative cells that can develop into virtually any cell in the body—that are genetically matched to a patient with a particular disease, such as diabetes. Studying such cells could give scientists new insights into the diseases and possibly lead to treatments.
“It’s an important experiment and we can’t do it,” Kevin Eggan, an assistant professor of molecular and cellular biology at Harvard.
