Stem Cell Research (ANT)

For those following the proposal by the President's Council on Bioethics to develop a procedure that would yield embryonic stem cells without killing any embryos, here is a link to the text of The Production of Pluripotent Stem Cells by Oocyte Assisted Reprogramming - Joint Statement. Here is an excerpt from it:

As described in the President's Council on Bioethics's recent White Paper, altered nuclear transfer (ANT) is a broad conceptual proposal for producing pluripotent stem cells without creating and destroying embryos. In the description set forth below, we outline a research program for a form of ANT that should allow us to produce pluripotent stem cells without creating or destroying human embryos and without producing an entity that undergoes or mimics embryonic development. The method of alteration here proposed (oocyte assisted reprogramming) would immediately produce a cell with positive characteristics and a type of organization that from the beginning would be clearly and unambiguously distinct from, and incompatible with, those of an embryo. Incapable of being or becoming an embryo, the cell produced would itself be a pluripotent cell that could be cultured to establish a pluripotent stem cell line. Significantly, this cell would not be totipotent, as a zygote is.

The joint statement is endorsed by a panel of ethicists, which includes William May, Fr. Nicanor Austriaco, OP, Germain Grisez, William Hurlbut, Fr. Kevin T. FitzGerald, S.J., Fr. Kevin Flannery, S.J., Edward J. Furton, Alfonso Gomez-Lobo, John M. Haas, John F. Kilner, Patrick Lee, Fr. Gonzalo Miranda, L.C, Archbishop John J. Myers, Fr. Tad Pacholczyk, and Fr. Thomas Williams... all who endorse the ANT procedure known as oocyte assisted reprogramming.

There is a page set up at Communio, which has several arguments against the proposed procedures, as well as some rebuttal. PLEASE NOTE! Communio does not endorse the joint statement.