Scientists Use Pigs Instead of Embryonic Stem Cells to "Avoid the Controversy"

This university newspaper article about experimentation at the University of Missouri's animal research labs in Columbia says much about how little thought people give to researching on animals--and to the fact that there are ethical issues with forcibly taking another conscious, sentient, living being and turning him or her into an unwilling test subject. The article begins,

Stem cell research has been considered by some to be the next area in science that could potentially produce life-saving cures, but controversy over the issue has limited research opportunities.

An MU researcher thinks he has found a way to avoid the controversy altogether.

And this "noncontroversial" solution, of course, is to use pigs and their connective tissue to try to create cells that "think" they're embryonic stem cells.

Induced stem cells have many advantages over cells taken from embryos, Roberts said. For one, they allow researchers to avoid the controversial procedures utilized in the gathering of embryonic stem cells, he said; the method for creating induced stem cells does not involve cloning and does not utilize embryos.

It is "controversial" to use human embryonic stem cells for which no living, sentient being is harmed because of some people's extreme religious views, but completely without controversy to replace experimentation on those cells with experimentation on a live animal?

But Goldstein said there are still risks involved in induced stem cells and that it remains unclear how effective these new stem cells can be.

"The problem is that these reprogrammed cells do have risks of cancer that are different than the kinds of risks for cancer with embryonic stem cells," Goldstein said. "And we are still trying to understand what the relevant issues are."

Goldstein said that though induced stem cells have many desirable properties, it is not yet known how similar they are to stem cells derived from embryos and whether they will turn out to be identical in their ability to be used in therapeutic approaches.

So as is usual with research on animals, essentially we don't have a clue whether there's any point to this research, whether this will yield any usable, relevant, trustworthy results for human purposes. But we'll do it anyway. We'll screw around with these cells, insert them back into the pigs to see if that can possibly be done "without causing any medical problems in the animals," and pretend like all this is going to produce reliable results for humans.

Because embryos have some bizarre semblance of rights. But a thinking, emotional, personality-filled animal, who can be harmed and has an interest in not being harmed, doesn't.

Science Daily also quotes Roberts as saying, "Cures with stem cells are not right around the corner, but the pig could be an excellent model for testing new therapies because it is so similar to humans in many ways."

For what I think about that argument (the ways in which we're similar versus the ways in which we're different and the implications of those similarities and differences), see this related post: "Farm Animals, on the Plate and in the Lab, and Human Hypocrisy." It concludes much the way I'm inclined to conclude this one.

Photo by Jeremy Portje/Associated Press