THREE FOR THE PRICE OF ONE

THE RETURN OF SATAN/LUCIFER

HUMAN CLONING

updated 12-27-2002

updated 1-4-2003

NEWS

by Dee Finney

Joe and I have long known that the entertainment industry in movies, as well as dreams, art works, and music are inspired from the spirit world and can reveal truths to us that we would miss if left to us to read a book or listen to a preacher. The following three movies left us feeling rather stunned when we saw them in close proximity to each other within a few weeks time. They tell a story of a truth that left me weak in the knees when I thought about it. It rather seems that these are more clues letting us know that 'the end is near' for mankind.   All in all, science is a good thing and can do wondrous things, but it makes us wonder if it inevitable that though there is a good side to science, the possibility that the 'dark forces' can use a good thing, turning it to the dark side which gives Lucifer/Satan the power to take us all down again. Following the movie reviews, we have presented the news regarding the cloning issue and what is being done scientifically. See what you think:

Movie Reviews from Hollywood Jesus Movie Reviews  and  Apollo Movie Reviews

Comments are edited to prevent identification of the writers.

THE NINTH GATE Directed by Roman Polanski Writing credits John Brownjohn and Roman Polanski Arturo Pérez-Reverte (novel The Club Dumas). Johnny Depp as Dean Corso Frank Langella as Boris Balkan Lena Olin as Liana Telfer Emmanuelle Seigner as The Girl Barbara Jefford as Baroness Kessler Jack Taylor as Victor Fargas José López Rodero as Pablo and Pedro Ceniza James Russo as Bernie Produced by Mark Allan (co-producer), Antonio Cardenal (co-producer), Michel Cheyko (executive), Wolfgang Glattes (executive), Adam Kempton (associate), Iñaki Núñez (co-producer), Roman Polanski, Alain Vannier (co-producer), Suzanne Wiesenfeld Original music by Wojciech Kilar Cinematography by Darius Khondji Film Editing by Hervé de Luze STUDIO SYNOPSIS Dean Corso (Johnny Depp) is highly skilled at his work, a position which requires dexterity, cultural expertise, nerves of steel...and few scruples. Known for locating rare books for wealthy collectors, Corso is hired by eminent book-lover and scholar of demonology, Boris Balkan (Frak Langella). Corso's mission: to find the last two volumes of the legendary manual of satanic invocation "The Nine Gates of the Shadow Kingdom," compare them with Balkan's first volume, supposedly the only one of its kind, and ascertain the authenticity of the series. Corso accepts the challenge. From New York to Toledo, Paris to Cintra, he immerses himself in a labyrinth full of pitfalls and temptations, disturbing encounters, violence and mysterious deaths. Protected by an angelic creature (Emanuelle Seigner) and guided by a force more powerful than himself, the hunter solves one by one the mysteries of the dreaded Book and discovers the real purpose of his mission... SATAN'S BIBLE -THE GOSPEL OF DEATH Balkan has recently acquired a long-coveted, seventeenth-century satanic text called "The Nine Gates of the Kingdom of the Shadows" from a fellow collector, Andrew Telfer, who committed suicide the very next day. Galatians 1:8 Let God's curse fall on anyone, including myself, who preaches any other message than the one we told you about. Even if an angel comes from heaven and preaches any other message, let him be forever cursed. PUBLISHED IN 1666 (AntiChrist's number) The book is illustrated with nine engravings that, when properly interpreted and combined with the original text, are said to summon the Devil and open the entrance to the Underworld. Published in 1666, it was adapted by its Venetian author, Aristide Torchia, from a legendary book written by Satan himself, a transgression for which the Holy Inquisition burned Torchia at the stake. Rev. 13:18 Wisdom is needed to understand this. Let the one who has understanding solve the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man. His number is 666. SATAN'S BIBLE IS AN EVIL TRINITY (3 books form one) Three copies of The Nine Gates survived -all the same except for the engravings. Balkan pretends that something is wrong with his edition; he falsely asserts that only one of the three editions is authentic. He offers Corso a hefty fee to seek out the two remaining volumes in Portugal and France and compare them against his. Corso who believes in cash, not the devil, accepts the job. The satanic trinity. Rev. 20:10 Then the Devil, who betrayed them, was thrown into the lake of fire that burns with sulfur, joining the beast and the false prophet. There they will be tormented day and night forever and ever. SATAN'S PATH IS LITTERED WITH LIES, DEATH AND THE GREAT WHORE Corso's first stop is Toledo, Spain, where the Telfer edition was purchased from the bookbinders/dealers the Ceniza brothers (José López Rodero). The two chatty brothers are a fountain of information about The Nine Gates and the paths it has traveled over three centuries. They tell the skeptical Corso that Aristide Torchia collaborated on the book with Satan himself, and also reveal that Liana Telfer badgered her indifferent husband into buying it for her. And, though Telfer's beautiful French-born widow Liana initially expresses only mild surprise regarding her husband's sale of The Nine Gates, she soon has a change of heart and becomes ferociously determined to regain the book. Rev. 17:3 So the angel took me in spirit into the wilderness. There I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast that had seven heads and ten horns, written all over with blasphemies against God. SATAN'S SIGNATURE Insisting on the book's authenticity, the brothers point out a significant detail in one of its nine engravings: it is signed "LCF," which they claim stands for "Lucifer." Outside the store, Corso has an encounter with some metal scaffolding that corresponds quite eerily to the message of that same engraving. Isaiah 14:12 (KJV) How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! how art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations! ENGRAVINGS ARE PROPHETIC Corso stashes The Nine Gates with his friend Bernie (James Russo), a rare book dealer. The book is safe at Bernie's shop, but Bernie himself is not: when Corso goes to retrieve the volume, he discovers his friend hanging upside down in a pose identical to an engraved illustration in The Nine Gates. The stunned Corso calls Balkan to quit, but the collector exponentially ups the financial ante. At the same time, Corso's curiosity is aroused when he hears flight announcements emanating from his client's undisclosed location. It seems Balkan is on his way to Europe, as well. 1 Cor. 13:2 And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not love, I am nothing. A DEMON AS A BLOND GUARDIAN ANGEL With The Nine Gates in his possession, Corso soon finds himself at the center of strange and violent goings-on. Not only is his apartment ransacked, it appears that he is being shadowed by the striking, mysterious blond Girl he first noticed at a lecture on witches given by Balkan -the sublimnial connection here is that she is an agent of Satan, disgised as an angel of light. Though Corso remains leery of the Girl, he accepts her as a kind of guardian angel. 2 Cor. 11:14 But I am not surprised! Even Satan can disguise himself as an angel of light. THE SECOND BOOK FOUND SURROUNDED BY FIRE AND DEATH The Girl is playfully evasive but seems to know a great deal about The Nine Gates and the people pursuing it. It is the Girl who tells Corso to go to Fargas' estate, where he finds Victor Fargas lying dead in a pond, and his copy of The Nine Gates smoldering in the fireplace, robbed of its engravings. Balkan, who had phoned Corso instructing him to get him Fargas's edition by any means necessary, is far more upset about the missing engravings than their owner's death. 1 Peter 5:8 Be careful! Watch out for attacks from the Devil, your great enemy. He prowls around like a roaring lion, looking for some victim to devour. SATAN IS THE SILVER SERPENT OF OLD Paris is the home of the wheelchair-bound Baroness Kessler, owner of the third and final copy of The Nine Gates. The Baroness, an acknowledged authority on the devil, recounts some of the book's history, noting that a secret society called the Order of the Silver Serpent was formed to perpetuate the teachings of The Nine Gates. Kessler herself quit the society in disgust as decadent millionaires like Liana Telfer took over the leadership. The Baroness harbors no fondness for Boris Balkan, either; learning of Corso's business affiliation with Balkan, she kicks him out of her office before he can study her edition. Balkan continues to monitor his employee by phone. He orders Corso to revisit Baroness Kessler, darkly invoking an "at all costs" philosophy. Corso manages to wangle his way back into the Baroness's office, unwittingly sealing her macabre fate. When Kessler's wheelchair crashes into a raging fire, Corso discovers too late that the engravings from her book have also been stolen. Rev. 12:9 This great dragon—the ancient serpent called the Devil, or Satan, the one deceiving the whole world—was thrown down to the earth with all his angels. SATANISTS ARE JUST A SOCIAL WANNABE CLUB By now, Corso is as obsessed as his client with The Nine Gates, which has been snatched from its hiding place by Liana Telfer and her bodyguard. With the Girl's help, Corso pursues Liana to her family's enormous chateau in the French countryside, where the annual meeting of the Society of the Silver Serpent is about to commence. But Boris Balkan is also on Liana's trail; like Corso, he is hell-bent on getting his hands on those nine original engravings signed by Lucifer. Bursting in on the black-robed assembly of jaded thrill-seekers, Balkan denounces Liana and her ridiculous coven, proclaiming that only he is fit to receive Satan's favors. With the Girl physically restraining him, Corso can only look on helplessly as Balkan strangles Liana to death and strides out of the chateau with The Nine Gates and its invaluable engravings. 2 Tim. 2:26 Then they will come to their senses and escape from the Devil's trap. For they have been held captive by him to do whatever he wants. RECIEVEING SATAN AS LORD AND SAVIOR Corso, however, is not about to let his chance at immortality slip away. Driving, hitching rides and walking, he makes his way to Balkan's ancient stone castle, where the publisher is preparing to deliver his soul to the devil. The two men battle for control of The Nine Gates, but neither one knows that the set of engravings contains one forgery, rendering any attempt to pass through the ninth gate doomed. Ultimately it is the Girl, revealed at last as an agent of the devil, who decides whether the secrets of The Nine Gates will be unlocked - and to whom. Balkin goes up in flames, of course, and Corso has intercourse with his demon girl friend and is permitted to enter into Satan's kingdom. 2 Cor. 4:4 Satan, the god of this evil world, has blinded the minds of those who don't believe, so they are unable to see the glorious light of the Good News that is shining upon them. They don't understand the message we preach about the glory of Christ, who is the exact likeness of God. Closing thought: Satan brought death to several people in the film. He does indeed have the power of death. There is a little known verse in the Bible that tells how Jesus' resurrection from the dead broke the power of Satan: Hebrews 2:14 -Because God's children are human beings—made of flesh and blood—Jesus also became flesh and blood by being born in human form. For only as a human being could he die, and only by dying could he break the power of the Devil, who had the power of death.

Comments: AN ISLAMIC VIEW OF THE NINTH GATE Date: Fri, 04 Aug 2000 From: anonymous Emmanuelle Seigner's character, the female demon of sorts, was actually the "great whore" not the character "Liana Telfer", which is indicated. As if the last few scenes of the movie when she seduces Depp's character (literally) did not give it away, the astute viewer will note that the final page, the real 9th page, that Curso finds in the brother's shop at the end of the movie, the harlot sitting on top of the beast has Emmanuelle Seigner's face on it... . So if she was the harlot riding the beast in the engraving, and keep in mind that each engraving had a direct correspondence to some aspect of the plot, though veiled in symbol and allegory, the question rises to one, well just who was she "riding" a couple of scenes earlier on the grass outside the castle. There was a definite humor to the movie, it had a sort of dark comedy edge to it. The evil of Corso's character is of a profoundly different nature than that of any of the other characters. He is simply just bankrupt and empty. But again the harlot rides the beast in the engraving, in the "real life" of the movie she "rides" Depp's character . Perhaps this is implying that Depp himself is or will be the 'beast' in a sense, in this movie's world ? One effective thing was to keep matters from becoming as blatantly supernatural as possible, most of the movie's events can be explained away by people in the matrix of the movie itself, the viewer has a privileged position and can see openings of the supernatural, such as the blond girl (Emmanuelle Seigner) appearing to fly or float, or to shape shift. It happens so fast and in so ambiguous of a way that the viewer does not quite know what is going on, which is effective. Perhaps it is not Polanski's best work, but it does provide some food for thought. I would be remiss if I did not give an alternative perspective, an Islamic one. Like Christianity, Zorasterianism, and Judaism, Islam is deeply concerned about the problem of evil and the entity know in the bible, and in our scriptures, as "shaitan" the accursed. One of the frequent concerns of Muslims is that, from our perspective, it appears that Christians elevate this being to an almost divine status, making him the "god of the world" or the "god of darkness". To a Muslim this is blasphemy since the foundation of Islam is complete monotheism, not on a superficial level but more profoundly that the ONLY power, and might, and force, that exists is God (Allah in arabic, Eloh in Aramaic, the spoken language of Jesus). In the Islamic view shaitan is a slave of Allah's, free to rebel against Allah but ultimately the devil can not do anything unless God wills to allow it to occur. The Muslim view is closely mirrored in the book of Job (interestingly enough, as a piece of trivia, the hebrew in the book of Job is a particularly archaic form, and contains a lot of Older Arabic words, the names of some of Job's companions are also arabic). The devil apes God, the devil imitates God but truly has no power whatsoever. To Muslims the emphasis placed on the devil in Western cultures is very strange and disturbing, beyond just movies and pop songs, even preachers in some Churches talk over and over again about the devil. This causes the people to fear the devil which in Islam can sometimes be almost equivalent to non belief or infidelity since if a person fears the devil then logically they must believe that the devil has power to affect them somehow, to harm them, when only God has any power and only God, Allah, should be feared. The devil can influence mislead, yes seduce, and misguide, and some of shaitan's agents can produce physical effects in this World, but it is all only through Allah's permission just as I can will to blow out a candle but in reality it was not I inhaling wind and my loungs pushing it out in the direction of the candle that allows the candle to be blown out, rather it is that Allah allowed me to blow out the candle, if he had so willed I could have been prevented from blowing out the candle. So to the devil is not strong, his strength is in illusion, in smoke, veiled reality, suggestion, making the unimportant and trivial seem important. In reality most of humanity is so divorced from God and God's will that the willingly do the "devil's work" with very little prompting whatsoever, without even realizing it. If one trains and conditions a man's mind to do certain things and accept certain ways as good that person will eventually need very little reinforcement. So we see that we live in perhaps the most wretched society on the earth, with murder endemic to our condition, our comfort sustained by the consuming and payment of usury (prohibited by the bible until Calvin allowed it), with legions of the poor in debt selling their bodies and souls for money, in which abortion is used as a matter of convenience, and in which nowadays even 11 year olds whore themselves out, a society of wealth (much like Rome, or indeed Babylon) that maintains comfort but is gotten from the conquest and exploitation of others. In spite of massive structural flaws we still have the illusion that our society is the greatest that has ever been. We are given much but when you peel up the veneer and look beneath the surface you see that underneath the gilding there is rot, and that rot is indeed ancient. In spite of this we fail to see our own conditions. This is due to a wonderful sort of magic and illusion, very strong but inshallah (God willing) not too hard to break. The point is that it is all illusion, and Islam sees this as being most important, that the devil, and its tricks and effects are illusion, and illusions can be broken. So the point is not to FEAR freddy kruger, or Jason, or any of the current architypes in which the devil may pop up in the mind and heart of contemporary man because to fear a thing is to lend it power in one's heart that it does not even have. Shaitan is weak, its just that too often we are often weaker still in our will and resolve. Shaitan to the Muslims is nothing more than Mankind's sworn enemy and a test of man's attachment and devotion to Allah. Shaitan's hatred of man leads him to try to tempt and misguide man but his "powers" are in reality only but illusion. As to the gentleman who was formerly involved in the occult, yes books like the fictional one in the movie do exist, the so-called "Keys of Solomon", the galderbook, the Magus, etc., etc. In general they are probably about 80% gobbly gook and nonsense. If there is anything dangerous in them it is leading a person's fantasies astray away from the path of truth and in inciting his or her greed for power. The occult can seem to produce some effects through the actions of various agents and "powers", but this is mostly just illusion. Where there is serious harm coming from magic and the like one should avoid involvement in such matters and seek refuge from God in prayer. The "powers" that do seem to come from the occult may have a strange way of returning to the person foolhardy enough to seek them... The hidden demonic powers (ifreets) that some occultists either knowingly or unknowingly try to tap are contemptuous of man and desire nothing other than man's ruin. Most of what is passed off as the occult is probably just smoke and mirrors, and God knows best. But there is danger even in this, in that in uttering garbage one may willingly turn his or her back on God. So even what appears to be harmless is not so. In some parts of the world magicians are able to produce wondrous effects, they are able to stab themselves with real swords, the "darb shish" and skewer themselves without harm to themselves, they can lift heavy objects such as stones, a friend of mine actually saw such with his own eyes in Indonesia. Of course God's chosen can on occasion display certain miraculous effects as well through Allah's power. Even things such as being penetrated with an iron blade. The difference being that the miraculous deeds of an infidel or a magicians will misguide one, but God may choose to let one of his elect display a miracle for the benefit of the people, perhaps to demonstrate to a non believer that God's power extends beyond his understanding, for example. The modern world has perhaps the most profoundly disturbing and effective magic ever known to man ! It is called the Cinema, and TV. Through it one can make a person believe whatever one wants, clothe truth in falsehood and falsehood in truth. Make wars seem just, paint the oppressed as oppressors, and the oppressors as the oppressed. It is quite a strange set of instruments, do you not agree :-) In any case I hope that someone finds this perspective thought provoking or useful, the Muslims have a prayer that is simple "God show us truth as truth and grant us to follow it, show us illusion and falsehood as illusion and falsehood and grant us to avoid it" perhaps a prayer such as this might be useful to those caught up in the grand illusions of the cinema, or of everyday life.

THOUGHT PROVOKING Subject: Thought Provoking Date: Mon, 8 May 2000 From: anonymous Johnny Depp continues on in his strange typecast character roles. His character acting is one of the attributes of this film that almost makes it worth watching. Depp who has played in such roles as Edward Scissors Hands, and the wonderful little film, Benny and June among others has come to be known for the odd ball characters he has played and the disturbing off film life he leads. Dean Coroso in The Ninth Gate could possibly be the most complex character that Depp has played and as disturbing as the film is, he plays the part quite well. As a matter of fact each of the actors in the film do a very good job, kudos to the Casting Director. This is a film that many Christians will see and be quite disturbed about. To be honest, so was I, even though I came out of a background that involved the Occult. One of the attributes of this film besides its acting was the research that was done. The Ninth Gate portrays the Occult in a real light and with accurate portrayals. It also speaks at how easily Satan uses each individuals weaknesses to gradually take over their souls which will lead to ultimate death. This is also portrayed extremely well throughout the film as Coroso gets drawn further and further into the trappings of Satan. Numerous times through the film, we the viewer are saying to ourselves, "quit", "get out leave this stuff behind." Coroso has a love for money and curiosity however that continues to draw him further and further into danger and away from any real life. While the film is made with a great deal of artistic integrity it is disturbing that there are no positive characters portrayed in the movie. The only character that could be perceived as a positive influence is later discovered to be nothing more than a demon drawing Coroso further into his ultimate spiritual death. Not including a positive character role leaves the viewer with little or no hope at the conclusion of the film. It is almost as if Coroso went down the only path he had available when in reality we have a choice. I would hope that the viewer, would realize that there is a ultimate hope, Jesus Christ. While the aspects of the film involving the Occult are fairly accurate they are only partially accurate. We as true followers of Christ know that victory over Satan was won at the resurrection. The growth of the Christian Church, Christianity and the miraculous life changing events of the lives of those who once followed Satan are evidence to this. Just think about the influence of Jesus the next time you put a date on a check or any other item. Many Christians or individuals watching this film may look at the Occult as a primary method of drawing persons to Satan, I would caution to be careful of this view. It is not Satan's goal to have everyone worshipping him out right. It is only his goal to draw them away from Christ, it is then that he has succeeded. The Ninth Gate should not be seen as the way Satan draws people to him. It should be seen as a way that some may be drawn to him as well as the ultimate death and deception that he brings. I would certainly caution many from viewing the film and will openly admit that the film is at times boring and difficult to understand. It does have a few twists and plots but frankly I did not leave the film with any positive thoughts or reflections. While this film deals with the dark side of our faith I would encourage viewers who are not Christians to also watch the film Tribulation with Gary Busy, a good ol Tulsa boy by the way, Margot Kidder and Howie Mandel. This film deals with the same types of battles but personally I like the ending much more in the film Tribulation. I will say that both conclusions in both films are true and accurate in their own way. It is up to the viewers as to which path they choose.

SATANIST EXPLANS NINTH GATE Subject: The Satanic View of Ninth_Gate Date: Tue, 28 Mar 2000 From: anonymous Satan or Lucifer (the Greek God of Light) is the Light Depp founds at the conclusion. It is he who was truly chosen to ascend to Godhood. Unlike Balkin, who was in error - Corso (guided by the grace of Satan) truly found Equality w/ God (the aim of a true Satanist). If you shudder and cringe at my "blashphemy" then it is no concern of mine. Satan was condemned to the Abyss of Ignorance (hence the significance of Black in satanic symbolism) his light hidden in the feeble humility of Xtian ignorance. Try to pray it away, but truth and reason, not faith. is the path of progress. Remain in the Flock, but I will not obey the steering of the Sheperds crook. The Children of Lucifer think for themselves.

A SIGN OF THE END Subject: Ninth Gate Date: Sat, 1 Apr 2000 From: anonymous I didn't exactly realize that Johnny Depp's character had become obsessed right away. I saw him as being more of a benevolent protagonist who was looking out for good's sake by retrieving the inscriptions. Eventually I realized his obsession. I feel that the statement that this movie is making is that we are now entering the final chapter or book; revelation. It makes satan out to be benevolent, and makes Depp's journey into Hell a glorious one, implying that the world will live out revelations prophecy.

DEPP'S CHARACTER IS PORTRAYAL OF BEING LUKEWARM FOR GOD Subject: -Lukewarm. Date: Tue, 14 Mar 2000 From: anonymous "I know all things you do, that you are neither hot nor cold. I wish you were one or the other! But since you are like lukewarm water, I will spit you out of my mouth!" Revelation 3:15,16 Johnny Depp's portrayal of "lukewarm" is a real warning to those that sit on the fence. You must choose whom you shall serve, be it dark or light. Because of his status as "free agent" in the spiritual realm, he was easily seduced into the dark side. Not much different than the way it actually happens outside of the theater. Reach for the Light! As for the movie, I wouldn't have missed much by not seeing it. I left the theater wanting to have a drink. There was so much consumption of alcohol and my being an alcoholic in recovery received some sort of mental suggestion because of it. There should be a warning "Movie may cause a desire to get drunk!" I think I'll go see "MY DOG SKIP" next.

NOT TYPICAL HOLLYWOOD Subject: Ninth Gate summary Date: Sun, 12 Mar 2000 From: anonymous I recently saw The ninth Gate and it is not a typical Hollywood movie by any stretch of the imagination. I think one will finally realise that no one chooses the Devil, he chooses you and watch out if he does. Certain things upon reflection made me realise that the female bodyguard was not only a demon but was also the one that chose Depp. she also marked him with her blood a form of baptism. The devil is man's worst enemy but we are completely infatuated with him. It is this infatuation that caused almost everyone in the movie to die. but who killed them? with the exception of olin everyone else died by strange circumstances. Of course everyone thinks its Balkan (Langella) but i believe it was the girl, leading depp to the ultimate prize.

Ninth Gate, The Apollo Score: Users' Rating: 61 (114 votes) The Ninth Gate begins ominously – a comfortable-looking study takes on a distinctly uncomfortable atmosphere as middle-aged man hangs himself with a rope that dangles from the chandelier. Then we see Dean Corso (Johnny Depp) at work. He’s a rare books expert, who doesn’t hesitate to rip people off to make a buck. As the wealthy book collector Boris Balkan (Frank Langella) observes, Corso is “the lean, hungry, restless type, who would stab friends in the back.” Corso readily admits that he’d do just about anything to make a buck, and he proves it when he takes on a job for Balkan, who collects books about the devil. Balkan has just picked up a particular prize – from the fellow whose suicide opens the film. The book is called The Nine Gates of the Kingdom of Shadows – purportedly inspired by the devil’s own writings. Legend has it that the book can be used to get the devil to drop in and visit Earth. Balkan wants Corso to travel to Europe and inspect the other two remaining 300-year-old copies of the book to determine which, if any, are authentic. He’s paid a million bucks for this book, but isn’t convinced that it’s the real thing. Corso grabs the book and heads off to make travel plans. He soon realizes that he’s being followed, and by more than one person. As he starts to piece together the truth of the Nine Gates, Corso is befriended by a mysterious young woman who regularly appears on the scene when he’s in trouble. She’s got remarkable powers, which Corso doesn’t seem to notice. Corso eventually figures out the truth about the book, and of course, he’s still competing with others for its possession. Although Corso supposedly cares about nothing other than his paycheque, he inexplicably becomes obsessed with the devil conjuring. The Ninth Gate just doesn’t add up. Despite incessant talk about the devil, evidence of the supernatural is largely absent until the film’s conclusion. Until then, we get a Sam Spade-like Corso stumbling about, and we’re left to notice the film’s many weaknesses. These include continuity problems – for example, in France, it seems that dawn comes about an hour after dusk. There are also plenty of implausible elements to the story. We’re supposed to believe that a rare book expert would carry a million dollar volume around in his handbag, handling it with his grimy hands, chain-smoking and drinking booze as he leafs through it – treating the thing like an Archie comic book. Almost as unlikely is Corso’s willingness to carry on with the job even after he learns that it’s a dangerous situation and he’s consistently not getting answers from those around him, including Balkan and the mysterious young woman. The Ninth Gate is not very spooky, and while the mystery is mildly interesting, it’s just too easy to be distracted by gaps in continuity and character motivation. As a result, the movie leaves us unspooked, unthrilled and unsatisfied. Brian Webster

NEWS ON CLONING AND STEM CELL RESEARCH

World's Second Cloned Baby Is Born, Raelians Say

Updated 11:40 AM ET January 4, 2003

By Eric Onstad

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - The world's second cloned baby was born on Friday to a Dutch woman, the head of the Raelian sect in the Netherlands said on Saturday.

"A baby girl was born yesterday evening. The baby is healthy and the mother, too," Bart Overvliet told Reuters by telephone.

The woman, a lesbian, is in the Netherlands with her partner, but the birth might have taken place in another country, he added.

He said the child was created by Clonaid, the same cloning firm that claimed last month to have organized the birth of the first human clone, named "Eve," to a 31-year-old U.S. woman.

Clonaid's initial claim sparked widespread skepticism among scientific experts, and the company has yet to provide DNA samples or other evidence to support its assertions about last month's birth.

Clonaid was established by the Raelian movement, a religious group that believes aliens landed on Earth 25,000 years ago and started the human race through cloning.

The founder of the movement, Claude Vorilhon, who calls himself "Rael," told CNN on Friday that Clonaid and the Raelian movement were "very different" and he could not personally vouch for the accuracy of Clonaid's claims.

Overvliet said the Dutch woman involved in the latest birth plans to raise the baby with her partner and is not a member of the Raelian movement.

"It's a lesbian couple, but she is not a member of the religion, she got in contact with Clonaid by herself," said Overvliet, a 45-year-old Amsterdam salesman.

Cloning a human is forbidden in the Netherlands, but nothing in the law forbids the birth of a cloned baby, a spokesman for the Dutch Health Ministry said.

FEARS OF DEFECTS

Clonaid, which says it has a list of 2,000 people willing to pay $200,000 to have themselves or a loved one cloned, announced its initial breakthrough on December 27 and said four more cloned babies would be born by the end of January.

Cattle, mice, sheep and other animals have been cloned with mixed success. Some of these animals have shown defects later in life and critics of human cloning say it is unethical to subject a baby to these dangers.

The Raelians dismiss fears about cloned babies suffering health problems as propaganda aimed at impeding the progress of cloning.

"These scientists don't want to let cloning progress, they want to stop it because they are afraid of human cloning. They say on purpose that it has a lot of faults and genetic defects," Overvliet said.

He said Clonaid's work was a logical progression of in-vitro fertilization (IVF), the technique used to help infertile couples have children.

"Human cloning is more of an extension of IVF, cloning of humans is actually less complicated than of animals," he said.

The Raelian Movement, which claims 55,000 followers around the world, has around 30 members in the Netherlands, but none of them so far have expressed interest in being cloned, he said.

Aliens who created humans and then departed for their own planet have been monitoring mankind's progress, Overvliet said.

"They now think we are far enough along in science so we can understand how we were created," he said.

On Thursday, Clonaid chief executive Brigitte Boisselier said in television interviews that DNA tests on the baby born to an American woman had been put off because the parents were anxious about keeping their identity secret.

PARIS (Jan. 3, 2003) - The parents of a newborn claimed to be the world's first cloned human are balking on whether to allow DNA testing on the child, said the head of the cloning company that says it brought the baby to life.

Many experts have expressed skepticism about the company's claim that the baby was a clone, saying they needed to see a DNA matching as proof.

But ``the parents told me that they needed 48 hours to decide yes or no - if they would do it,'' Brigitte Boisselier told French television station France-2 in an interview Thursday.

Boisselier is chief executive of Clonaid, which is linked to a religious sect that believes space aliens created life on Earth. She is also a member of the sect, called the Raelians.

Clonaid has refused to identify the parents or offer any proof that the child - nicknamed ``Eve'' - is a clone. But the company had promised DNA test results to confirm their claim by around the end of this week.

Attempts by The Associated Press to reach Michael Guillen, the freelance journalist who was arranging the DNA testing, were not successful Thursday. A spokeswoman for Clonaid said she was not familiar with Boisselier's broadcast remarks and was unable to comment Thursday.

Boisselier told France-2 the parents were reconsidering whether to submit to testing because of legal action taken in Florida that could result in the cloned child being taken away from them.

Earlier this week, a court in Florida was asked to turn the baby over to state care if it found the baby's health was in danger. Though Clonaid has kept secret the baby's whereabouts, the company held its news conference to announce the clone's birth in Florida, which could give the court jurisdiction, argued lawyer Bernard F. Siegel.

``That is a lot of turbulence for the parents (who) have gone home and just want to have some peace and spend time with their children,'' said Boisselier.

Meanwhile, a second cloned baby was expected to be born somewhere in Europe before Sunday, Boisselier said. She declined to name the country.

Boisselier had previously said that three additional couples were expected to give birth to Clonaid-created clones by early February.

Clonaid, which declines to reveal where its facilities are, was founded in the Bahamas in 1997 by the man who founded the Raelian religious sect. The man, Rael, says he learned about the origin of life on Earth from a visitor from outer space. He says he views cloning as a step toward reaching eternal life.

Clonaid retains philosophical but not economic ties to the Raelians, the company says.

01/02/03 21:26 EST

Copyright 2002 The Associated Press.

HOLLYWOOD, Fla. (Dec. 27, 2002) - A chemist connected to a group that believes life on Earth was created by extraterrestrials claimed Friday to have produced the world's first human clone, a baby girl named Eve.

The 7-pound baby was born Thursday, said Brigitte Boisselier, head of Clonaid, the company that claimed success in the project. She wouldn't say where the baby was born.

Even before the announcement, other scientists expressed doubt that her group could clone a human.

Boisselier, who spoke at a news conference, said the baby is a clone of the 30-year-old American woman who donated the DNA for the cloning process, had the resulting embryo implanted and then gestated the baby. If confirmed, that would make the child an exact genetic duplicate of her mother.

''It is very important to remember that we are talking about a baby,'' she said. ''The baby is very healthy. She is fine, she doing fine. The parents are happy. I hope that you remember them when you talk about this baby, not like a monster, like some results of something that is disugusting.''

Boisselier did not immediately present DNA evidence showing a genetic match between mother and daughter, however. That omission leaves her claim scientifically unsupported.

The group expects four more babies to be born in the next few weeks, another from North America, one from Europe and two from Asia.

She said the baby will go home in three days, and an independent expert will take DNA samples from the baby to prove she had been cloned. Those test results are expected within a week after the testing.

Most scientists, already skeptical of Boisellier's ability to produce a human clone, will probably demand to know exactly how the DNA testing was done before they believe the announcement.

Clonaid was founded in the Bahamas in 1997 by Claude Vorilhon, a former French journalist and leader of a group called the Raelians. Vorilhon and his followers claim aliens visiting him in the 1970s revealed they had created all life on Earth through genetic engineering.

Cloning produces a new individual using only one person's DNA. The process is technically difficult but conceptually simple. Scientists remove the genetic material from an unfertilized egg, then introduce new DNA from a cell of the animal to be cloned. Under the proper conditions, the egg begins dividing into new cells according to the instructions in the introduced DNA.

Boisselier, who claims two chemistry degrees and previously was marketing director for a chemical company in France, identifies herself as a Raelian ''bishop'' and said Clonaid retains philosophical but not economic links to the Raelians. She is not a specialist in reproductive medicine.

Human cloning for reproductive purposes is banned in several countries. There is no specific law against it in the United States, but the Food and Drug Administration contends it must approve any human experiments in this country. Boisselier would not say where Clonaid has been carrying out its experiments. Bush administration officials said in Washington on Thursday they were aware of rumors of an announcement but had no plans to comment on the matter until after the details were known.

In Rome, fertility doctor Severino Antinori, who said weeks ago he had engineered a cloned baby boy who would be born in January, dismissed Clonaid's claims and said the group has no scientific credibility.

The news ''makes me laugh and at the same time disconcerts me, because it creates confusion between those who make serious scientific research'' and those who don't, Antinori said.

''We keep up our scientific work, without making announcements,'' he added. ''I don't take part in this ... race.''

So far scientists have succeeded in cloning sheep, mice, cows, pigs, goats and cats. Last year, scientists in Massachusetts produced cloned human embryos with the intention of using them as a source of stem cells, but the cloned embryos never grew bigger than six cells.

Many scientists oppose cloning to produce humans, saying it's too risky because of abnormalities seen in cloned animals.

AP-NY-12-27-02 0942EST

Copyright 2002 The Associated Press.

Cloned monkey embryos are a "gallery of horrors"

A high percentage of cloned monkey embryos that look healthy are really a "gallery of horrors" deep within, says a researcher at Advanced Cell Technology, the company that last month published the first paper on cloned human embryos.

December 12 , 2001

Sylvia Pagan Westphal, Boston

This could mean that there is something unique about primate eggs that will make cloning monkeys or people far more difficult than cloning other animals. At the very least, the experiments show that there's a lot to learn before primates can be cloned.

Tanja Dominko, who presented the results last week at a conference in Washington DC, did the work before joining ACT, while she was working for the reproductive biologist Gerald Schatten at the Oregon Regional Primate Research Center in Beaverton.

Several groups have been trying for years to clone monkeys, but while the embryos look normal, no one has ever got them to develop further.

Uneven scatter

To try and figure out what was going wrong, Dominko looked at 265 cloned rhesus macaque embryos created by nuclear transfer - plucking out an egg's nucleus and then adding a nucleus from a donor cell. She followed development of the embryos through several divisions, from the two-cell stage until the 32-cell stage.

Though they appeared superficially healthy, the cells in the vast majority of Dominko's embryos did not form distinct nuclei containing all the chromosomes. Instead, the chromosomes were scattered unevenly throughout the cells.

"The surprising thing is that these cells keep dividing," says Dominko. Some embryos developed to the stage known as a blastocyst, but by day six or seven they had started to look abnormal.

The cloned human embryos created by ACT didn't even get this far. Only one reached the six-cell stage.

Trauma of removal

Dominko says that the trauma of removing the nucleus from the egg might be what triggers the defects. Eggs whose nuclei are removed and then put back inside show the same abnormalities, as well as evidence of programmed cell suicide. "This is not to say that normal embryos can't be made, but not on a regular basis," says Dominko.

Ian Wilmut, who cloned Dolly the sheep, told the conference that Dominko's results were not surprising in the light of experience of nuclear transfer in mice and cows. Even in these animals the success rates are not high, so the phenomena observed by Dominko probably occur in them as well - it's just that everyone focuses on the few successes, he says.

Even so, researchers hoping to publish work on nuclear transfer in humans may now have to come up with better evidence that embryos are healthy. William Haseltine, editor of the journal in which ACT published details of its cloned human embryos, now agrees that pictures alone aren't enough.

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Date: 8/1/2001

US bans human cloning

WASHINGTON - The US House of Representatives has approved a sweeping ban on human cloning, a prohibition that would make it a federal crime to clone people to produce children or to create embryos for medical research.

Saying that human cloning posed too many safety risks and ethical dilemmas, lawmakers in the Republican-controlled House passed the legislation by a 265-162 vote.

The House defeated 249-178 an alternative backed by medical groups and the biotechnology industry that would have permitted human cloning for a type of stem cell research.

The bill, favoured by President Bush, now awaits action by the Democratic-led Senate.

"The moral issues posed by human cloning are profound and have implications for today and for future generations," Bush said in a statement issued by the White House.

"Today's overwhelming and bipartisan House action to prohibit human cloning is a strong ethical statement, which I commend. We must advance the promise and cause of science but do so in a way that honours and respects life," Bush said.

Two groups of scientists have announced plans to clone people to provide children for infertile couples by using the same techniques that gave the world Dolly the sheep in 1997. Lawmakers agreed that human cloning for reproduction should be illegal but battled over whether to permit researchers to make cloned embryos to get their stem cells, the versatile cells at the centre of a controversy over federal funding.

Scientists believe embryonic stem cells, early master cells that can be coaxed into becoming almost any other cell type, can potentially be used to treat serious diseases.

- REUTERS

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Wednesday August 1, 2001

Archerd: Hollywood campaigns for stem cell funding

By Army Archerd, Daily Variety Senior Columnist

HOLLYWOOD (Variety) - Not since the Clinton-Gore campaign days has Hollywood been galvanized to support -- not a candidate -- but an issue. The issue: to get President George W. to authorize funds for embryonic stem cell research.

As already noted, congressional support urging government funding has crossed party lines. One of those, a right-to-lifer, who favors the embryo stem cell research funding is Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah).

The Zuckers and fellow Hollywood supporters of this issue have hired a lobbyist in D.C. to fight the fight. The premiere of ``Rat Race'' Monday in Century City raised $420,000, which goes directly to the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation's Stem Cell Advocacy Campaign. Paramount underwrote the premiere and the lavish party -- to the tune of $280,000.

``(Paramount boss) Sherry Lansing is fantastic,'' both the Zuckers and Lucy Fisher enthused to me. Janet Zucker added, ``She is a galvanizing force. She has written to President Bush, she is organizing committees and a 'summit conference' in the industry.''

Further, Wick's father, Charles Wick, former head of the USIA under President Reagan, has written to his friends in D.C., including Tommy Thompson, head of the Human Health Services. And Nancy Reagan is also an advocate of the research, having written to President Bush, hopeful her husband's legacy will leave no further suffering for any one afflicted by Alzheimer's, one of the diseases targeted via the research.

Marvin Davis, whose daughter has diabetes, had a conversation with President Bush about the research funding. The Davises are no strangers to the Bush family -- George pere once worked in the Texas oil fields with/for Davis.

Those attending -- and buying party tables at the Las Vegas-style post-premiere screening -- included ``High Rollers,'' ``Big Cheeses'' and ``Fat Cats'' and crossed all political lines. GOP fundraiser Ann Dunsmore got 'em to support the evening's program.

Reuters/Variety REUTERS

Copyright © 2001 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.

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Wednesday August 1, 2001

Israelis Turn Human Stem Cells Into Heart Cells

By Will Dunham

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Scientists said on Wednesday that they had grown heart cells from human embryonic stem cells, an important step toward harnessing the transformational qualities of these primitive master cells to regenerate tissue damaged by cardiac disease.

Israeli researchers said they had created early-stage human heart cells in petri dishes using stem cells derived from an embryo just days after fertilization. They said they envisioned using these cells, after refining the process, to reverse damage inflicted on cardiac muscle by heart attacks.

``It was shown for the first time definitely that the cells that are being created are cardiac cells that show electrical, biochemical and morphological characteristics of early or young cardiac muscle,'' Dr. Joseph Itskovitz-Eldor of the Faculty of Medicine and Rambam Medical Center in Haifa said in a telephone interview.

The publication of the study in the Journal of Clinical Investigation comes as President Bush (news - web sites) considers whether to permit federal funding of research involving human embryonic stem cells.

BODY'S BUILDING BLOCKS

Embryonic stem cells can be viewed as the body's early building blocks. Their wondrous ability to transform themselves into virtually every cell type enables the embryo to grow from a round ball of a few cells into a fully formed body.

Researchers are hoping to use stem cells to create therapies for a variety of illnesses, including heart disease, one of the leading causes of death worldwide.

``The idea is that if you now have a source for heart cells, in the future you can transplant them into a nonfunctioning area (of the heart) and possibly replace the cells,'' said Dr. Lior Gepstein of the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology Faculty of Medicine, an author of the study, along with colleagues including Itskovitz-Eldor and Dr. Izhak Kehat.

``When we have a heart attack, the area of the heart that doesn't receive blood supply actually dies and is replaced by scar tissue,'' Gepstein added. ``Because the adult heart doesn't have any regeneration capacity, this area in the heart won't contract anymore (to pump blood). So this can lead to deterioration in heart function and eventually to heart failure.''

The goal would be to inject the early-stage human heart cells created in the laboratory using stem cells into the damaged area and create healthy cardiac muscle that restores heart function, the researchers said.

Other researchers recently reported they had used mouse stem cells to create mouse cardiac cells.

STANDARD TECHNIQUE USED

The Israeli researchers used human embryonic stem cells to grow an undifferentiated mass of cells using a standard laboratory technique. They then sought to steer the multiplying cells toward transformation into cardiac cells by optimizing the conditions in the petri dish.

As the cells divided, the cells aggregated into microscopic clumps. In about 10 percent of these, the researchers detected small groups of cells that were contracting spontaneously just like cardiomyocytes -- the cells that develop into heart tissue in an embryo.

The researchers then put these groups of cells through a battery of tests to confirm that they were cardiomyocytes and thus destined to differentiate into mature heart cells.

The researchers said the cells checked out in every way, including the genes they activated, the proteins they possessed, their electrical activity as they regularly contracted like a beating heart, their use of calcium and their response to hormones such as adrenaline.

``These are heart cells,'' Gepstein said.

He said the researchers still needed to devise a way to increase the number of these cells produced in the laboratory. Noting that 90 percent of the cells created in the experiment were not heart cells, he said the researchers were exploring different combinations of chemicals to induce the stem cells to produce pure cultures of cardiomyocytes.

The researchers said several million of these cells would be needed for a theoretical transplantation.

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OTHER ARTICLES ON CLONING AND STEM CELL RESEARCH

Tuesday July 31, 2001

Research Points to Stem Cell Therapy for Diabetes

By Will Dunham

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Israeli researchers said on Tuesday they had succeeded in coaxing human embryonic stem cells into producing the hormone insulin, in a key step toward creating a revolutionary treatment for type 1 (juvenile) diabetes.

Stem cells that were derived from a human embryo days after fertilization were transformed with chemical prodding into an abundant mass of cells possessing important qualities of the cells of the pancreas that secrete insulin, the researchers said. Those cells are called islet cells, or beta cells.

The findings represent a major stride toward using embryonic stem cells to treat type 1 diabetes. The appearance of the study in the journal Diabetes, published by the American Diabetes Association, comes as President George W. Bush considers whether to allow federal funding for research involving human embryonic stem cells.

Embryonic stem cells are known for their ability to transform into virtually every cell type. Some scientists hope to harness this quality to treat type 1 diabetes by transplanting these cells into the bodies of patients in order to create healthy islet cells to secrete and regulate insulin.

The findings were ``a necessary prerequisite for therapeutic strategies'' for type 1 diabetes using stem cells, the researchers write. The investigators are with the Bruce Rappaport Faculty of Medicine, Technion, Israel Institute of Technology and the Rambam Medical Center in Haifa, and were led by Suheir Assady.

Dr. Christopher Saudek, president of the American Diabetes Association and a professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, called the findings ''exciting.''

``Up until this point, people have talked about the possibility that human stem cells could be made to produce insulin. But here it is being demonstrated,'' Saudek said in a telephone interview.

In type 1 diabetes, the pancreas fails to pump out insulin due to an immune system attack on its insulin-producing cells. Insulin is a hormone necessary for cells to be able to use blood sugar (glucose), the basic fuel for body cells.

More than 1 million Americans have type 1 diabetes, which strikes children and some adults suddenly, making them dependent on daily insulin injections to stay alive. People with the disease face complications such as heart disease, stroke, amputation, blindness and kidney failure.

Pancreas transplantation is one strategy for combating the disease, but there is an insufficient supply of organs. Investigators are exploring alternative sources of the insulin-producing islet cells.

The Israeli research team said the cells they created in the laboratory possessed many characteristics of islet cells, including insulin production and release. But they acknowledged they had not shown that the cells could regulate insulin secretion based upon the body's glucose levels.

``Although we have not demonstrated glucose responsiveness, we cannot conclude that the cells are glucose unresponsive,'' the researchers write.

``You can say they have demonstrated that you can turn on the gas. What they haven't demonstrated is that you have brakes and accelerators to control it. And that's what you would need in a final use,'' Saudek said.

Because the federal government has never funded research involving human embryonic stem cells, the study could not have been conducted in the United States with grant money from the National Institutes of Health (news - web sites), the major supporter of medical research.

``This is definitely the kind of research that would be accelerated enormously if federal funds could be made available for it,'' Saudek said.

SOURCE: Diabetes 2001;50:1691-1697.

Copyright © 2001 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved.

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Thursday July 26, 2001

Press Release

SOURCE: Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America

Leading Orthodox Jewish Groups Write Bush Encouraging Support For Stem Cell Research With Guidelines

NEW YORK, July 26 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America and the Rabbinical Council of America wrote to President George W. Bush to express the support of these leading Orthodox Jewish organizations for federal funding for stem cell research so long as such research is conducted under careful guidelines.

The position expressed by the statement was developed in close consultation with leading rabbinic authorities and Orthodox Jewish scientists. The UOJCA represents nearly 1,000 Orthodox Jewish synagogues and the RCA has a membership of over 1,000 Orthodox rabbis.

A complete copy of the letter can be viewed on the Union's website -- http:// www.ou.org, portions are excerpted here:

``[T]he decision you face is one with complex moral dimensions. On the one hand scientific research indicates that there is great life-saving potential in embryonic stem cell research, potential that warrants federal support. On the other hand, we must be vigilant against any erosion of the value that American society affords to human life, including potential human life ... Our Torah tradition places great value upon human life; we are taught in the opening chapters of Genesis that each human was created in G-d's very image. The potential to save and heal human lives is an integral part of valuing human life from the traditional Jewish perspective ... Thus, if embryonic stem cell research can help us preserve and heal humans with greater success, and does not require or encourage the destruction of life in the process, it ought to be pursued.''

``Nevertheless, we must emphasize, that research on embryonic stem cells must be conducted under careful guidelines. Critical elements of these guidelines, from our perspective, relate to where the embryonic stem cells to be researched upon are taken from. We believe it is entirely appropriate to utilize for this research existing embryos, such as those created for IVF purposes that would otherwise be discarded but for this research. We think it another matter to create embryos ab initio for the sole purpose of conducting this form of research ... Other elements of an ethically sensitive oversight regime would include a rigorous informed consent process from future IVF procedure participants, a fully funded and empowered oversight body comprised of scientists and bio-ethicists, and periodic reviews by relevant Executive branch agencies and congressional committees.''

SOURCE: Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America

Copyright © 2001 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved.

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WASHINGTON, July 26, 2001

/U.S. Newswire/ -- In light of the Vatican's statement July 25 that embryonic stem cell research, "even...to help others," is "absolutely unacceptable," a well-known Catholic theologian and an Episcopal priest, both affiliated with the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice have expressed other views on the moral issues involved.

According to theologian Mary E. Hunt, Ph.D., and Episcopal priest The Reverend Dr. Katherine Hancock Ragsdale, prohibiting such research -- or federal funding for research -- elevates respect for embryos slated for destruction above respect for those who could benefit from research findings.

"As people of faith we are called to be partners with God in healing and in the alleviation of human pain and suffering," they said. "Our respect for life includes respect for the embryo and fetus. Therefore, decisions about research should be made responsibly, under existing federal guidelines."

Pope John Paul II's condemnation of using embryonic stem cells for research represents the view of those who see fetal and embryonic life as morally equivalent to human persons. Most Americans do not. The question before President Bush is research on excess embryos created for in vitro fertilization and slated for destruction.

The enormous life-saving potential of embryonic stem cells cannot currently be matched by adult stem cells, according to researchers. Narrow theological arguments disregard a basic religious principle, that of the common good of all humanity. "The Pope is only one religious voice in the debate," they said. "Many other faiths and individuals have strongly held beliefs in support of this research. We hope President Bush will listen to all sides of the issue."

The Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, founded in 1973, is the national alliance of pro-choice religious organizations.

Copyright © 2001 Yahoo! Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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Wednesday July 25, 2001

Bone Marrow Cells Can Develop Into Kidney Tissue

By Richard Woodman

LONDON (Reuters Health) - Scientists said on Wednesday they had discovered that adult stem cells found in the bone marrow are capable of turning into kidney cells after a bone marrow transplant. The discovery, made in mice and human transplant patients, suggests that bone marrow-derived cells could be used to treat kidney failure, although more research is needed to determine if this is true.

The stem cells found in bone marrow are immature cells that can give rise to all cells of the blood and immune system. Past studies have shown they also have the potential to transform into liver cells and researchers in London said their work proves for the first time that these remarkably plastic cells can also transform themselves into kidney cells.

They hope that their findings, published in the online version of the Journal of Pathology, could one day enable doctors to restore kidney function to patients suffering from kidney failure or perform gene therapy for kidney diseases.

The team, from the Imperial Cancer Research Fund and Imperial College School of Medicine in London, examined kidneys of female mice that had received a male bone marrow transplant and kidney biopsies from eight male patients who had received kidney transplants from female donors.

By using a special DNA probe to detect the sex chromosomes, the researchers showed that circulating stem cells frequently engraft into the kidney and differentiate into kidney tissue cells.

They said bone marrow-derived cells were found in both normal mouse kidneys and in the human transplanted kidneys.

``These data indicate that bone marrow cells contribute to both normal turnover or renal epithelia and regeneration after damage, and it is suggested that this could be exploited therapeutically,'' they state in the journal.

Professor Malcolm Alison, a research pathologist working at both Imperial Cancer and Imperial College School of Medicine, said in a news release, ``Our laboratory experiments showed the presence of cells in the kidney that came from bone marrow stem cells, but we then went a step further and proved it can actually happen in the human body.''

According to Dr. Richard Poulsom, lead author and research pathologist at Imperial Cancer Research Fund, ``The potential for advances in medicine from using adult stem cells is enormous. They can give rise to many different types of cells so any organ may one day be repaired. Using adult stem cells also avoids the ethical dilemmas associated with embryonic stem cell work.''

Stem cells can also be collected from embryos and are thought to have great potential in treating adult illnesses, but are currently at the center of a raging debate over the ethics of using such tissue. While adult stem cells are promising as well, many researchers believe that embryonic cells can form an even greater variety of adult body tissues.

Sir Paul Nurse, Director General of Imperial Cancer Research Fund, said, ``This is a great achievement and shows real progress by the team which, almost exactly a year ago, discovered that bone marrow stem cells are capable of turning into liver cells and repopulating damaged liver.''

SOURCE: Journal of Pathology 2001;193:1-7.

Copyright © 2001 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.

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Wednesday July 25, 2991

Vatican Says No Exceptions to Pope's Stem-Cell Stand

Bush Returns to White House - (WKMG, Orlando)

By Philip Pullella

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - The Vatican (news - web sites), rejecting suggestions that Pope John Paul (news - web sites)'s stem-cell warning to George W. Bush left the president room to maneuver, said on Wednesday he condemned all research using embryos without exception.

In a public address to Bush at their meeting on Monday, the Pope referred to stem-cell research, a topic at the forefront of the conservative president's mind as he deliberates whether to permit federal funding for such work.

Stem cells can be taken from embryos and are capable of developing into cell types that make up the body. Scientists believe they can lead to cures for diseases such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, diabetes, spinal cord injuries and cancer.

The Pope defined as evil ``proposals for the creation for research purposes of human embryos, destined to destruction in the process.''

While the Pope clearly referred to embryos created to be destroyed by research he did not specifically refer to those created for use in in-vitro-fertilization (IVF) and which are left over after a woman becomes pregnant.

The Washington Post on Tuesday cited U.S. administration officials as saying the Pope's words were ``sufficiently ambiguous'' to provide comfort for Bush if he approves funding for stem-cell research with extra embryos in fertility clinics.

The paper said this was a compromise the conservative president was considering, adding that the U.S. administration believed the Pope's words could have been much broader if he wanted to include IVF embryos.

The Vatican, anxious to cut short any suggestion of different rights for different embryos, weighed in firmly with an official statement by its chief spokesman.

Joaquin Navarro-Valls quoted from the Pope's 1995 encyclical Evangelium Vitae (The Gospel of Life), which specifically condemned the destruction of embryos produced for IVF.

``This moral condemnation also regards procedures that exploit living human embryos and fetuses -- sometimes specifically 'produced' for this purpose by in-vitro fertilization -- either to be used as 'biological material' or as providers of organs or tissue for transplants in the treatment of certain diseases,'' the statement said.

``The killing of innocent human creatures, even if carried out to help others, constitutes an absolutely unacceptable act,'' it said.

STEM CELLS ARE HOPE FOR FUTURE

Stem cells can give sick people new cells that have been instructed to act as replacements for damaged tissue.

They can also be taken from organs and tissues in a body -- these are known as adult stem cells -- but scientists say that research on embryonic cells is more promising.

The Church, which teaches that life begins at the moment of conception, does not oppose adult stem-cell research.

After his meeting with the Pope, Bush said he would keep the Pontiff's stand in mind when making his decision on whether federal money should be used for embryonic stem-cell research.

Bush, who is opposed to abortion except in cases of rape and incest, is said to be agonizing over the stem-cell decision, one of the most important of his presidency.

``I do care about the opinion of people, particularly someone as profound as the Holy Father,'' he said on Monday.

``I'll take that point of view into consideration as I make up my mind on a very difficult issue confronting the United States of America. It's the need to balance value and respect for life with the promise of science and the hope of saving life,'' he said.

Copyright © 2001 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.

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Monday July 23, 2001

Pope Warns Bush of 'Evil' of Embryo Cell Research

President Bush to Meet Pope for First Time - (WKMG, Orlando)

By Philip Pullella

CASTELGANDOLFO, Italy (Reuters) - Pope John Paul (news - web sites) warned President Bush (news - web sites) on Monday of the ``evils'' of stem-cell research using embryos and spoke of the right to life and dangers of globalization.

Bush, 55, dressed in a dark suit, appeared slightly nervous as he was introduced to the 81-year-old Pope, who greeted him while leaning on a cane.

Bush, asked later about his feelings during the meeting, said: ``It's hard to describe. I'm not poetic enough to describe what it's like to be in his presence.''

Meeting the Pontiff for the first time as president, Bush took the ailing Pope's left hand and helped him walk to chairs where they held 35 minutes of private talks in a room overlooking a lake at the papal summer residence south of Rome.

``This is where the Popes spend their summers,'' the Pope said while photographers clicked away.

``Yes Sir. And I can understand why. It's so beautiful here,'' Bush said.

During their private talks, which Bush later described as a ''good discussion,'' the two men spoke of the recent violence-marred Group of Eight summit in Genoa, the Middle East, and ways of helping the developing world, a Vatican (news - web sites) source said.

PUBLIC SPEECH

The Pope saved his thunder for his public speech.

In a talk woven around the theme of respect for life, the Pope made a clear reference to stem-cell research, a topic in the forefront of the conservative president's mind as he deliberates whether to permit federal funding for such work.

He spoke of ``evils such as euthanasia, infanticide and, most recently, proposals for the creation for research purposes of human embryos, destined to destruction in the process.''

The Catholic Church condemns stem-cell research using embryos because they are destroyed in the process but does not oppose other forms of stem-cell research where cells are taken from body tissues and life is not threatened.

The Pope's specific words on stem-cell research concerning embryos appear to leave maneuvering room for Bush as he ponders what kind of stem-cell research to approve for federal funding.

Bush later told a news conference he would keep the Pope's words in mind when thinking about his decision.

``I do care about the opinion of people, particularly someone as profound as the Holy Father,'' he said.

``I'll take that point of view into consideration as I make up my mind on a very difficult issue confronting the United States of America. It's the need to balance value and respect for life with the promise of science and the hope of saving life,'' he said.

Advocates believe research with embryonic stem cells, the early master cells formed soon after a human egg is fertilized, could lead to medical advances.

The aging Pontiff also spoke out, albeit indirectly, against the death penalty, which Bush supports.

``A free and virtuous society, which America aspires to be, must reject practices that devalue and violate human life at any stage from conception until natural death,'' he said.

During Bush's six years as Texas governor, the state carried out 152 executions, the highest rate in the United States. Under his presidency, U.S. federal authorities resumed executions after 38-years. Two men have been put to death.

POPE WARNS OF DOWNSIDE OF GLOBALISATION

Saying ``a global world is essentially a world of solidarity,'' the Pope decried that many do not reap globalization's benefits.

``The Church cannot but express profound concern that our world continues to be divided, no longer by the former political and military blocks, but by a tragic fault line between those who can benefit from these opportunities and those who seem cut off from them,'' he said.

He also repeated calls for industrialized countries to share technology with poorer countries, to respect the environment, to cancel or significantly reduce developing country debt and to be open to immigrants.

In his speech, Bush avoided controversy, praising the Polish Pope for his role in defense of human rights and referring to his role in the fall of communism in Eastern Europe.

``You have urged men and women of goodwill to take to their knees before God and to stand, unafraid, before tyrants...this has added greatly to the momentum of freedom in our time,'' Bush said

After the private talks, Bush's wife Laura and daughter Barbara, both clad in black and wearing mantillas for the occasion, were called in and shown the view from the papal balcony, overlooking Lake Albano, an extinct volcano.

Copyright © 2001 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.

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WHERE SCIENCE IS TAKING US

Report: Test-Tube Baby Born to Save Ailing Sister

Reuters

WASHINGTON (Oct. 3, 2000) - A Colorado couple used genetic tests to create a test-tube baby that would have the exact type of cells desperately needed to save their 6-year-old daughter, the Washington Post reported on Tuesday.

The newspaper said it was the first time a couple was known to have screened their embryos before implanting one in the mother's womb for the purpose of saving the life of a sibling.

The baby, named Adam, was born in Denver on Aug. 29. Doctors collected cells from his umbilical cord, a painless procedure, and on Sept. 26 infused them into his sister Molly's circulatory system, according to the Post report.

Molly suffered from an inherited bone marrow deficiency that is universally fatal without a transplant like the one she received from her newborn brother. She is recuperating in a Minneapolis hospital, and within about a week doctors should know whether the procedure was successful, the Post said.

The procedure is both a promising and worrisome harbinger of where scientific advances are taking human reproduction in the near future -- at least for those who can afford to take that path, the Post said, quoting doctors and ethicists.

''We knew we were running out of time,'' Charles Strom, director of medical genetics at Illinois Masonic Medical Center, where the genetic testing was done, told the paper.

Now, he said, the girl has an 85 percent to 90 percent chance of being largely free of the marrow disease.

But the case also raises questions about parents' ability to choose the traits of their children, for whatever practical -- or capricious -- reason they may have.

GIRL FACED RARE, DEADLY DISEASE

The girl who received the cell transplant, Molly Nash of Englewood, Colorado, was born with Fanconi anemia, an inherited disorder that causes a massive failure of bone marrow cell production.

Children with the disease suffer from anemia, bleeding disorders and severe immune system problems and generally die from leukemia or other complications by the time they are 7.

The only effective treatment is to get a batch of healthy cells from a perfectly matched sibling to replace the ailing child's faulty bone marrow cells.

The Post said Molly's parents, Lisa and Jack Nash, had long wanted more children, but were afraid to conceive another for fear that any new baby would be affected by the disease. Each parent carries both a normal and a faulty version of the Fanconi gene, which meant they had a 25 percent chance of having an affected child with each pregnancy.

But a few years ago they learned of a new technique under development called pre-implantation genetic diagnosis.

Researchers harmlessly pluck a single cell from embryos that have been created by standard in vitro fertilization and are developing in a laboratory dish. They test each of those cells for the presence of a disease gene, and then transfer to a woman's uterus only those embryos whose cells test normal.

Lisa Nash told the Post that when she tried in vitro fertilization for the first time a few years ago she turned to pre-implantation genetic diagnosis primarily to select an embryo unaffected by Fanconi. She allowed researchers to test the embryos for compatibility with Molly's cells, but the tests were not very good then, she said.

The couple went through this four times, and each time benefited from increasingly sophisticated cell typing tests. But none of the attempts resulted in a pregnancy.

Finally, in the fertility cycle initiated late last year, two of the couple's 15 embryos tested as both free of the disease and having a perfect match for Molly, Strom said.

Only one of those two embryos was healthy enough to transfer to Lisa Nash's womb. On Christmas Eve the couple learned that the embryo had implanted properly and that Lisa Nash was pregnant, according to the Post report.

After Adam was born, doctors saved blood cells from his umbilical cord. Research has shown umbilical cord cells, like transplanted bone marrow cells, can go to a recipient's bone marrow and repopulate the marrow space with healthy cells.

The transplant was performed last week at Fairview-University Hospital in Minneapolis, which specializes in bone marrow replacements for children with Fanconi anemia.

''Molly was holding Adam in her lap'' while the cells dripped through a plastic tube into the girl's chest, Nash told the Post. ''It was the most awesome, monumental experience of our life, yet it was so simple. You'd think there'd be thunderbolts and lightning, but it was calm.''

So far, doctors said, Molly is doing well.

University of Minnesota cord blood specialist John Wagner, who oversaw the transplant, told the Post there had been no complications, and Molly would soon be out of the high-risk period that follows such procedures. Doctors suppressed her immune system with the radiation and chemotherapy to increase the chances the cells would not be rejected.

Copyright 2000 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.

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Opposition to human cloning will 'blow over,' scientist says

January 7, 1998

Same technique used in sheep cloning

Ethical, legal dilemma

CHICAGO (CNN) -- A scientist who plans to clone babies for infertile couples believes any opposition to his work will be short-lived. "I think it will blow over," Richard G. Seed told CNN on Wednesday.

"There were an awful lot of people against the automobile, too," he said in a live interview by telephone from Chicago. "Any new technology ... creates fear and horror." But as time passes, human cloning will receive "enthusiastic endorsement," he said.

CNN's Dr. Steve Salvatore explains the cloning dilemma

Seed, who has a Harvard doctorate in physics and has done fertility research in the past, plans to begin his work on a human clone within three months . "My target is to produce a two-month pregnant female (within the next 18 months)," he said.

If he is barred from pursuing his work in the United States, Seed said he plans to go to another country. He said he has talked with officials in Tijuana, Mexico, and also was considering the Cayman Islands and the Bahamas.

In a separate interview with National Public Radio (NPR) correspondent Joe Palca, , Seed said it was his objective to set up profitable human clone clinics, first in the Chicago area and then at "10 or 20 other locations" in the U.S. and "maybe five or six" internationally.

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'Cloning and the reprogramming of DNA is the first serious step in becoming one with God.'

— Scientist Richard G. Seed

Seed, who is not a medical doctor, says he has already assembled a group of doctors willing to work with him and has four couples who have volunteered to be cloned.

The goal for each of them is to achieve a pregnancy within a year and a half.

The researchers will use a donor cell from either the mother or father and test it for genetic abberations, he said.

He declined to name any of the couples and it was not immediately clear where in the Chicago area Seed planned to open his proposed clinic. He told USA Today he needs $2 million to begin his privately funded project but has only raised "a few hundred thousand" dollars.

Same technique used in sheep cloning

Human cloning goes under the microscope

Seed plans to use the same technique utilized by Scottish scientists in 1996 to clone the adult sheep Dolly, the first mammal cloned from adult tissue.

The human cloning procedure involves taking an unfertilized egg from a female, removing the nucleus, which contains most of the genetic information, and replacing it with the nucleus of a cell from the person to be cloned.

The hard part is tricking this egg into acting as if it has been fertilized by a sperm, thus starting it dividing as if it were a new baby, instead of just creating more skin cells or liver cells or cells of whatever organ the nucleus was taken from.

If the technique is successful, the fertilized egg would grow to 50 to 100 cells and the embryo would then be transferred to a woman. A baby clone would be born nine months later.

Seed says the cloned babies he and his colleagues would create would have no chromosomal damage and a normal life span.

He first talked about his plans December 5 at a little-noticed Chicago symposium on reproductive technologies sponsored by the Illinois Institute of Technology, Palca told CNN.

Ethical, legal dilemma

Seed will attempt to use the same techniques used to clone Dolly

After Dolly was cloned, President Clinton set up an advisory group which recommended last year that Congress pass a law making human cloning illegal.

Harold Shapiro, who headed the panel -- the National Bioethics Advisory Committee -- believes Seed's project is "scientifically and clinically premature," with many legal and ethical issues yet to be resolved.

In the future, however, Shapiro acknowledged there might be cases where human cloning could benefit infertile couples.

Clinton issued an executive order blocking the use of federal funds on human cloning research and proposed a law banning such research for five years, actions Seed disagrees with. "I am an independent thinker," he told NPR.

Several measures to ban cloning are awaiting action in Congress. In the meantime, the Food and Drug Administration says it has the authority to regulate human cloning research.

The American Medical Association said Wednesday it does not have an official policy on the subject but expects members to discuss the issue at a meeting in June.

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Human Cloning Plans

January 6, 1998 -- American scientist Richard Seed tells NPR’s All Things Considered that he and his colleagues are set to begin work on human cloning within the next 90 days. In an interview, NPR’s Science Correspondent Joe Palca reports that Seed and some Chicago-area doctors have the skills and equipment to make an attempt at the procedure, which they plan to offer to infertile couples wishing to have children.

The controversial move runs counter to President Clinton's directive that the public and private sectors refrain from human cloning research. The president made that request last year in the wake of news that Scottish scientists successfully cloned the adult sheep Dolly. The prospect of human cloning has been widely denounced by ethicists, scientists, and public officials.

But, as Palca reports, Seed sees human cloning as a moral imperative -- something that will bring humankind closer to God. Hear Richard Seed explain his rationale.

Ethicist and lawyer John Robertson disagrees with Seed’s rationale but says some people may find legitimate uses for human cloning in the future. Listen to Robertson's arguments.

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The Lancet, Jan 2, 1999

Human cloning trial met with outrage and scepticism. Kelly Morris; Jonathan Watts.

The announcement last month by South Korean scientists that they had made the world's first human clone sparked public outrage and scepticism among scientists.

Researchers at Seoul's Kyunghee University Hospital infertility clinic reported on Dec 16 that they had fused an adult human nucleus with an enucleated egg to create the embryo, which divided twice to reach the four-cell stage. The experiment was stopped on Dec 11 to avoid contravening ethical guidelines, but team leader Lee Bo-Yeon said the next stage would have been to transfer the embryo to a womb. "If implanted into the uterine wall of the carrier, we can assume that a human child would be formed and that it would have the same gene characteristics as the donor", he told reporters.

Lee explained that the team had used the so-called Honolulu technique. This method, which was used to clone mice in Hawaii earlier last year, involved insertion of a somatic-cell nucleus into an enucleated egg followed by activation of the egg. This was a modification of the technique used at the Roslin Institute (Roslin, UK) to create Dolly, the first vertebrate cloned from an adult cell. In Dolly's case, a whole somatic cell was inserted into an enucleated egg, and the two cells were simultaneously fused and activated by passage of a small electric current.

Lee's claims were dismissed as unsound by scientists around the world, many of whom noted that Lee's unpublished work is not part of a major cloning research programme. Yukio Tsunoda (Kinki University, Nara, Japan), the first scientist to clone twin calves, said, "I have never heard of such an experiment taking place and at the moment I don't believe it is true".

Harry Griffin, a scientific director at the Roslin Institute, said that "taking a putative embryo to the four-cell stage doesn't actually tell us anything at all", since a fertilised human egg is "preprogrammed" to divide to at least the eight-cell stage. To produce a live, healthy clone, the 100 000, mainly silent, genes in the somatic-cell nucleus need to be activated rapidly and "perform perfectly for the next 9 months", Griffin explained. The generally low success rate with cloning sheep, calves, and mice suggests that a cloned human embryo would probably be stillborn or die soon after birth. "Nuclear transfer is not in-vitro fertilisation with a twist."

Another risk associated with cloning from somatic cells is the potential for inheritance of somatic-cell mutations from the donor. Nuclear transfer bypasses mechanisms that correct DNA errors in germ cells so cancer incidence may be increased in clones. Scientists are also concerned that the DNA in a cloned animal may behave like that from an animal that has the combined age of the donor and offspring, and that this might shorten the clone's lifespan.

These scientific concerns added to the serious ethical reservations expressed internationally as the world came face-to-face with the possibility of human cloning. Protesters demonstrated outside Kyunghee University Hospital demanding that Lee and his team apologise to the human race for their "inhuman experiment". Local newspapers reacted with a mixture of pride and dismay, though there was widespread agreement that South Korea needs new laws to curb cloning research. Currently, the only restraint is voluntary--a 1993 resolution by the South Korean Medical Association.

Lee said he would continue his studies, but only within the limits of the law. "I understand the concerns of people who are opposed to it."

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The New Republic, March 1, 1999 p20(1)

Will Homo sapiens become obsolete?: MEDICAL EVOLUTION. (stem-cell research raises cloning controversy) Gregg Easterbrook.

Abstract: Two scientists have isolated embryonic stem cells; the cells that are the precursor of all body parts. Also, they have induced them to copy themselves into like cells that can generate any type of human tissue. The research uses tissue from aborted fetuses, and this aspect of it has raised some controversy. Also, some fear this stem-cell research puts biotechnologists only a step away from human cloning. The 2 scientists who pioneered the research are calling on Congress to lay down clear guidelines for the field.

For John Gearhart, a biologist at Johns Hopkins University, professional life had been an exercise in slamming against walls. Gearhart's specialty is Down's syndrome, triggered when one of the infant body's chromosomes copies itself once too often. Gearhart had spent 20 years trying to puzzle out this genetic error. "All our data suggested that Down's was caused by something that happens quite early in embryo genesis," he says--but the only way to find out what happens then would be to conduct experiments on human embryos, a prospect repugnant at best. Trying to think his way out of the problem, Gearhart wondered; What if there was a way to isolate and culture embryonic "stem cells," the precursors of all body parts? If they could be transferred to the laboratory, it might become possible to study the cytology of conception.

Stem cells are the philosopher's stones of biology, magical objects capable of metamorphosing into any component of the body: heart, nerves, blood, bone, muscle. Mammal embryos begin as a clump of stem cells that gradually subdivides into the specific functional parts of the organism. Researchers have long assumed that, because stem cells are genetically programmed to change into other things, it would never be possible to control them, let alone culture them. But Gearhart and another researcher working independently, James Thomson of the University of Wisconsin, found this is not so.

Three months ago, Gearhart and Thomson announced that they had each isolated embryonic stem cells and induced them to begin copying themselves without turning into anything else. In so doing, they apparently discovered a way to make stem cells by the billions, creating a biological feedstock that might, in turn, be employed to produce brand-new, healthy human tissue. That is, they discovered how to fabricate the stuff of which humanity is made.

Researchers had already demonstrated that stem cells might be a medical boon by showing that such tissues extracted from aborted fetuses could reverse symptoms of Parkinson's disease. But so many fetuses were required to treat just one patient that the technique could never be practical, to say nothing of its harrowing character. By contrast, Gearhart and Thomson have found that stem cells can be reproduced roughly in the way that pharmaceutical manufacturers make drugs.

If researchers can convert stem cells into regular cells like blood or heart muscle and then put them back into the body, then physicians might cure Parkinson's, diabetes, leukemia, heart congestion, and many other maladies, replacing failing cells with brand-new tissue. Costly afflictive procedures such as bone-marrow transplants might become easier and cheaper with the arrival of stem-cell-based "universal donor" tissue that does not provoke the immune-rejection response. The need for donor organs for heart or liver transplants might fade, as new body parts are cultured artificially. Ultimately, mastery of the stem cell might lead to practical, affordable ways to eliminate many genetic diseases through DNA engineering, while extending the human life span. Our near descendants might live in a world in which such killers as cystic fibrosis and sickle-cell anemia are one-in-a-million conditions, while additional decades of life are the norm.

Granted, sensational promises made for new medical technologies don't always come to pass, and some researchers are skeptical about whether stem-cell technology will pan out. But Harold Varmus, head of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), recently declared, "This research has the potential to revolutionize the practice of medicine." Notes John Fletcher, a bioethicist at the University of Virginia, "Soon every parent whose child has diabetes or any cell-failure disease is going to be riveted to this research, because it's the answer." Ron McKay, a stem-cell researcher at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, says, "We are now at the center of biology itself." Simply put, the control of human stem cells may open the door to the greatest medical discovery since antibiotics.

But there are disquieting aspects to stem-cell research, too. The first is that, for now, the only way to start the process of controlled stem- cell duplication is to extract samples from early human life. Gearhart used fetuses aborted by Baltimore women; Thomson, embryos no longer wanted by Wisconsin in vitro fertilization (IVF) clinics. Gearhart, Thomson, and other stem-cell researchers propose to continue drawing on such "resources," as some bloodless medical documents refer to the fetus and the embryo. This is possible because, even though Congress has placed a moratorium on federal funding for experimentation on most IVF embryos and most kinds of fetal tissue, no law governs what scientists can do to incipient life using private funding, either in research settings or within the burgeoning IVF industry.

Because the rules have banned embryo research by federally funded biologists, but not comparable private science, Congress has created the preposterous situation in which most stem-cell research is not being done by publicly funded scientists who must pass multiple levels of peer review and disclose practically everything about their work. Instead, most stem-cell science is in the hands of corporate-backed researchers. Gearhart's and Thomson's projects, for example, are being underwritten by Geron, a company whose name derives from "gerontology," and which anticipates a licensing El Dorado if stem-cell-based good health can be patented and sold to the seniors' market. "That a sensitive category of research is legal for people who are not publicly accountable, but illegal for those who are accountable, is just very strange," says Thomson.

But the greatest anxiety about stem-cell research is that it will make human cloning respectable. Many of the techniques being perfected for the medical application of stem cells are just a hop, skip, and a jump away from those that could apply to reproductive cloning. Society isn't even close to thinking through the legal, ethical, regulatory, and religious implications, but, thanks to stem-cell research, cloning may arrive much, much sooner than anyone expects.

Stem cells stand in the vanguard of human life. When a sperm penetrates an egg, it triggers a majestic sequence whose first step is to create a new structure that is composed mainly of stem cells. Biologists call such cells "undifferentiated," meaning they have not yet decided what they will be. Once the fertilized ovum implants in the uterus, differentiation starts. Some stem cells become placenta; others begin differentiating into the baby's organs, tissue, or blood. A stem cell might divide into any of the many components of the body, but, once it does, it can only continue growing as that part.

Because once a stem cell begins to differentiate it cannot turn back, biologists assumed that all stem cells could never turn back. But, in 1981, experimenters succeeded in extracting stem cells from the embryos of mice. By the mid-'90s, researchers had learned which chemicals instruct mouse stem cells to become particular tissue types and how to insert the new tissues back into mice. Loren Field of Indiana University became so adept at signaling mouse stem cells to become mouse heart cells that "his lab is almost pulsating with heart cells beating in dishes," Gearhart says.

But, though the stem cell clearly dominates human germination, mysteries abound. The overriding enigma is why stem cells work so phenomenally well in the womb but then stop working when the body matures. After all, every cell in the body contains a complete DNA blueprint for a person's being. In theory, if your coronary arteries became clogged, your DNA could direct the creation of stem cells that would subdivide into new arteries to replace the failing tissue. In some lower animals that regrow limbs, this is roughly what happens. But, after reaching maturity, the human body never again draws on its DNA blueprints to replace tissue more complex than skin. Thomas Okarma, vice president for research for Geron, asks, "Who is really more highly evolved, the lizard that can grow new body parts, or us?" Using stem cells to make fresh new tissue or organs, as if the body was still nascent, is the revolutionary therapy Geron hopes to market.

Another mystery concerns the regulator that shuts stem-cell division off, called the telomere. Any human cell is capable of dividing roughly 50 times; after that, growth stops. Cells are born with a length of telomere, which gets slightly shorter each time the cell divides. When the last snippet is gone, after about 50 divisions, the cell can no longer duplicate. Running out of telomeres is one reason we age.

Why God or natural selection put telomeres into the cell is hotly debated among theorists. But, along with their other dizzying advances, stem-cell researchers have learned to rejuvenate the telomere, at least in the lab. Using an enzyme called telomerase, Geron scientists have already guided batches of stem cells through 200 divisions, with the descendant tissue being stable and nonmalignant. Researchers joke that cells that endlessly divide are "immortal," but this has always been a sardonic adjective, since the only immortal cells observed in natural biology are cancerous. Now Geron is making hale, normal cells that don't grow old, and wondering if this effect can be transferred to people. Therapeutic use of "immortal" cells would not confer unending life (even people who don't age could die in accidents, by violence and so on) but might dramatically extend the life span. Stem-cell research is spinning out so many breakthroughs so fast that its pursuit of the ageless cell, which in other contexts might be the scientific story of the century, here seems like just an asterisk.

The hope among stem-cell researchers is that practical treatments will be available in ten years or less. Biologists have been encouraged by the reasonable success of stem cells collected from the umbilical cords of newborns and used to treat conditions such as bone-marrow disease. (The sudden awareness that stem cells can be manipulated is causing crash programs to collect umbilical cords, which are rich in these enchanted cells.) But many things could go wrong between here and a new form of medicine. Loren Field's experiments with mouse hearts, for example, have shown that 97 percent of artificially cultured, stem- cell-based heart tissue works properly when transplanted into mice. But for reasons unknown, the other three percent becomes malignant. Obviously that problem has to be surmounted before human stem-cell trials can be contemplated.

More pressing is resolving the basic ethics of stem-cell research. When Gearhart first proposed to use aborted fetuses as the basis of his stem-cell research, his sponsoring university was not thrilled. Although research on aborted fetuses is legal, it's a gray area, and restrictions are many. Occasionally, a maverick researcher protests this situation by asking the discomfiting post-Roe question: If it's okay to terminate a fetus, why isn't it okay to experiment on the remains? Few object to research on the cadavers of adults. Do we ban research on the aborted out of a sense of guilt that we should not add mutilation to the wrongs suffered by a life denied?

Gearhart's stem-cell extractions employ "fetal tissue," which researchers may view as differing from fetuses, though the reasoning is obscure. Johns Hopkins put his proposal through eleven levels of legal and ethical review, and also review by the university's security office, which worried that the degenerate fringe of the pro-life movement would target the project. Gearhart chose to focus on a type of stem cell called a "primordial germ cell," which he extracts from a region on the aborted fetus called the "urogenital ridge." Gearhart will work with fetuses no more than nine weeks old. Around nine weeks is when the fetus begins to appear recognizably human, though it is believed there is no consciousness until weeks later. He says, and not without defensiveness, "Remember, it's not criminal at this point." Technically, Gearhart's project might have qualified for federal funding, but he never asked, knowing there would be an outcry.

For his part, Thomson isolates stem cells from the "inner mass" of roughly week-old embryos that were conceived in IVF clinics but which couples elected not to use. Thomson thus extracts tissue from the early, pre-uterus stage in which it is impossible to tell which stem cells will become the placenta and which the person. Strictly speaking, then, Thomson has no way of knowing whether the cells he plucks could have grown or would have been lost anyway. Though Thomson's extractions are timed to occur at what seemed to him the least ethically perilous moment of incipient life, in the cockeyed world of bioethics regulation, his recent experiments clearly could not have qualified for federal funding, since he was employing embryos.

Both Gearhart and Thomson call on Congress to enact clear legal guidelines for their field. Thomson says, "The human embryo is the most special cell in biology, and there are just some things you shouldn't do to embryos"--mainly clone them. The primary point stem-cell researchers make in their own favor is that the cells they experiment upon, once brought into the lab, might be made into muscle or blood, but can no longer become a human being. This assertion seems true, though slightly cute, since the reason the cells cease being capable of personhood is that they've been artificially snatched from it. But then no one plans to conceive the IVF embryos that Thomson gets, and the fetuses Gearhart receives have already had their lives terminated. Neither biologist can change these things, though both might change others' lives for the better.

Reflecting the delicacy of the situation, stem-cell researchers are

beginning to wrestle over the terms "totipotent" and "pluripotent." A totipotent cell is what exists at the earliest germination stage, when each stem cell is capable of becoming a whole person. A pluripotent tissue is an isolated stem cell, capable of transforming into any desired cell type, but not of becoming a whole person. Not, at least, with current technology.

In January, government lawyers sided with the pluripotent versus totipotent distinction, ruling that the NIH can begin funding stem-cell research on the grounds that the cells being worked with cannot become persons and thus are not embryos. This ruling hasn't yet taken effect; assuming it does, there will be beneficial results. Publicly funded scientists from research-center universities will jump into stem-cell investigations: research-center scientists are generally the country's best, and always the most accountable. Equally important, federal funding will move stem-cell findings into the public domain rather than allowing them to become proprietary. Geron shares samples of its stem cells with academics but asks the recipients to sign a statement that Geron owns the knowledge embodied in the cell line. Once public funding flows, proprietary claims will diminish.

Bringing public funding to stem-cell research will force a public debate on this new biology. There has been little so far. In Congress, a few members, such as Representative Jay Dickey of Arkansas, have declared themselves opposed, for pro-life reasons, to any research on embryonic cells. A few members, such as Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa, have openly endorsed stem-cell studies. Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania was expected this year to introduce legislation making human stem-cell research explicitly legal, as it is in the United Kingdom. But Specter now says he will postpone action, feeling the time isn't right.

Many researchers were pleased by this decision, fearing that drawing public attention to today's stem-cell research might only provoke a backlash, whereas, once treatments derived from stem cells are available, lobbying impetus for the technology will be unstoppable. But, while the science world may be trusted to police its own for professionalism and high standards, it can't be trusted with the ethical end of this debate.

Science types tend to be unreflective boosters of funding, funding, and more funding. A 1994 NIH commission on whether to allow embryonic research endorsed it without meaningful objection, tossing off slighting remarks--like a statement that the human embryo is "significantly smaller than the period at the end of this sentence," as if that had anything to do with anything. Stem-cell research came over the horizon so fast that the 1994 panel's work quickly became obsolete, and now a National Bioethics Advisory Commission has been convened to study the latest developments. But it, too, seems mainly concerned with rationalizing the status quo. In January, I watched as the bioethics commissioners had a chance to grill Gearhart and Thomson. The commissioners were awestruck and deferential, asking what they could do to help win stem-cell funding--not much more aggressively than Dolly the cloned sheep herself might have. Toward the end, one commissioner, Rhetaugh Dumas of the University of Michigan, asked the sole unfriendly question: Does stem-cell research have any downsides? When neither of the scientists spoke, Dumas looked around at her fellow commissioners and asked skittishly, "Was that an inappropriate question?" It wasn't a reassuring moment.

One reason the interplay between science and religion has become a topic again is that thoughtful researchers know biotechnology is raising questions science can't answer. For one, whether stem-cell research is ethically good, bad, or indifferent depends largely on when life begins, and on this subject there is neither definitive science nor ethics. Many Catholic, evangelical, and Islamic theorists say that life begins at the moment sperm meets egg; therefore, a single cell can have sacred rights. But this seems not quite right, because DNA sets from egg and sperm do not immediately merge; the ovum divides once before the onset of genetic recombination. Besides, what would happen if cloning rendered every cell in the body a potential person? Varmus, the NIH director, has asked, "If we say any cell has the potential to be a human being, then every time you cut your finger, do you have to wear black?"

Obstetricians sometimes mark the big moment as the time, around two weeks after conception, when the fertilized egg implants in the womb and pregnancy begins. Thomas Aquinas taught that the fetus became "ensouled" after about six weeks. This view, which was Vatican policy until 1869, differs only somewhat from Gearhart's conclusion that fetal tissue extractions should stop after about nine weeks. Roe declared that the rights of life are in view when the fetus is capable of existing outside the mother, a milestone technology keeps pushing back toward the second trimester. Surely once brain activity begins, around the tw