Embryos in the skin

Biochemist José Polo poses with images of his human pseudo-embryos Monash University

Scientists have managed to create something very similar to a week-old human embryo from simple skin cells from a donor, in a good example of the things that are slipping from the spotlight because of the pandemic.

The advance is imperfect, as recognized by its own authors - embryos are surely unviable to produce a pregnancy, let's not talk about generating a baby - but it makes the creation of a perfect human embryo a mere technical question.

Bioethics must be up to the task.

Jurists and legislators are faced here, and more generally in regenerative medicine as a whole, with a speed test in which the pace of scientific advance has thus far dominated.

The regulation not only responds late to the discoveries, but also badly, because its parsimonious and guaranteeing uses produce rigid and myopic norms that soon turn out to be unnecessary, or even as a hindrance.

It is just what is happening now with a sacred border that prevents half the world from investigating embryos older than 14 days.

It is like admitting that an embryo older than that has the status and protection of an individual, which has no empirical support.

Researchers in the sector and some jurists believe that this arbitrary border should be eliminated, because it is hindering the advance of knowledge in exchange for nothing.

Society must be involved in the debate.

The short-term objective of these investigations is to access the unknowns that the formation of a human embryo still poses, to explore the causes of infertility and the mechanisms of congenital diseases.

No one intends to clone Fu-Manchú or to demonstrate the nonexistence of God — two projects that are not very financed — but to improve medicine and alleviate human suffering.

Legislative activity must respond with speed, waistline, and standards adaptable enough to last for a few years.