Part I: A brief Description of the Early Life Issues
5. An IVF, Cloning and Stem Cell Timeline[1]
Some major events since the discovery of stem cells
1963 - Canada - McCulloch and Till illustrate the presence of self-renewing cells in mouse bone marrow.
1967 - Abortion legalised in Britain.
1968 - Bone marrow transplant between two siblings successfully treats Severe Combined Immunodeficiency (SCIDS- also known as ‘bubble-boy’ disease.)
1969 - Abortion conditionally legalised in Canada.
1978 -United Kingdom: Louise Brown is born, promoted by the IVF industry as the “first test-tube baby.” In fact, Louise was the only child to be conceived by the in vitro procedure who survived to birth of nearly 80 previous attempts.
1978 - British government sets up the Warnock committee in the wake of the controversy over Louise Brown’s conception, to investigate IVF and embryo research, and to make recommendations for legislation.
1978 - Haematopoietic stem cells are discovered in human cord blood.
1981 - Mouse embryonic stem cells are derived from the inner cell mass.
1991 - United Kingdom: Passage of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act, establishes Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA).
1991-2007 - HFEA issues series of permissions for experiments on live human test subjects, at the embryonic stage and often created in the lab for the purpose, or donated from “spare” embryos left over from in vitro fertilisation. These include cloning; eugenic screening and destruction of embryos for potential defects; the creation of embryos for sibling tissue match treatments; the combining of human and animal DNA to create “hybrid” or “chimeric” embryos.
1992 - Neural stem cells are cultured in vitro as neurospheres.
1993 - Canada’s Royal Commission on New Reproductive Technologies recommends the creation of a matching regulatory body for Canada.
1995 - U.S. President Bill Clinton signs into law the Dickey Amendment which prohibited federally appropriated funds to be used for research where human embryos would be either created or destroyed.
1997 - Leukemia is shown to originate from a haematopoietic stem cell, the first direct evidence for cancer stem cells.
1998 - James Thomson and coworkers derive the first human embryonic stem cell line at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
2000 - French researchers report in Science what the call the first clear success in human gene therapy, curing severe combined immunodeficiency disease (SCID) in several children by inserting the missing gene into their bone marrow stem cells.
2000- Costa Rica: the highest constitutional court outlaws IVF because of the loss of life involved. The court declared that “the human embryo is a person from the moment of conception ... not an object” and rules that any form of IVF exposes embryos to “disproportionate risk of death”.
2003 - Dr. Songtao Shi of NIH discovers new source of adult stem cells in children's primary teeth.
2004 - The government of Italy makes it a crime to freeze human embryos or to perform preimplantation diagnosis.
2004 - California voters approve Proposition 71, which provides $3 billion in state funds over ten years to human embryonic stem cell research.
2004 - Canadian Liberal government passes An Act Respecting Assisted Human Reproduction and Related Research, legalising and regulating IVF and related activities including research on embryos.
2005 - Researchers at Kingston University in England claim to have discovered a third category of stem cell, dubbed cord-blood-derived embryonic-like stem cells (CBEs), derived from umbilical cord blood. The group claims these cells are able to differentiate into more types of tissue than adult stem cells.
2004-2005 - Korean researcher Hwang Woo-Suk claims to have created several human embryonic stem cell lines from unfertilised human oocytes. The lines were later shown to be fabricated.
2001-2006 - U.S. President George W. Bush endorses the Congress in providing federal funding for embryonic stem cell research of approximately $100 million as well as $250 million dollars for research on adult and animal stem cells. He also enacts laws that restrict federally-funded stem cell research on embryonic stem cells to the already derived cell lines.
2004 - Dr. William Hurlbut proposes “Altered Nuclear Transfer” to the President’s Council on Bioethics. He claims it is a method of acquiring embryonic stem cells without killing embryos. His claim is rejected by some pro-life organisations and accepted by others.
2006 - Senator Rick Santorum introduces bill number S. 2754, or the Alternative Pluripotent Stem Cell Therapies Enhancement Act. into the U.S. Senate.
2006 - The U.S. Senate passes the Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act H.R.
810, and votes down Senator Santorum's S.2754.
2006 - President George W. Bush vetoes H.R. 810 (Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act), a bill that would have reversed the Clinton-era law which made it illegal for Federal money to be used for research where stem cells are derived from the destruction of an embryo.
2006 - Cell Journal publishes Kazutoshi Takahashi and Shinya Yamanaka, Induction of Pluripotent Stem Cells from Mouse Embryonic and Adult Fibroblast Cultures by Defined Factors.
2006 - The people of the U.S. state of Missouri passed Amendment 2, which allows usage of any stem cell research and therapy allowed under federal law, but prohibits human reproductive cloning.
2007 - Scientists at Wake Forest University led by Dr. Anthony Atala and Harvard University report discovery of a new type of stem cell in amniotic fluid. This may potentially provide an alternative to embryonic stem cells for use in research and therapy.
2007 The California Institute for Regenerative Medicine became the biggest financial backer of human embryonic stem cell research in the United States when they awarded nearly $45 million in research grants.
2007 - Research reported by three different groups shows that normal skin cells can be reprogrammed to an embryonic state in mice.
2007 Scientist Shoukhrat Mitalipov reports the first successful creation of a primate stem cell line through somatic cell nuclear transfer.
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