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SHOW: CNN LIVE SUNDAY 4:00 PM EST
December 5, 2004 Sunday

HEADLINE: Larry Goldstein on Stem Cells

BYLINE: Fredricka Whitfield, Nic Robertson, Denise Belgrave, Miguel Marquez, Kathleen Koch, John Vause, Ali Velshi, Anesh Raman, Karen Winter, Carol Lin

GUESTS: Oliver Ryan, Larry Goldstein

WHITFIELD: More morally acceptable stem cell options? We'll talk to a professor about possible break-through after the break.

And putting religion before sports. A pint-sized football team refuses to play a championship game scheduled on a Sunday. So why will they still get a chance at a title? Answers when we come right back.

WHITFIELD: The medical panel that advises President Bush on bioethical issues is holding a series of meetings on stem cell research. According to the "The Washington Post," the panel heard descriptions of two new lab techniques that offer the possibility of large numbers of stem cells without the destruction of living human embryos. Larry Goldstein is a stem cell researcher at the University of California , San Diego . He attended the meetings and joins us live from Washington . Good to see you Doctor.

LARRY GOLDSTEN, STEM CELL RESEARCHER, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA : Hello. How are you?

WHITFIELD: I'm doing pretty good. Well was there widespread acceptance at this meeting of these two new techniques?

GOLDSTEIN: I think I need to correct something. I'm at a meeting of the American Society for cell biology here in Washington . I wasn't at the president's council meeting.

WHITFIELD: Some of the members of the council were attending that meeting, that should be the correction.

GOLDSTEIN: Yes, that's right.

WHITFIELD: OK, and was there widespread acceptance at this meeting of these two techniques?

GOLDSTEIN: I think both ideas, and remember, they're ideas now, they are not demonstrated techniques are very interesting. And I think most scientists greet them with interest and enthusiasm. What you have to remember is that most scientists and majority of the American public find this type of research using human blastocsts (ph) and human embryos ethical and appropriate. In fact in California we voted on this and know this to be true. What's being offered here are two alternative ways of doing this research that might make more Americans comfortable with it and that's a good thing.

WHITFIELD: Let's break down what these techniques are.

GOLDSTEIN: Sure.

WHITFIELD: One technique involves embryos that are so-called functionally dead. How does that work? GOLDSTEIN: So the proposal is that it may be possible to identify embryos after they come out of a freezer, that is they've been frozen for some time and used by a chemical or other markers to indicate that they are not capable of any further development and are therefore, for all practical purposes, dead they could not initiate a pregnancy if they were put into a woman's womb. That's a interesting idea if such markers could be identified and it were practical to isolate stem cells from those embryos.

WHITFIELD: And we must precede these are both in experimental stages. Now the second technique apparently involves what's called a nuclear transfer. What does that mean?

GOLDSTEIN: That is right, so it's a very interesting idea. Remember, the way nuclear transfer works, and this is a little more complex than you may have bargained for, but the idea is you take a woman's egg cell or oacyte (ph) and you completely remove its genetic material. What you sometimes end up is a cytoplast. It's not a true cell but has molecules that can activate genes. You can take a necelous (ph) for example from a skin cell, your genetic material, put it in that cytoplast, activate it, get it to what is called the blastocyst (ph) stage and get it genetic to you.

The notion here that has been proposed by Professor Bill Hurlford (ph) of Stanford, is that perhaps it would be possible to alter the DNA of your skin cell before putting it into that cytoplast, that egg cell, that oacyte (ph) without genetic material. It would still retain the ability to make stem cells but will not adopt the form or property of a human embryo. And the idea is that might give us a way to make stem cells genetically like you with out making an embryo or something like an embryo that would be morally offensive to some Americans.

WHITFIELD: So unadvantaged, so that perhaps it wouldn't be morally offensive to a lot of people, unadvantaged is that these embryos do not have the potential to grow, but if they are considered incomplete, does that mean that the research is limited as well, the use of these types of embryos?

GOLDSTEIN: Well, I that's a very important question, and it's a question we don't know the answer to until somebody does the experiment. Remember that experimental science, and especially experimental biomedical research is driven by document able experiments and data. And so an interesting idea is absolutely something we should try, and see if it works, and if it does, then we should see how far we can go with it.

If it can replace conventional techniques, then great. But it's very important to realize that, having a good idea is not a good reason to stop valuable and important research while we see if it works. And so it's very important that we proceed with this research that a majority of our citizens and a majority of Californians think is ethical and appropriate while we search for other solutions but certainly, we should search for other solutions while we're at it.

WHITFIELD: All right and the stages of this research are still fairly early, still in its experimental stages. Dr. Larry Goldstein, thanks so much for joining us.

GOLDSTEIN: Thank you.