Scientists at the Advanced Cell Technology in Worcester, Massachusetts, announced on Thursday that they’ve managed to extract cells from human embryos without damaging them and that the embryos have been frozen and are theoretically ready to be used for in vitro fertilization. Dr. Robert Lanza, chief scientific officer at the firm, urged the Bush administration to take action and approve the funding of their research, as this would mean a scientific breakthrough in regenerative and tissue replacement medicine.

The announcement follows the one in June last year, when Japanese and U.S. scientists announced they managed to obtain stem cells by turning human skin cells into pluripotent cvasi-stem cells, which later on have the ability to transform into any type of cell. However, there are a series of limitations to using this method, more precisely the fact that it requires the use of gene-altered viruses.

As a response to the work of the Japanese and U.S. researchers, Robert Lanza says the new findings are, for the first time since the study of stem cells began, perfectly harmless to the embryos, and that should determine President Bush change his mind on embryonic stem cell use and approve a federal funding program.

However, despite the assurances that the embryos have not been harmed, there were no assurances that nothing happened to them, or at least that is what scientists at the National Institute of Health believe. And Lanza is very much aware of that: “I think the burden of proof lies with the NIH and the Bush administration to show that an embryo was harmed,” Lanza said (Washington Post).

Following the Japanese and U.S. scientists’ announcement on obtaining stem cells through other methods than the embryonic one, even Professor Ian Wilmut, who led the team of scientists that create Dolly the sheep, agreed that the technique has much more potential than the embryo one.

Whether Lanza and his team of scientist will manage to convince the Bush administration to changer its mind or not, still remains to be seen. Until then, the controversy still hangs over the human embryonic stem cell research, and Lanza will have a hard time proving his technique, considering the only way of showing that the embryos have not been damaged would be by actually using them for in-vitro fertilization, which ethics wouldn’t allow.