Experts Hail Qatar's Stem Cell Research Ethics

Doha, February 29 (QNA) Qatar's ethical and regulatory clarity on stem cell research has spurred further scientific advancement in the subject here, experts told Qatar International Conference on Stem Cell Science and Policy on Wednesday. Hailing Qatar's research ethics environment, Qatar Foundation (QF) for Education, Science and Community Development Research and Development President Faisal Mohammed Al Suwaidi said, "Qatar has one of the most permissive policies on stem cell research." Elaborating further, Supreme Council of Health's (SCH) Dr. Faleh Mohamed Hussein Ali said, "Draft legislation on the protection of human tissue, which includes stem cell research, has been approved by the Executive Committee. "Once implemented into law, it would enable the SCH to make recommendations, set regulations and establish a mandate across institutions that would allow for the standardization of research labs here in Qatar. This legislation can be a model for laboratories in the GCC and across the Middle East." With its ethical, regulatory and scientific infrastructure, Qatar has a comparative advantage in this field whereby "new institutional approaches can be undertaken in the same way Johns Hopkins revolutionized modern medicine in 1880, creating new places for discoveries," said Dr. Richard Klausner, Managing Partner at the Column Group, a biotechnology venture capital firm in California. Weill Cornell Medical College in Qatar's Dr. Jeremie A.R. Tabrizi said, "Research and experiments in induced pluripotent stem cells and mouse and human embryonic stem cells are being conducted in the Middle East, whether here at Weill Cornell in Qatar, in Saudi Arabia or in Iran. This is because the ethical issues of stem cell research have been clearly addressed in Islam." Reaffirming that Islam elaborated on scientific concepts much before the modern era, University of Pittsburgh Professor Gerald Schatten told the conference, "More than a millennium before Swiss microbiologist, Herman Fol, discovered the penetration of a spermatozoon into an ovum and proved its essential role in fertilization, Islam understood the concept of sperm-egg fertilization." Qatar Faculty of Islamic Studies' Dr. Hatem A. El Karanshawy said, "Scientific research in the region has not only occurred historically, but is also "happening now. As you can see here at the conference, research in stem cells has been occurring for quite some time in Qatar and around the region." Urging the setting up of an expert network in the GCC region, Dr Tabrizi said, "The establishment of a collaborative stem cell network throughout the region will lead to greater disease-targeted research, which is not currently possible with individual, private investment initiatives." Since the establishment of the SCH, its mission has been to set forth governance for Qatar s science and research. After the issuing of decrees by the Islamic Jurisprudence Council of the Islamic World League in 1997 and 2003, which approved embryonic stem cell research for therapeutic and scientific research purposes - if they were obtained from permissible sources - the SCH set up Qatar s National Research Ethics Committee to establish a Stem Cell Research Policy. The Qatar International Conference on Stem Cell Science and Policy, organized through a partnership between Qatar Foundation and the James A. Baker III Institute of Public Policy at Rice University, continues for two more days at the Qatar National Convention Centre. (QNA)