Treating burn victims with fetal skin
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Overview:
A team led by Dr. Patrick Hohlfeld, a professor of gynecology and obstetrics
at the University Hospital of Lausanne, Switzerland, published the
results of their study of skin grafts for the treatment of children's very serious burns. Their report appeared on the Internet on 2005-AUG-18. It will appear
in a future edition of The Lancet, a British medical journal. 1
Physicians had previously observed that when operations are performed on a
fetus before birth, the surgical wounds heal without leaving a scar. The Swiss
team speculated that this unusual property of fetal skin might offer some
advantages when used to treat burn victims.
The team appears to have made a major advance in the treatment of second and
third degree burns. We have included this essay in our web site's
morality section because pro-life groups are almost
certain to raise moral objections to this new technique, since it uses grafts
which can be traced back to a piece of skin removed from a fetus.
How it works:
In conventional treatment of serious burns, a piece of skin is removed from
the patient's body -- typically from their thigh -- and used to cover the wound. In this new study, a small
patch of skin was removed from an aborted fetus, and grown in the laboratory.
The result were sheets of artificial "bioengineered skin." The
artificial skin patches
were used in the place of the victim's own skin to cover the burns. Dr. Hohlfeld
said: "The results were sort of unexpected. . . . These constructs seem to
work as a biological Band-Aid, promoting spontaneous healing of the patient."
2 (The name "Band-Aid" is
registered by Johnson and Johnson).
Design of the study:
Physicians removed a small patch of skin approximately three quarters of an
inch square (four square centimeters) from a 14 week fetus. 3
The pregnant woman "gave permission
at the time of the abortion", 2
presumably long after having made the decision to terminate the pregnancy. At the time, the fetus would have been
about 3 inches long. She had obtained an
abortion for
"medical-social" reasons. This piece of skin was first divided, and then
"...seeded into a collagen 'construct'." The result were sheets of
bioengineered skin sized about 3.5 by 4.7 inches (9 by 12 cm). These were used
to treated eight children, aged 14 months to 9 years. All had deep second or
third degree burns on their hands, feet, legs or buttocks as a result of contact
with scalding water, fire or a hot iron. Treatment would normally have required
skin grafting from the patients' own bodies. A new layer of artificial skin was
placed over the wound every three or four days.
Advantages of the technique:
There appear to be a number of advantages to the use of artificial skin
derived from fetal skin cells:
 |
It is not necessary to cut patches of the patient's own skin in order to
create the grafts. This is a very painful procedure, both at the time of the
procedure and afterwards during healing. | |
With the new treatment, there is no scar left behind on the patient's body where the graft would
have been removed. | |
"The scarring...seen after many burns did not occur" with the new
treatment. 1 | |
"A main problem with healed but heavily scarred burns is that they
contract, limiting the motion of joints. Grafts frequently leave an uneven
contour on the skin surface. Neither of these problems occurred in the eight
children, according to the report. There was 'total recovery of mobility,
especially in hands and fingers'." 2 | |
When normal skin grafts are used, the patches bond with the patient's
existing skin and the wound itself. These have to be periodically removed --
a procedure that is excruciatingly painful. The artificial grafts work
differently. They do not bond with the existing skin. They either dissolve
or change into a gel-like film over the wound. The latter is easily removed
with far less pain. Hohlifeld said: "Not only did they heal, but it had a
very good impact on the pain they were experiencing -- you need several
dressing changes and usually you have to put them to sleep to do that -- and
with this technique most of them didn't need it." | |
There is a possibility that the new technique could save lives:
 |
Since a general anesthetic is not usually required when the artificial grafts
are replaced, the procedure is often much safer. There is a very small
chance that a patient could die due to a reaction to the anesthetic. |
|
There is a possibility that the new technique might increase the
survival rates of seriously injured patients with third-degree burns
over much of their body. Some patients experience serious complications
because they do not have sufficient undamaged skin that can be harvested
for grafts. |
| |
Using normal skin grafts, wound healing takes up to three months. With
the artificial grafts, healing averaged two weeks. |
Dr. Hohlfeld summarized the new technique: "We observed spontaneous
healing of the wound, which you would never observe in normal conditions with a
traditional graft...It wouldn't heal that way, it wouldn't heal that quickly; it
would take months; and it wouldn't cover the whole surface."
Of course, much further work needs to be done before this technique becomes
generally available.
Disadvantages of the technique:
There appears to be one disadvantage to the new procedure: the skin used for
grafts are grown from a small patch of skin removed from an aborted fetus. This
essay is written before any reactions from pro-life groups have surfaced. But it
is likely that very serious objections will be raised. We speculate that
protests may come from two directions:
|
It would promote abortions: If a pregnant woman were struggling with
the decision whether to have an abortion or not, the knowledge that skin
harvested from her fetus would or might be used to help hundreds of thousands of
seriously burned patients might sway her decision in favor of the abortion. Dr.
Hohlfeld believes that this would never happen. He said: "It wouldn't be a
question since we can prepare millions of constructs out of one skin biopsy...I
understand the concern, but...there are pregnancy termination every day."
One sample of skin from one fetus could treat 100,000 or more patients. The
chances of a woman being asked for permission to obtain a skin biopsy would be
vanishingly small. Of course, she would never be asked until after the abortion
was performed. |
|
It is a abhorrent procedure: To some, the idea of skinning a dead
fetus triggers memories of Nazis making lampshades out of human skin during the
Holocaust. (The lampshade atrocity might be a myth. 4)
However, the skin is an organ -- the body's largest organ. Physicians have been
transplanting organs from dead bodies to living people for decades -- hearts,
lungs, kidneys, cornea, etc. Other people have no objection to the procedure,
particularly if a single skin biopsy can help hundreds of thousands of people --
and perhaps save the life of some. |
Reactions from pro-life groups:
|
2005-AUG-18: LifeSiteNews.com posted a brief article on their web site
titled "Abortion-derived skin from unborn babies used to treat burns."
It said, in part, |
"The use of aborted baby parts is not new. Body parts of aborted
children are highly prized by researchers for a number of different
experimental applications including for cosmetic testing. Mark Crutcher
of Life Dynamics, the group that first exposed the practice, says that
the abortion industry is developing new methods of killing children so
that more of the body is preserved intact so the parts can be more
readily re-sold to research firms. Crutcher told LifeSiteNews.com that
the logic is inescapable. "Once you cross the line, where you see a
child as a commodity, something you can remove if you have the money to
do it, then this is a natural extension." 5
|
2005-AUG-18: CovenantNews.com
covered the story, under the title: "Skinning Dead Babies." They
wrote, in part: "The researchers used the skin from a murdered
unborn baby -- a 14-week male whose mother gave permission at the time of
abortion." The article had a link to a brief
summary of the study at Nurse101.com, which in turn had a link to the
Washington Post article. 2 |
Reactions from medical experts:
|
Roger W. Yurt, head of the burn center at Weill Cornell Medical
Center, in New York City, NY said: "I can't say whether it's a leap
forward before we know how it compares with standard wound care." |
|
Robert Sheridan, chief of burn medicine at Shriners Hospital for
Children in Boston, MA said: "This is certainly work worth following
with great eagerness. But in the absence of comparisons, it would be very
difficult to assess the difference that the fetal cells bring." 2 |
Sponsored link:
References used:
-
Sheryl Ubelacker, "Fetal skin cells used to treat child burn victims,"
Canadian Press, The Toronto Star, 2005-AUG-18, Page A18.
-
David Brown, "Fetal tissue heals burns: Tests show treatment led to
normal skin regrowth," Washington Post, 2005-AUG-18, Page A02. Online
at:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/
- Various media reports state that the skin biopsy used either had an area
of four square centimeters or was a 4 cm by 4 cm square. We have assumed
that the former is correct.
-
Cecil Adams, "Did the Nazis make lampshades out of human skin?,"
The Straight Dope, 2004-JUN-04, at:
http://www.straightdope.com/
-
"hw," "Abortion-Derived Skin From Unborn Babies Used to Treat Burns,"
LifeSiteNews.com, at:
http://www.lifesite.net/
Copyright © 2005 by Ontario Consultants on Religious
Tolerance
Originally posted: 2005-AUG-18
Latest update: 2005-AUG-19
Author: B.A. Robinson 
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