Conclusion
This Technology Should Be Regulated and Controlled by Government
There is not really much argument that stem cell research, regardless of its origin as embryonic or otherwise should be controlled to some degree by the government as the development of this research demonstrates a potential for abuse that is startling and could essentially be highly abused. The abuse of this type of research would likely be sourced in the desire of scientists to make more rapid breakthroughs in the development of treatments for diseases and injuries that human kind has found particularly devastating and extremely hard to treat with any real success. Yet, it is clear that a rush to breakthroughs has often caused devastating effects in and of itself and that controls are needed, to create at least a moderate ethical consensus to control the potential pitfalls of progress. Though as has been noted previously there is much in science that is self-regulatory the reality is that there are certain areas of research that can simply not be left entirely without guidance, as stakeholders all have differing goals and ideations, and most are extremely committed to those goals, possibly even to the point of ethical peril.
Researchers' primary aim is to pursue useful, generalizable knowledge. Their pursuit of that goal is subject to ethical side constraints: they're obligated to avoid certain conflicts and promote certain interests of subjects. But they're not obligated to indiscriminately rank subjects' interests above their own or those of the research endeavor -- nor could they, without crippling that endeavor. (Meyer, 2010, pp.10-11)
It is for this very reason that some outside, but not nonspecific, ethical considerations...
To some degree funding for research dictates ethical guidelines as if a line of inquiry or research has or could be seen to step outside the bounds of the ethical goals of the organization that funds it the research will simply not be funded. The government is quite often in the situation of early research that has no immediate future inducement of profit the funding agency of choice and should therefore know where it is putting the taxpayers money and control the situation with special consideration. In short scientists and in many cases industry cannot fundamentally be alone in their ethical enforcement as their goals are different than those of many other stakeholders and complete ethical consideration would to some degree hinder their scientific process.
References
Campbell, M.K. & Farrell, S.O. (2009) Biochemistry 6th Edition. Belmont, CA: Thomson, Brooks/Cole.
Kaplan, K. (November 05, 2010) Scientists to congress: Pass the stem cell law ... while you still can, Los Angeles Times Web. http://articles.latimes.com/2010/nov/05/news/la-heb-stem-cell-letter-to-congress-20101105
Lehrman, S. (2010). Undifferentiated ethics. Scientific American, 303(3), 18-20. Retrieved from EBSCOhost.
Meyer, M.N. (2010). The national individual health insurance mandate. Hastings Center Report, 40(5), 10-11. Retrieved from EBSCOhost.
Robertson, J.A. (2010). Embryo stem cell research: Ten years of controversy. Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics, 38(2), 191-203. doi:10.1111/j.1748-720X.2010.00479.x
Townsend, L. (2008). A re-energized debate on stem cells. MLO: Medical Laboratory Observer, 40(12), 36. Retrieved from EBSCOhost.
