Medical Ethics -- Stem Cells

Medical Ethics -- Stem Cells & Cloning

STEM CELLS and CLONING: ETHICAL ISSUES

Stem cell research offers the hope of curing a wide range of human diseases, including diabetes, cystic fibrosis, Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, and many forms of cancers, to name just a few of many. In addition, stem cell-based therapies also provide the mechanism for creating human organs for transplant into thousands of patients who die every year before suitable donated human organ become available to them.

Stem cell research even holds the key to reversing traumatic paralysis caused by accidents, war wounds, and other injuries to the spinal chord that otherwise result in lifelong paralysis and incapacity (Zuckerman 2005). On the other hand, the field of stem cell research and technology provokes harsh criticism from those who maintain that it is immoral to experiment with fertilized human embryonic tissue, primarily because their religious beliefs that life begins at conception.

Unfortunately, the branch of stem cell research that holds the greatest potential for medical advances relies on fetal stem cells, because embryonic stem cells have the greatest potential for transformation into therapeutic tissue forms, because adult stem cells are much less flexible in that regard (Park 2007). Only very recently have scientists in Japan and Wisconsin discovered how to mimic the greater potential of fetal stem cells in adult cells (Zuckerman 2005), but this hardly compensates adequately for valuable research time lost by virtue of seven years of research banned from federal funding since 2000. Most scientists completely reject the belief that early embryonic tissue is "alive" in the same sense as more developed fetal tissue and point out the unjustifiable waste of prohibiting valuable research on the millions of excess embryos currently produced in conjunction with in-vitro fertilization procedures which, under current law, must be discarded as medical waste instead of being used for medically beneficial research.

Human cloning also provokes tremendous opposition, mostly from people who do not understand what it means. Typically, it suggests images of quasi-human "clones" as second-class citizens or beings created for forcible slavery or scientific exploitation in the manner sometimes depicted by science fiction movies and literature. In truth, clones already live among us, because every identical twin is actually a clone of its twin (Sagan

1997).

In reality, cloning simply refers to the process of generating a viable fetus from one set of genes instead of two sets contributed by two parents. At the simplest level, this would allow infertile couples and single women to have children whose genes are exclusively theirs instead of having to combine their genes with those of complete strangers to become pregnant. The first successfully cloned mammal was a sheep named

Dolly" created in 1997, but responsible scientists and medical ethicists do not recommend human cloning until the many difficulties associated with it can be solved