Stem Cell Research Controversy One

¶ … Stem Cell Research Controversy

One of the most controversial ethical topics in modern American society concerns the use of stem cell science in general and embryonic stem cell research in particular. For the decade preceding the Obama presidential administration, embryonic stem cell research was excluded from any federal funding, effectively prohibiting it for all intents and purposes because of the nearly complete dependence of all major stem cell science-related research on government funding. As a result of federal funding restrictions on embryonic stem cell research in the United States, most of the important research in the field was conducted in Europe and Asia for the first decade of the 21st century.

Meanwhile, stem cell research in the U.S. was (in effect) limited to projects involving adult stem cells. The scientific problem is that not all human stem cells are equal in their potential usefulness. Embryonic stem cells have the greatest capacity for being directed to develop into specific kinds of human tissue. Adult stem cells have similar properties (in principle) to embryonic stem cells but their ability to be coaxed into developing into specific kinds of tissues is much more limited. Moreover, working with adult stem cells requires difficult and uncomfortable and potentially dangerous bone marrow extraction of stem cells from living donors.

As a government policy leader on the U.S., it is important to make policy decisions that are consistent with objective ethical principles and with applicable legal and constitutional principles. The embryonic stem cell research issue was dealt with improperly under the Bush administration because White House policy (and the resulting legal restrictions on embryonic stem cell research) seems to have obviously been driven by religious beliefs and dogma rather than by secular medical and scientific ethics. In the U.S., that is fundamental violation of the historic principle of separation of church and state upon which this nation was founded.

The objective ethical analysis of the issue would balance the potential benefits of embryonic stem cell research against the potential harms capable of being caused. Ethically permissible legislative restriction would have to be related to specific types of harm and to distinguishing between objectively valid objections or moral concerns and those objections or claimed moral concerns that are based on subjective belief rather than objective scientific concepts and data.

In the case of embryonic stem cell research, it would be the responsibility of legislators to identify the specific types of potential harms that would justify limitations on research or on research funding available through public funds. Given the uncontested fact that embryonic stem cell research applications have the potential to eliminate the need for organ transplantation, to regenerate limbs lost in traumatic amputations, to restore movement in cases of spinal paralysis, and to eliminate many of the most debilitating human diseases, there must be very legitimate specific concerns of potential harm to balance out those tremendously important benefits to society.