The Ethics Behind Stem Cell Research

By: Gowri Gopakumar

What if a single cell can change the entirety of humankind’s interaction with medicine? That’s the power a stem cell holds. According to MayoClinic, “Stem cells are the body's raw materials — cells from which all other cells with specialized functions are generated”. The unique capability of stem cells to create differentiated cells through cell division is what makes their use in science invaluable. As a result of this special function, stem cells can provide us answers to decade long problems in the medical field.

While stem cells have many uses including help to test new drugs for safety and assist to understand new diseases and how they work, it is stem cells’ use in regenerative medicine that has scientists hooked. Regenerative medicine is simply when new healthy cells are generated to replace cells affected by a disease. This form of medicine has the ability to change the course of healthcare. As of right now, regenerative medicine has only been able to artificially create tissues and organs at the most, providing relief to many patients abroad.

However the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy explains that, “Despite the tremendous therapeutic promise of HESC (human embryonic stem cell) research, the research has met with heated opposition because the harvesting of HESCs involves the destruction of the human embryo. [...] This process of disaggregating the blastocyst’s cells eliminates its potential for further development. Opponents of HESC research argue that the research is morally impermissible because it involves the unjust killing of innocent human beings.” Stem cells blurry the line as to when human life starts, right at conception or after the development of the embryo. This debate continues on which impedes on the proceeding of such research of stem cells to avoid this ethical concern. Furthermore, with the rapidly growing technology in this day or age, people begin to worry whether artificially created humans or even human clones may become the next big thing. In fact the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy continues that, “It (stem cell research) also encompasses questions about, among other things, whether researchers who use but do not derive HESCs are complicit in the destruction of embryos, whether there is a moral distinction between creating embryos for research purposes and creating them for reproductive ends, the permissibility of cloning human embryos to harvest HESCs, and the ethics of creating human/non-human chimeras”. Many worry that such stem cells may encourage the creation of embryo cells ultimately leading to further development of these embryonic cells to actual humans for the name of science. Yet, creating humans from these artificially created embryo cells calls into question what do we as a society consider a human – a developed embryo or a conceived embryo from another existing human?

Scientists continue to juggle to further their study in the promising stem cell research and the perceived ethical concerns such research brings up. Only as time goes on can we only truly understand what stem cell research will mean for us as a society. The question lies is whether we prioritize providing a new solution to current problems over the risk of opening a pandora box of greater ethical pressures in the future?